Thanks to books like Pollen's Omnivore's Dilemma and Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, along with recent extensive coverage by the NY Times, the local/slow food movement has really taken off in the past year or so. It goes a step further than just simply eating "organic", which some strict locavores will tell you has been co-oped by the "industrial food chain" (another basic principal of the movement), and encourages people to buy locally (to reduce the food's carbon footprint and support the local economy) and eat "real food"...(as opposed to anything processed...80% of which is made mainly of corn and soybeans).

Pollen's follow up to The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, sums up the diet of a locavore this way "Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants."

If it sounds like I've signed on to this latest "fad", I have. It ain't an easy way to eat, especially for those of us stretched to find the time to dedicate to finding and cooking food, but its the first book I've read about "food" in a long time that made any sense and didn't come off like it had an ulterior motive.

Essentially, it boils down to...eat real food, not processed. That means eating a little meat that eats grass preferably (not force-fed corn), and lots of plants (fruits/veggies), preferably organic and local. Not easy...but it tastes so much better...and is so much healthier.

Locally, the Decatur Organic Farmer's Market is a great resource to grab these products. Also the DeKalb Farmer's Market has grass-fed beef and sells a lot of organic produce (and is very good about telling you where it came from).

But still, I gotta tell you, even for a Decatur resident with two great resources, it ain't all that easy. Any locavores out there with any additional tips?

I fully subscribe to the importance and relevance of all of these eating plans, and doing the research to discover what is right for your body; as a woman I am constantly striving to curb my sugar cravings and eat more naturally sweetened foods; I discovered I was lactose intolerant at age 16 so am constantly aware of dairy-alternatives; and at age 24 developed a wheat sensitivity deduced from 6 sinus infections in one year plus stomach issues so I have gone through the trials of spelt, kamut, and other non-wheat carbs. Plus a client recently lent me The Whole Soy Story by Kaayla T. Daniel following which I eradicated the many, many soy products I was eating on a daily basis. So, if anyone is open and wiling to promote the mainstreaming of knowledge as it relates to food and choosing an eating plan that works for your individual health and your individual beliefs, I'm all for it.

I thought I'd hunker down and read a few of these new books (a long 13hour flight in the summer travel plans coming up soon...a post in the coming weeks will share more) , but I wanted to see if anyone has reviews, thoughts, even friends thoughts, on any of them? Here's a few that I've seen...

• The 100 Mile Diet: A year of local eating by Alisa Smith & J.B. Mackinnon (Random House Canada, 2007). (The US edition is titled Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally). From keeping current on the local food & farmers market scene here in Vancouver and on the web, I am familiar with this pairs quest. The 100 Mile Diet is an experiment that these two authors went through: for one year they would eat only food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver home. And then they put pen to paper.

• Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products and Services in Canada by Adria Vasil (Random House Canada, 2007). Though this book isn't solely food-based, there are interesting sections including: 'The Most Helpful Services' noting several green general stores and local, organic food delivery; and 'The Most Current Information' which includes sub-sections on sustainable seafood, meat and veggie choices, and buying pesticide- free food.

• Formula for Health by Paul Nison. My food stylist Scot Roger recently reviewed this book for The Epoch Times (July issue), and after having listed to Mr. Nison speak at the Raw Food Health Lecture, was surprised to hear him say that it's not just about the food. Scot explains "In his latest book Formula for Health Nison shows us that the beginning signs of disease are laziness and constipation, while the leading causes of disease are overeating and under sleeping...The key to health is to make the body work less to get more...this is where the raw food lifestyle comes in. Eating high quality food that is raw, ripe,
fresh, organic and alive is the key to unlocking the power inside all of us."

• In Defense of Food: An Eaters Manifesto by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press, 2008). This book caught me just by the cover photo: a crisp, obviously local head of lettuce (from the yellow 'organic' twist-tie), wet leaves with a perfect white to green gradient, with deep purple ends. This book is essentially Part 2 of Pollan's work, picking up where his previous The Omnivore's Dilemma left off. Pollan writes about the relation between the industrialization of our food supply and the degradation of the environment; the question of what to eat from the perspective of health; what the giant markeing machine has to do with it all, and comes to a seemingly simple conclusion: "eat food, not too much, mostly plants". From what I've read about it Pollan seems to write less about his opinion surrouding these food issues, but more to let the facts speak for themselves.

And there are so many more...An Apple a Day by Joe Schwartz, Slow Food Nation by Alice Waters, The End of Food by Thomas F. Pawlick, Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel, Bottomfeeder by Taras Grescoe...and the list goes on. (Fabulous titles I might add.)

Have you read any of these? Or any others you can tell us about? What are your thoughts?

Happy eating and happy reading...J

Pollan points out that humans have subsisted on a variety of diets over time. Indeed, omnivores can eat nearly anything, and omnivores of the American-in-the-twenty-first-century variety have almost endless choice. From processed and pre-made to whole and organic foods, there are more possibilities for how to nourish ourselves than ever before. So Pollan goes to the trouble to help us out in making those choices. How nice of him.

