Liquid Gold

This week's reading was the fat section of Salt, Sugar, Fat. Fat gives us the texture, the oiliness, and a hidden taste that is much more hidden than salt or sugar. Fat has been targeted for causing bad health way before salt and sugar made their way onto the scene. Butter and other oils have been around for ages, and it's common knowledge that too much of an oily, fatty product is bad for you. However, the use and consumption of fats have drastically increased over the past few decades, and now nearly everything we eat is packed with fat. A key point for the proliferation of fats in our diet is that they don't set of "alarm bells" like salt or sugar, but we barely eat anything that doesn't have the wonderful texture or amazing taste of fat.

One of the most interesting parts of this section was the section about cheese. Historically, cheese has been regarded as generally healthy. But as Moss points out, the food industry has reformulated the process and now cheese is loaded with fats, and we have been coerced in to eating more and more of it per year. The aging process has been replaced with enzymes to speed things up. Now, many foods are loaded with cheese, purely because Americans really like it, and will buy products with more cheese. A specific example is the frozen pizza: historically, as the food giants competed to win over the American populace, adding more and more food to pizzas increased sales. Over the last decade or so, the amount of cheese consumed by Americans per year has increased drastically.

Although fat has been under public scrutiny for the longest of the three killer ingredients, we still tend to turn a blind eye when it comes to flavor and price. Everything from fried food to cheese and and kind of dessert are loaded with fat, and we just continue to consume more. The next time you prepare a meal and think you're eating healthy, be sure to check the fat content - you'd be surprised at the difficulty to escape this chemical sensation.

Omnivore's Dilemma, part 3

This last section of the book detailed Pollan's quest to forage and gather his own natural meal. He details a hot hunting trip and foraging for mushrooms and other plants. The experiences he shares is a good conclusion section, to both this class and the reading.

Pollan wraps up the book, in which he details all of the problems that our culture has grown into due to modern food. By foraging and collecting his own meal, it's a section that is similar to a call to action. Pollan walked through everything he thought wrong about modern food, then tried to show a way to do something different.

It's also a good time to examine that foraging a meal like Pollan did isn't very practical in modern times. It's difficult to do for even those in rural communities, much less suburban. I think this is a good example Pollan uses to identify his argument of the "American paradox." Although we may seem more health conscious, we don't really have that much of a choice.

The section was definitely a good conclusion to most of our reading. Personally, I would enjoy going looking for my own food or hunting something. I like fishing and hunting, and any time I can get something from somewhere other than the store I go for it. However, this section also does a good job of exemplifying that eating truly natural isn't practical at all.

Fastest Conquest ever - And we're all captives

This weeks reading was the first section of Salt, Sugar, and Fat, detailing the obsession with sugar. We are walked through a very recent history (within the last 100 years) of how sugar came to dominate nearly every food and drink we have on a daily basis. We are given a chronological explanation of how a shift occurred, mostly after World War II, that changed the vast majority of American's diets and caused the epidemic of obesity.

In the prologue, we are given the details of a secret meeting between food industry CEOs and their views on obesity and the contribution of their products. In short, they don't care. We will be seeing just as much sugar in the coming times.

The chapters in this section detail the different marketing efforts of several iconic companies. Dr Pepper, Coke, and the cereal industry, to name a few, were among the examples showing how marketing and demand has driven for foods saturated with sugar. As a result, nearly every food in the grocery store is not sugar frosted, sugar blasted, or just colored sugar.

There are numerous ethical issues that arise from this. And since I have to present this to the class tomorrow, I won't go to in-depth yet. But when we read about sugar's conquest, and how we are completely subjugated by sugary foods and bad nutrition, there comes a point when we have to decide that it's too much and something needs to be done. What is the best way to turn things around?

Wonders of the microbial world of cooking

In the last section, of Cooked, Pollan goes into great depths explaining the wonders that the microbiological world has to offer. He explains several great processes that many people forget are entirely driven by microbial life and their unique fermentation abilities.

In the first two sections, Pollan discusses fermentation of food. He goes through the process of making sour kraut in extreme detail. I enjoyed reading some of the scientific aspects of it, which I understood quite well knowing what I do about microbiology and biochemistry. I definitely appreciated the section, although it was quite long.

The last section was devoted to alcohol, a very unique process entirely dependent on microbes. I enjoyed the historical discussion on alcohol, talking about what it means for us in different aspects of life such as religion and social relationships. Pollan gave a nice context on what alcohol means for us historically, as well as some animals. We all use it similarly. This section was once again a nice scientific discussion that I enjoyed.

