great book: In the Defense of Food

seriously.  i thought i would be reading things i already knew, and while i do feel that it is solidifying my stance on food and agriculture, there is a lot of information in here that is new to me.  Pollan cites a lot of studies and points out some inherent flaws in the reductionist view of nutrients.  i don't want to sell a single vitamin again at work and i don't want to eat any processed foods.  i know that i inevitably will, but my intention is to change my tendency toward cheap and easy, to whole and nutritious.  when with people that don't hold the same values as me, for whatever reason, i often choose to go with what they want so as not to rock the boat.  i also remember from my vegetarian days that people who ate meat somehow seemed to think that my food choices implied that i was judging the way they chose to eat.  i am doing this for me and for my family, and yes, of course i think the more people that choose to eat this way could possibly change the future of our land, of our health and of our children's lives for generations to come.  but i do not judge your choices.  i trust that everyone is where they need to be, and i have been in a lot of places in my life when i needed to be there...and basically, i am learning to be me...and not to change because i don't want to  rock the boat.  my choices are not meant to hurt anyone, and i know that.  hopefully everyone else does too.
so, anyway....wow.  uranus in aries.  i am telling ya.  be yourself.  don't go trying to make yourself into a round peg if you are a square, you know that old analogy.  go full force ahead, just as you are

ok, back to the book.  here are some randomly remembered quotes...
-"A diet based on quantity rather than quality has ushered a new creature onto the world stage: the human being who manages to be both overfed and undernourished, two characteristics seldom found in the same body in the long natural history of our species."
-"Only 20% of American children and 32% of adults eat the recommended five daily servings of fruit and vegetables."
-"The sheer novelty and glamour of the Western diet, with its seventeen thousand new food products every year and the marketing power - 32 billion dollars per year - used to sell those products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and government and marketing to help us decide what to eat.  Nutritionism, which arose to us better deal with the problems of the western diet, has largely been co-opted by it: used by the industry to sell more nutritionally "enhanced" processed food and to undermine further the authority of traditional food cultures that stand in the way of fast food."

most of the great information is hard to encapsulate into a brief bit here on my blog.  you just HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK!

ok...so now off to cook some good old regular food for my family.  i am sure the kids will learn to love it. :)  and tomorrow, payday, hoping to buy a book on Urban Homesteading.  wooohooo.  i love how much i am learning through doing this blog!

love, Melissa