More to the point, The Omnivore's Dilemma and Pollan's 2008 book In Defense of Food debunk the "nutritionism" that dominates the American relationship with food. We obsess over carbs, calories, fats, saturated fats, trans fats, omega-3, protein, vitamin C, and a host of other nutrients- to the exclusion of concerning ourselves with the foods themselves and the pleasure in eating them. The American eater, Pollan suggests, fails even to notice the difference between whole and processed foods, so concerned is he with the nutrients they contain.

What makes Pollan's two books most beautiful—and apt for a post on this blog—is that they're a gateway back to a different gastronomical era, when foods were whole, and hand-made, and nutritious, and when they were shared over a table as a staple aspect of community. That revered food writer of the twentieth century, M.F.K. Fisher, once wrote,

I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story... to sustain them against the hungers of the world.

Some of the most enchanting scenes of modern literature have taken place around a well-laid table. The pivotal scene of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse was the ecstatic, candle-lit dinner. And that's no surprise. Woolf did famously pronounce that "one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well."

Pollan's investigation helps us re-focus our understanding of food, and what we eat and why. If Fisher and Woolf are on to something, then it's worth the long, hard look into our eating habits to find a path back to real pleasure at the table.

I haven’t taken many opportunities to get outside lately. I’ve been doing yoga most afternoons, but I think being inside all day is getting to me. So, for this next trip, I’m hoping to go on some hikes and maybe even kayak.

On another note, I just finished Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food and it has changed my mind about veganism. The main concept is that most of the food we eat is not actually food. It’s just a bunch of chemicals, food parts, vitamins and minerals put together to create something that is edible. Pollan’s argument is that we need to go back to eating things that have not been overly processed and that don’t come in saran-wrapped packages. This includes the vegan cheese and vegan meat-products that I’ve been eating for the past two years. So… I’ve decided that I want to try eating cheese and yogurt (I’m still skeptical about milk) when I get back home. BUT, I’ll only eat products that I know where they come from and ones that have no hormones, antibiotics, etc… i.e. products that come from the farm itself, a farmer’s market, or a local health food store. I’m still not, however, going to eat meat. I recommend this book to anyone, whether they are vegetarian or not – it’s a big eye-opener on what our society is actually eating.

But I found the section on the Western Diet and diseases associated with it quite interesting and his suggestions on what and how to eat useful.  And it's only 200 pages.  Now, if I could just finish The Omnivore's Dilemma.  But it's just so damn long.

So, I'm still reading Empire of the Sun and A Wild Sheep Chase.  I'm about half way done with both, and while I'm not finding either particular page-turners, they're both good reads thus far.  I'm shooting to be done with one of those next week.

1.  In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan:  when I first started reading this and he started going off about the 'lipid hypothesis', I was like, Oh, boy - major snooze-fest.  But since it's on my list, I didn't immediately post it on Swaptree - I plowed on.  And it's gotten much more interesting.   The section I'm reading now is about the so-called 'Western diet' - its origins and why it's not good for people, even Westerners.  I believe the last section of the book which I'm close to approaching, has his recommendations about what one should eat, and I think that should be interesting too.  I'm about halfway done.

2.  Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard:  again when I first started this, I was a tad skeptical.  My first thought was, This is just like the movie - I'm not going to get anything out of this at all. But again, I soldiered on, and it's actually gotten better too.  The movie always struck me as painting a little too rosy picture of life in Japanese-occupied China during World War II.  I mean, Rape of Nanking, anyone?  But the book seems quite a bit darker.  Which suits me just fine.

3.  So after the slow starts to these 2 above-mentioned books, I just had to go for something that I had no doubt would be good.  So I reached for A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami, an author whose imagination and wit never let me down.  (If only I knew Japanese and didn't have to read in translation - I can only imagine how much more amazing his works could be.)  So he hasn't disappointed.  I haven't gotten too far in this, but I know it'll be pretty awesome.  This is on Larisa's list too, so I won't go into the plot or anything, so I don't ruin it for her.

So I'm planning to be done with one of these in the coming week.  At that time, I'll post again.

Samara

I would not care, if obesity was a strictly personal matter. More and more, however, it has become a global threat, with Americans leading the offensive. Bestsellers such as Mireille Guiliano's "Why French women don't get fat?", or Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" are small blips in America's awareness of its food problem. What to do? Should weight loss become a national initiative as in Japan? 

Although I don't agree with everything in the book, I think a lot of it makes huge sense. Not only does the book strike a chord with how I am striving to nourish my body, it gave me and my husband a lot of food for thought in terms of other changes we are making in our diet.

When Michael Pollan says "eat food" he means real food. Unprocessed food. Or as he says, food that your grandmother or great grandmother (depending on your age) would have recognized. So much of the food we buy today is highly processed "imitation food" that is chock full of chemicals. Just read the labels!

He also recommends buying food from the person who produces it whenever possible.