One of the main themes of this section was the emphasis on probiotics. Pollan presents us with our history of wanting to be sterile, completely free of bacteria and other flora that populate our bodies. In the first chapter of this section, he mentions a fermentation festival he went to where many people strongly advocated the idea of nourishing the natural microbial flora. Pollan argues for the health aspect of using probiotics, and that our modern diets and the western diseases could be alleviated by being more careful and conscientious about caring for our microbial companions. Pollan also makes a very interesting point that humans evolved as super-beings, that we are an incredibly complex network of various organisms working together.

It's no doubt we need to respect the world we can't see, and not by just focusing on pathogens but realising that there is a lot more to microbial life than the germs that make us sick. Microbiology is a relatively recent and emerging field, and it will be a long time until we understand how it works.

Cooked Part 3 - post discussion

After discussing the reading last night, it's interesting to see the different viewpoints that stood out to other people. First, the more intimate nature that Pollan relates when he was working with the dough is a strange topic that I first overlooked. This relationship of baking bread was explored in very different terms than I would have thought. Nevertheless, a very unique viewpoint was presented. As a whole, our class is about reconnecting with food, and the way Pollan described was a very interesting way to describe that.

Secondly, the discussion of the importance of bread in Christianity was an interesting aspect as well. I didn't take this part to heart as much when I read it, but as we discussed in class the implications of communion combined with Dr. Hartman's personal background and what communion meant in Russian Orthodox, the role of bread in Christianity is quite unique. Once again this speaks to the relationship aspect of reconnecting with food, as a clear example of food proliferating religion is given. Many other religions have ceremonial foods as well. I thought this was a great point for our overall goal of reconnecting with food, particularly in this relationship aspect.

Cooked part III - Air

In the third portion of Cooked, Michael Pollan goes into great detail of the arduous process of baking bread. He spends a large portion of the time detailing the exact processes, then his adventures of investigating how a master baker produces the perfect sourdough bread. This section of the book was very similar to the first part of Cooked, fire, in which the art of barbecue was explored.

Something I really liked about this section was the discussion of the microcultures of bacteria and yeast that were required to make the bread rise. Pollan goes into great detail to contrast his procedure of letting the dough sit outside for a little while as compared to the industrial process where specific yeast are used. Pollan describes that the diversity of the microcultures is what makes home made bread so much better (in addition to the added freshness and better nutrient value). I enjoyed how he did take the time to get acquainted with the organisms growing in his bread, to the point of learning the history of the microbiology behind it and the exact biochemical processes.

Combined with the experience from Great Harvest last weekend, I definitely appreciate bread a lot more. And after eating the freshly made bread from Great Harvest, it's really hard to go back to anything bought from Ingles.

Ultimately, I really appreciate the scientific approach that both sources took to explain this seemingly simple process. Some day, I do want to try baking bread myself and see if I can get these finicky microbes to grow and produce great bread myself.

The Grass is Always Greener....

After the second part of Omnivore's Dilemma, which focused mainly on grass, we discussed a weird contrast between corn and grass. Although both from the same plant family, Pollan clearly prefers grass (the kind you would find in pastures) over corn, leading into the discussion of organic (grass) versus industrial (corn). The comparison between the two methods of producing food are what fueled this part of the book and our discussions last night.

One of the topics we discussed last night was the romanticism of marketing and the idea of red barns and rolling green pastures. Pollan also discusses this in the book, when comparing organic to non-organic. But what we come to see is that even if something is labelled organic, it's ultimately a marketing ploy; we will pay extra for a good story, which further disconnects us from where our food is really from and what really goes into providing the steak or vegetable that we buy in the grocery store.

Another theme we discussed in class that wasn't as much in the book was the fact that to sustain the 7+ billion people living on the earth the idea of "industrial" farming becomes a necessity. By farming the way people did 50 years ago, we could not support the growing population we do now, which becomes a much more complicated ethical issue. We discussed that while true organic farming may be better in some ways, it couldn't support all the people alive now , and the question of who should get food becomes relevant, presenting a very difficult ethical question. Contrast this with the ethical questions of "industrial" farming, and you're left with an extremely intricate mess of ethical issues.

So with the discussion of organic and non-organic, which is more ethical and realistic? The answer isn't nearly as simple as it might seem at first.