Post Pollan Thoughts

The Michael Pollan lecture was a treat. He was funny, engaging and entertaining.

Pollan spoke on the Western food culture. Ours is in fact the most focused on eating well (orthorexic) and simultaneously the least healthy in terms of chronic diseases and obesity. In Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel, I read that the rate of childhood obesity in Mexico increases as the population gets closer to the US boarder, where our food trends have eked over. Our food culture, he made clear, is socially constructed-- think of all the fad diets and changing "enemy" nutrition. But how do we decide what is healthy? What value do we place on different nutritional aspects? How is it possible that such different diets, from solely protein in Africa to maize and other produce in South America, allow for fully functioning and healthy humans? There is not one nutritional recipe for health. There is one nutritional disaster though, in the form of "edible food like substances" in our grocery stores.

In Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle she laments that Americans have no food culture. In peer countries, certain foods and spices that come specifically from that geographic region define the cuisine. Americans do not experience culture rooted in food because we would rather ignore seasonality and distinct geographic produce in order to support monoculture and have fruit on the table all year round. Kingsolver decides to live off her land for one year. The health of her family increases and the family connects by growing, preparing and eating food together.

One problem with our food trends and the edible food like substances is they are cheap. Too cheap to pass up! On a limited budget, one is going to try and get as much bang for the buck as possible. It should be noted that at the Hamilton Farmer's Market, healthy food options are made more available to those on a limited income. This summer I worked at a booth with an EBT machine. Where you could previously only use cash, the EBT machine allowed the swipe of the "food stamp" card in exchange for tokens that could be redeemed at participating vendors. So, many are recognizing the need to evaluate our food trends and the ability to change our food culture depends on identifying the availability of healthy food options.