We buy our bison from a local organic producer. We buy our bread at a local bakery where they make things from scratch and use no preservatives. We try to buy organic fruits, vegetables, and milk. We buy our chicken, turkey, beef and eggs from another organic farm about an hour's distance from our home.

That's where the green eggs come in. Some of the eggs we get from Big Coulee Farm are "green." The shells are a pale green and they are just beautiful. They come from a breed of hen whose name escapes me - I'll find out and post it on a future blog. I just love them!

Green eggs we'll eat - but not with ham...anymore (Sorry, Dr. Seuss). It's among the things we're trying to avoid. Cured or processed meats tend to be full of nitrates and sodium. We're also trying to cut processed foods out of our diet.

In Defense of Food is an easy, interesting, and entertaining read. It may just change your mind about how you eat. You can order it from our website smart-heart-living.com.

Over the last few years though we have started to eat more intentionally. My health problems (I have a chemical sensitivity) have lead us to learn more about what we put into our bodies and has led us to avoid pretty much all processed and packaged foods. It’s actually been a fun adventure. We make almost all of our meals at home from scratch now and I think that has really improved our cooking skills.

I think all of this plays together to create a keen interest in food and especially in how food relates to health. So, when we came across these videos recently we were quick to watch them and we weren’t disappointed.

This first video is of a lecture that the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food and even though it is a bit long (about an hour) it is definitely worth watching. I found it totally fascinating and interesting and more than a little entertaining as well. If these issues interest you at all I highly recommend it. And if these issues don’t interest you then I still highly recommend that you check it out.

This second video is one of the TED lectures given by Mark Bittman. He talks about meat and meat consumption in the US in extreme but fascinating terms. I really enjoyed watching this video as well.

Rejoicing in the journey -
Beth Stedman

Michael’s 12 rules of eating:

1. Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
2. Avoid foods containing ingredients you can’t pronounce.
3. Don’t eat anything that wouldn’t eventually rot.
4. Avoid food products that carry health claims.
5. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.
6. Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmer’s market or CSA.
7. Pay more, eat less.
8. Eat a wide diversity of species.
9. Eat food from animals that eat grass.
10. Cook and, if you can, grow some of your own food.
11. Eat meals and eat them only at tables.
12. Eat deliberately, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.

The most astounding fact I learned from this book:

Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food; they also spend less than a half hour a day preparing meals and little more than an hour eating those meals. Compared to the 9.9 percent of their income Americans spend on food, the Italians spend 14.9 percent, the French 14.9 percent, and the Spanish 17.1 percent. It’s important to note that the Italians, French and Spanish also suffer less health issues than Americans. Coincidence? Not likely.

My one question in regards to this book:

On page 25 there is a mention that the official U.S. recommendation for the maximum permissible level of free sugars is 25 percent of daily calories. To my knowledge there is no RDA for sugar. If anyone has any insight they’d like to share on this, I’d love to determine where this number came from.

Do I recommend this book?

YES. It’s a worthy read and ultimately it is difficult not to side with the ideas the author is presenting. I found In Defense of Food to be an eye-opening, informative read written in a way that’s easy to digest (pun intended!).

Stay strong.

Peace.

Susan

Thus journalist Michael Pollan begins his book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. And once he makes his case for returning to a diet without processed foods, you see that those three rules are truly as simple as they look.

But first, the complicated bits. Raj Patel recently demonstrated how the agro-industrial complex has almost taken over the world's food supply, to the vast detriment of, well, everything. (Countries' economies, small farms, food quality, people's health etc.) His book, Stuffed and Starved, looked mostly at the macro level of the world's food systems, from the viewpoint of a former World Bank employee.

Now Pollan delves into the same history, showing us more of the micro level: how the agro-capitalist takeover has undermined the health and well-being of millions of people, and how it's getting worse very, very quickly.

It's called the "Western diet." And wherever it has spread, since the early twentieth century, observers have noted a drastic rise in heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, alongside an astonishing increase in malnourishment. It consists of massive volumes of highly-processed foods (Pollan calls them "edible food-like substances"), marketed by corporations, prepared and eaten quickly, in large portions of non-nutritious, empty calories. (Even supposedly healthy fruits and vegetables now suffer from the same problem.)

And it goes hand-in-hand with what Gyorgy Scrinis labelled "nutritionism" - an almost religious belief in isolating "nutrients" in food, which then requires a scientific high priesthood to decree which nutrients can be processed out, and which must be processed back into our new, improved imitations of food.

The first problem, says Pollan, is that science can only talk about nutrients it's discovered - and there are thousands it hasn't isolated yet, even in simpler foods. And food scientists rarely examine how nutrients interact with each other (especially if they haven't discovered them all), so it's no wonder they're always finding a new "essential nutrient" that becomes the latest rage. One year, it's trans fats (look how that turned out!), another year it's oat bran; this year it's Vitamin D.

So nutrients don't do what they're supposed to, scientists study more, add other nutrients that don't seem to work, study again, add other nutrients, and on it goes. You start wondering what logic justifies processing out the original nutrients if they're just going to have to add them back in again, hoping they'll work this time. (One guess: huge corporate profits!)

