My family has been the recipient of much of my advice about nutrition, so they respond with anything good they find on the subject. The book “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan, copyright 2008, was dropped on my table about lunchtime today and I skimmed it while eating a delicious mushroom sauce pasta, stir-fried vegetables and salad. It is a good book. Daniel had checked it out of the library. You can too, or at least read it there, or the reviews on Amazon.com before you decide to buy it. It is not another diet or vitamin book, but it explains once again the negative relationship between good food and commercial interests in our culture. If you choose not to look at the book, just follow the first sentence. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
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Interesting. I guess your grandkids know what type of books will interest you, don’t they?
Grandma, when we watched the documentary called “King Corn” last week we got to see lots of historic and current pictures and video of Iowa which was pretty cool. They also interviewed Michael Pollan several times in the documentary. One of the more interesting things in the movie was that most of the corn grown in the US today is not for human consumption. Just for fun they tried to eat some of it in the film and ended up spitting it out.
There are some good things made with corn, like corn tortillas made from good corn ground on a stone with lime, a cultural custom that makes a nutritious combination (one of Pollan’s points). But I have been extremely frustrated that the powers that be are trying to make fuel out of corn (and making the Mexican staple more expensive) instead of making it out of sugar cane, which we don’t need anyway.
Hi Aunt Jan,
You mentioned your blog at the Virginia reunion and I finally looked it up! I read In Defense of Food a couple of months ago and thought it was excellent! I’ve been getting worked up recently about GMOs and overly processed foods. I liked the suggestion in the book about not eating things with more than 5 ingredients or ingredients you couldn’t pronounce. Kyle and I have been trying hard to follow that suggestion!
Thanks for the comment. It was great to hear from you today. Good nutrition is important for everyone, but folks who do what you and Kyle do should be especially interested.
I’m about 3/4 the way through the book (listening while riding to and from work). Very interesting, and most of what he says has ring of common sense and truth to it.
The connection between subsidized grains and processed foods was new to me. Industrialization’s influence on our food supply would be hard to reverse on a world, or even a national scale. And as I mentor some people with economic hardship, I am looking for inexpensive ways to escape the trap of cheap food, no real sustenance.