The engineering extends further, back to crops or animals, feeding them simplified, processed food, again ignoring the millions of nutrient reactions they need that science hasn't discovered - and the original foods, too, become less nutritious despite all this "healthy" care.

As consumers of the "Western diet" have become more and more obsessed with nutrients and "healthy" eating, the more unhealthy they've become. Yet humanity ate the whole foods in traditional diets, and maintained excellent health (or they'd have stopped eating them!) for thousands of years before all this "help." They didn't know what nutrients the foods contained - they just ate them, and thrived.

Pollan carefully and convincingly traces the history of the "Western diet" and the eager (and profitable) marketing of "nutritionism" while correlating it with the rise in associated ailments. But if that was all he did, a reader might be tempted to despair. However, he suggests ways to return to a diet that produces real health.

Eat Food. Meaning whole, unprocessed food from growers and producers who don't process their crops or animals. Try farmers' markets. Or, if possible, food grown in your own garden.

Not too much. Consumers of the "Western diet" really consume- partly, Pollan suspects, because the body keeps trying to find enough nutrients among all those empty calories. He believes it's easier to be sated if the body is nourished on whole foods without the nutrition processed out of them.

Mostly plants. We can obtain all the nutrition we need (even iron and protein) from a diversity of plants, supplemented if we want by fish and only occasional servings of meat.

Pollan's book is well researched, clearly and understandably written - and full of dire information. Yet it does not feel dire at all, and Pollan remains cheerfully optimistic that people not only can reverse the effects of the "Western diet," but gradually reclaim the world's food production systems. His infectious optimism leaps from the pages of his book and makes you want to go out and find a farmer's market immediately.

Saturday my family had a party.  Sunday Dusty's had a family dinner.  Today at work we had a pot-luck, and tonight it's sushi for gavin's b-day. 

Luckily the book discusses the cultural and spiritual connection to food, and I hope when I get to that section it tells me to just go ahead and eat.  I suspect it will.  mmm... funeral potatoes.

The good news is that I have lost 6 pounds, which is a lot.  ;)  to me.  I haven't been able to lose much since getting old!  I now know what people mean about hitting an age where their metabolism just changed.  I could eat nothing and would die before I would lose any friggin weight. I don't have as much to lose as some, but then again, I have more than others! 

I am also getting into running lately.  I am pretty sure Shawn inspired me.  But my ankles are killing me.  I might have to slow it down.  Not that I ever got very far.  I am up to 6.5 miles on my long runs.  By the end of that I am wincing due to my ankles.  Maybe I'll try wheel-chair racing.  If I start practicing now I'll be really good in about 20 years, which, according to American's horrible eating habits, is when I should be debilitated to the point of needing a wheelchair. 

However, if I manage to forage through the buffet table like a chimp looking for fleas, I might be able to find enough actual food to keep me alive, and then I should be able to stay healthy enough to run in a 1/2 marathon in September in eastern Utah.  It looks georgous!

Oh, and since I started my "twigs and berries" diet, dusty has lost about 5 pounds.  That sucker hasn't run at all.  Figures.

Seriously.  Read the book.

I don't have to explain my thoughts on food to most of you because I know you, feel much the same as I do and have read many of the same books, so I'll just share this quote from In Defense of Food that I thought was beautiful:

When you're cooking with food as alive as this—these gorgeous and semi gorgeous fruits and leaves and flesh—you're in no danger of mistaking it for a commodity, or a fuel, or a collection of chemical nutrients. No, in the eye of the cook or the gardener or the farmer who grew it, this food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some not, but each of them dependent on each other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight. I'm thinking of the relationship between the plants and the soil, between the grower and the plants and animals he or she tends, between the cook and the growers who supply the ingredients, between the cook and the people who will soon come to the table to enjoy the meal. It is a large community to nourish and be nourished by. The cook in the kitchen preparing a meal from plants and animals at the end of this shortest of food chains has a great many things to worry about, but "health" is simply not one of them, because it is given.

1. The Ominivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

2. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

3. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barabara Kingsolver and her family.

I'm inspired!!!

Michael Pollan considers food politics and food choices without pretense or judgment. His books make me think. They make me consider more deeply how and why I eat what I do. His tales have made my eating behaviors more conscious. I have settled into new layers of inquiry. How can I make a difference in my community, my country and also my body through what I choose to buy at the market?

Barbara Kingsolver, author extraordinaire is uber special. I love her books! And even more I love when she reads her audio books. Her voice is a delight to listen to. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a family collaboration that makes me want to have a family and live in the country. It makes me want to feel more connected to the land, to create soulful sustenance, and to live in alignment with my values. It reminds me of how my first years were. My parents chose I similar path when we were young but then were swept away by the busyness of life and a growing family. My childhood included compost bins full of little red worms, pulling long orange carrots out of fresh dirt, sun warmed strawberries in deep shades of red, sweet snappy peas eaten from the vine. It included the yeasty scents of home-made bread and white globs of tofu, monthly trips to town to stock up on staples and car loads of seasonal fruits and vegetables from local farmer's markets. I ate fresh, whole and nourishing foods and although I have deviated somewhat myself later on, I couldn't imagine raising my children any other way.

Do you think about where your food comes from? Do you make conscious eating choices? Do you cultivate green space?

In addition to the books - particularly in audio form - I also suggest Kingsolver's website www.animalvegetablemiracle.com

I do love fresh air, fresh fruits and vegetables, rock climbing, water bottles, and other things that an eco-friendly person would like...and I must confess that I was a vegetarian several years ago.

I eat organic fruits and vegetables when the price difference is reasonable though I refuse to buy "cage free" or "free range" eggs. I am quite interested in the Certified Humane Raised & Handled label for meats and would probably buy such meat if it was more readily available in grocery stores.

I do make an effort to recycle and I prefer to re-use if possible. I also prefer to walk (rather than drive) and I car-pool as often as possible. And I've replaced most of the bulbs in my house with CFLs (compact fluorescent lightbulbs).

So am much I deny being an environmentalist, I suppose I do try to live a "sustainable" and "green" lifestyle.

So to celebrate Baltimore Green Week (April 28 - May 2) and Baltimore's April 25 EcoFestival, I am reading these green-themed books:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan - Published in 2006 and named one of the best ten books of 2006 by the New York Times Book Review, this book explores the question "What should we have for dinner?" by following four meals, each derived through a different food-production system, from their origins to the plate. Along the way, Pollan examines the ethical, political, and ecological factors that are intertwined in the industrial, large-scale organic, small-scale organic, and personal (hunted-gathered) food chains, while describing the environmental, economic, health, and moral consequences that result from our food choices within these chains.

I've heard so much about this book and am excited to read it, though I think I am more excited to read Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (also reviewed by the NYTimes Book Review). I expect both books espouse the "you are what you eat" philosophy. I've enjoyed hearing Pollan speak on NPR and watching him on C-SPAN and I hope his books live up to my expectations.

Click here to read the introduction and first chapter of The Omnivore’s Dilemma on the author's website. And click here to read the introduction of In Defense of Food on the author's website or here to read the first chapter on the NYTimes Book Review website.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver - Kingsolver is the much praised author of Prodigal Summer (which I bought at a Library Book Sale recently), The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, Small Wonder, among other best-sellers.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (published in May 2007) is Kingsolver's first non-fiction book and it is a memoir of how Kingsolver's family was changed by one year of deliberately eating food produced in the place where we live. Barbara wrote the central narrative; Steven's sidebars dig deeper into various aspects of food-production science and industry; Camille's brief essays offer a nineteen-year-old's perspective on the local-food project, plus nutritional information, meal plans and recipes.

I haven't gotten into the whole locally grown food thing though I have been meaning to join a Community Supported Agriculture for years now (since 2004). I don't know why I haven't done it yet, there are so many CSAs in Maryland. Maybe reading this book will finally give me the initiative to join a CSA and/or to plant a fruit and vegetable garden!

Oh, and by the way, click here to read a few excepts on the author's website for Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben - Bill McKibben is a self-proclaimed environmentalist. McKibben believes that that we need to move beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal -- makes me think of Burlingham's Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big (which I wrote about here) --and pursue prosperity locally, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food (like joining a CSA), generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment.

As McKibben's website says of Deep Economy (published in 2007), "He shows this concept blossoming around the world with striking results, from the burgeoning economies of India and China to the more mature societies of Europe and New England. For those who worry about environmental threats, he offers a route out of the worst of those problems; for those who wonder if there isn't something more to life than buying, he provides the insight to think about one's life as an individual and as a member of a larger community."

I don't know what to expect of this book; I'm a little afraid that it'll be too environmentalist-preachy for me but I'm still looking forward to reading McKibben's ideas for improving our future.

Click here to read an excerpt on the author's website and click her to read a review of Deep Economy on the NYTimes Book Review.

Here's to Baltimore Green Week - helping to make the Baltimore region cleaner and environmentally safer by living a sustainable lifestyle!

http://www.vtroom.com/2008/04/22/earth-day-speech/

Why Bother?

Why bother? That really is the big question facing us as individuals hoping to do something about climate change, and it’s not an easy one to answer. I don’t know about you, but for me the most upsetting moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” came long after Al Gore scared the hell out of me, constructing an utterly convincing case that the very survival of life on earth as we know it is threatened by climate change. No, the really dark moment came during the closing credits, when we are asked to . . . change our light bulbs. That’s when it got really depressing. The immense disproportion between the magnitude of the problem Gore had described and the puniness of what he was asking us to do about it was enough to sink your heart.

But the drop-in-the-bucket issue is not the only problem lurking behind the “why bother” question. Let’s say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down, start biking to work, plant a big garden, turn down the thermostat so low I need the Jimmy Carter signature cardigan, forsake the clothes dryer for a laundry line across the yard, trade in the station wagon for a hybrid, get off the beef, go completely local. I could theoretically do all that, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?

A sense of personal virtue, you might suggest, somewhat sheepishly. But what good is that when virtue itself is quickly becoming a term of derision? And not just on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal or on the lips of the vice president, who famously dismissed energy conservation as a “sign of personal virtue.” No, even in the pages of The New York Times and The New Yorker, it seems the epithet “virtuous,” when applied to an act of personal environmental responsibility, may be used only ironically. Tell me: How did it come to pass that virtue — a quality that for most of history has generally been deemed, well, a virtue — became a mark of liberal softheadedness? How peculiar, that doing the right thing by the environment — buying the hybrid, eating like a locavore — should now set you up for the Ed Begley Jr. treatment.

And even if in the face of this derision I decide I am going to bother, there arises the whole vexed question of getting it right. Is eating local or walking to work really going to reduce my carbon footprint? According to one analysis, if walking to work increases your appetite and you consume more meat or milk as a result, walking might actually emit more carbon than driving. A handful of studies have recently suggested that in certain cases under certain conditions, produce from places as far away as New Zealand might account for less carbon than comparable domestic products. True, at least one of these studies was co-written by a representative of agribusiness interests in (surprise!) New Zealand, but even so, they make you wonder. If determining the carbon footprint of food is really this complicated, and I’ve got to consider not only “food miles” but also whether the food came by ship or truck and how lushly the grass grows in New Zealand, then maybe on second thought I’ll just buy the imported chops at Costco, at least until the experts get their footprints sorted out.

There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists’ projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been unduly optimistic: the warming and the melting is occurring much faster than the models predicted. Now truly terrifying feedback loops threaten to boost the rate of change exponentially, as the shift from white ice to blue water in the Arctic absorbs more sunlight and warming soils everywhere become more biologically active, causing them to release their vast stores of carbon into the air. Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared.

So do you still want to talk about planting gardens?

I do.

Whatever we can do as individuals to change the way we live at this suddenly very late date does seem utterly inadequate to the challenge. It’s hard to argue with Michael Specter, in a recent New Yorker piece on carbon footprints, when he says: “Personal choices, no matter how virtuous [N.B.!], cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money.” So it will. Yet it is no less accurate or hardheaded to say that laws and money cannot do enough, either; that it will also take profound changes in the way we live. Why? Because the climate-change crisis is at its very bottom a crisis of lifestyle — of character, even. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us (consumer spending represents 70 percent of our economy), and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences.

For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking — passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists — that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It’s hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it.

Thirty years ago, Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and writer, put forward a blunt analysis of precisely this mentality. He argued that the environmental crisis of the 1970s — an era innocent of climate change; what we would give to have back that environmental crisis! — was at its heart a crisis of character and would have to be addressed first at that level: at home, as it were. He was impatient with people who wrote checks to environmental organizations while thoughtlessly squandering fossil fuel in their everyday lives — the 1970s equivalent of people buying carbon offsets to atone for their Tahoes and Durangos. Nothing was likely to change until we healed the “split between what we think and what we do.” For Berry, the “why bother” question came down to a moral imperative: “Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.”

For Berry, the deep problem standing behind all the other problems of industrial civilization is “specialization,” which he regards as the “disease of the modern character.” Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: we’re producers (of one thing) at work, consumers of a great many other things the rest of the time, and then once a year or so we vote as citizens. Virtually all of our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another — our meals to agribusiness, health to the doctor, education to the teacher, entertainment to the media, care for the environment to the environmentalist, political action to the politician.

As Adam Smith and many others have pointed out, this division of labor has given us many of the blessings of civilization. Specialization is what allows me to sit at a computer thinking about climate change. Yet this same division of labor obscures the lines of connection — and responsibility — linking our everyday acts to their real-world consequences, making it easy for me to overlook the coal-fired power plant that is lighting my screen, or the mountaintop in Kentucky that had to be destroyed to provide the coal to that plant, or the streams running crimson with heavy metals as a result.

Of course, what made this sort of specialization possible in the first place was cheap energy. Cheap fossil fuel allows us to pay distant others to process our food for us, to entertain us and to (try to) solve our problems, with the result that there is very little we know how to accomplish for ourselves. Think for a moment of all the things you suddenly need to do for yourself when the power goes out — up to and including entertaining yourself. Think, too, about how a power failure causes your neighbors — your community — to suddenly loom so much larger in your life. Cheap energy allowed us to leapfrog community by making it possible to sell our specialty over great distances as well as summon into our lives the specialties of countless distant others.

Here’s the point: Cheap energy, which gives us climate change, fosters precisely the mentality that makes dealing with climate change in our own lives seem impossibly difficult. Specialists ourselves, we can no longer imagine anyone but an expert, or anything but a new technology or law, solving our problems. Al Gore asks us to change the light bulbs because he probably can’t imagine us doing anything much more challenging, like, say, growing some portion of our own food. We can’t imagine it, either, which is probably why we prefer to cross our fingers and talk about the promise of ethanol and nuclear power — new liquids and electrons to power the same old cars and houses and lives.

The “cheap-energy mind,” as Wendell Berry called it, is the mind that asks, “Why bother?” because it is helpless to imagine — much less attempt — a different sort of life, one less divided, less reliant. Since the cheap-energy mind translates everything into money, its proxy, it prefers to put its faith in market-based solutions — carbon taxes and pollution-trading schemes. If we could just get the incentives right, it believes, the economy will properly value everything that matters and nudge our self-interest down the proper channels. The best we can hope for is a greener version of the old invisible hand. Visible hands it has no use for.

But while some such grand scheme may well be necessary, it’s doubtful that it will be sufficient or that it will be politically sustainable before we’ve demonstrated to ourselves that change is possible. Merely to give, to spend, even to vote, is not to do, and there is so much that needs to be done — without further delay. In the judgment of James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who began sounding the alarm on global warming 20 years ago, we have only 10 years left to start cutting — not just slowing — the amount of carbon we’re emitting or face a “different planet.” Hansen said this more than two years ago, however; two years have gone by, and nothing of consequence has been done. So: eight years left to go and a great deal left to do.

Which brings us back to the “why bother” question and how we might better answer it. The reasons not to bother are many and compelling, at least to the cheap-energy mind. But let me offer a few admittedly tentative reasons that we might put on the other side of the scale:

If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change, markets for all manner of green products and alternative technologies will prosper and expand. (Just look at the market for hybrid cars.) Consciousness will be raised, perhaps even changed: new moral imperatives and new taboos might take root in the culture. Driving an S.U.V. or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your McMansion like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience. Not having things might become cooler than having them. And those who did change the way they live would acquire the moral standing to demand changes in behavior from others — from other people, other corporations, even other countries.

All of this could, theoretically, happen. What I’m describing (imagining would probably be more accurate) is a process of viral social change, and change of this kind, which is nonlinear, is never something anyone can plan or predict or count on. Who knows, maybe the virus will reach all the way to Chongqing and infect my Chinese evil twin. Or not. Maybe going green will prove a passing fad and will lose steam after a few years, just as it did in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan took down Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the roof of the White House.

Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it’s one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren’t great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will. That, after all, was precisely what happened in Communist Czechoslovakia and Poland, when a handful of individuals like Vaclav Havel and Adam Michnik resolved that they would simply conduct their lives “as if” they lived in a free society. That improbable bet created a tiny space of liberty that, in time, expanded to take in, and then help take down, the whole of the Eastern bloc.

So what would be a comparable bet that the individual might make in the case of the environmental crisis? Havel himself has suggested that people begin to “conduct themselves as if they were to live on this earth forever and be answerable for its condition one day.” Fair enough, but let me propose a slightly less abstract and daunting wager. The idea is to find one thing to do in your life that doesn’t involve spending or voting, that may or may not virally rock the world but is real and particular (as well as symbolic) and that, come what may, will offer its own rewards. Maybe you decide to give up meat, an act that would reduce your carbon footprint by as much as a quarter. Or you could try this: determine to observe the Sabbath. For one day a week, abstain completely from economic activity: no shopping, no driving, no electronics.

But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

A great many things happen when you plant a vegetable garden, some of them directly related to climate change, others indirect but related nevertheless. Growing food, we forget, comprises the original solar technology: calories produced by means of photosynthesis. Years ago the cheap-energy mind discovered that more food could be produced with less effort by replacing sunlight with fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides, with a result that the typical calorie of food energy in your diet now requires about 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce. It’s estimated that the way we feed ourselves (or rather, allow ourselves to be fed) accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse gas for which each of us is responsible.

Yet the sun still shines down on your yard, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organized vegetable garden (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden center), you can grow the proverbial free lunch — CO2-free and dollar-free. This is the most-local food you can possibly eat (not to mention the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious), with a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it. And while we’re counting carbon, consider too your compost pile, which shrinks the heap of garbage your household needs trucked away even as it feeds your vegetables and sequesters carbon in your soil. What else? Well, you will probably notice that you’re getting a pretty good workout there in your garden, burning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym. (It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labor that, having replaced physical labor with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape.) Also, by engaging both body and mind, time spent in the garden is time (and energy) subtracted from electronic forms of entertainment.

You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce Americans ate.

But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

Michael Pollan's manifesto of "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants," is relevant to my shopping experience. Firstly, I think it is safe to say, many food products on the shelves at Costco do not qualify as "food." If we use Pollan's definition that food should be recognizable to our great, great grandmothers and, when we look at the ingredients, we should be able to recognize (in addition to pronounce) everything listed. I noticed the large quantity of food products displaying Costco's private label, Kirkland Signature. There is something very disturbing about a store carrying such a wide variety of foods under one label.

I had a hard time distracting myself from the obvious observation -- "why do we Americans like to buy in bulk?" I know the answer involves saving money and, for large families, buying wholesale probably does help cut costs. But I doubt most Costco shoppers fall into this category.

Michael Pollan's concept of "Not Too Much" and Costco run in diametrical opposition to one another. Pollan's suggestion to "Pay More, Eat Less" sounds almost "un-American" (I'm being tongue-in-cheek here). Paying less for something, getting a bargain, a discount, something for wholesale, is part of the American way -- and eating less food, well -- we are living in the "super size me" nation. But in America, we spend less money on food than France, Italy, and Spain. And until we are willing to pay for better quality food and have a bit less of it we may continue to be the sickest country in the world.

My last thought about Costco, Pollen's suggestion "don't get your fuel from the same place your car does," applies to my version of the principle: "don't get your food from the same place you buy your flat screen television."

Michael Pollan's manifesto of "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants," is relevant to my shopping experience. Firstly, I think it is safe to say, many food products on the shelves at Costco do not qualify as "food." If we use Pollan's definition that food should be recognizable to our great, great grandmothers and, when we look at the ingredients, we should be able to recognize (in addition to pronounce) everything listed. I noticed the large quantity of food products displaying Costco's private label, Kirkland Signature. There is something very disturbing about a store carrying such a wide variety of foods under one label.

I had a hard time distracting myself from the obvious observation -- "why do we Americans like to buy in bulk?" I know the answer involves saving money and, for large families, buying wholesale probably does help cut costs. But I doubt most Costco shoppers fall into this category.

Michael Pollan's concept of "Not Too Much" and Costco run in diametrical opposition to one another. Pollan's suggestion to "Pay More, Eat Less" sounds almost "un-American" (I'm being tongue-in-cheek here). Paying less for something, getting a bargain, a discount, something for wholesale, is part of the American way -- and eating less food, well -- we are living in the "super size me" nation. But in America, we spend less money on food than France, Italy, and Spain. And until we are willing to pay for better quality food and have a bit less of it we may continue to be the sickest country in the world.

My last thought about Costco, Pollen's suggestion "don't get your fuel from the same place your car does," applies to my version of the principle: "don't get your food from the same place you buy your flat screen television."

I have also included a link to an audio (mp3) version of each talk in case you want to listen on your iPod, etc.  To make this a reality, right click on any of the  mp3 links below and select "Save target as..."  Once finished downloading, create a playlist in iTunes and drag the files over (or listen however you please).

Or, if you are interested, click here for a .zip file of all the mp3s bundled together.  Enjoy!

* * *

In Defense of Food, part 1/4 (10 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

* * *

In Defense of Food, part 2/4 (11 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

* * *

In Defense of Food, part 3/4 (8 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

* * *

In Defense of Food, part 4/4 (7 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

* * *

Authors @ Google: Michael Pollan (59 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

* * *

TED: The Omnivore's Next Dilemma (17 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

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Berkeley Writers at Work: Michael Pollan (82 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

* * *

Revelle Forum: Michael Pollan (58 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

* * *

Cannabis, Forgetting, and the Botany of Desire (58 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

* * *

Hedonistic, Healthy, and Green: Can we Have it All? (8 minutes)

(direct mp3 audio: click here)

I still haven't finished Pollan's previous bestseller, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Don't get me wrong, The Omnivore's Dilemma is a very good book. In fact, Pollan's writing is so good I'd probably read an owner's manual if I knew he wrote it. I think I read In Defense of Food so quickly because I found both the historical details of how our American diet evolved to where it's at, and what we can do now to correct our eating habits, equally compelling. Without trapping us into thinking we need to follow some "new" prescribed diet where we can never eat chocolate again, Pollan proposes several common sense approaches to "watching what we eat."

And I love the philosophy that lives behind much of what he is saying. If only we Americans could learn to enjoy our food more; to eat food that tastes good (and no, a Big Mac is not really food), eat with other people while sitting down at a table, (a shocking fifth of all meals are eaten in the car according to Pollan), eat until we are full or, better yet, 80% full (that would eliminate any kind of "super size" whatsoever), and to savor the experience as well.

I think another important message Pollan writes about is that our health can be improved by eating better - and that doesn't mean we need to become obsessed with "healthy eating." In fact, the word "orthorexics" has been coined to describe people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. I think we, as women, are susceptible to falling into the trap of becoming obsessed with healthy eating and our health in general (and let's not forget our unhealthy obsession with the way we look). I know as a woman experiencing perimenopause I've become quite obsessed lately (admittedly about my health, and yes, my looks too). Not feeling well can quickly affect a women's sense of balance in the world. And I guess, that is one of the reasons Pollan's book is so good. Because it doesn't try to make us more obsessed about the food we eat but rather more conscious and pleasure-seeking -- freeing us up from thinking about food as a "diet" and more as a sensory experience to enjoy.

I read Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, in one day.

I still haven't finished Pollan's previous bestseller, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Don't get me wrong, The Omnivore's Dilemma is a very good book. In fact, Pollan's writing is so good I'd probably read an owner's manual if I knew he wrote it. I think I read In Defense of Food so quickly because I found both the historical details of how our American diet evolved to where it's at, and what we can do now to correct our eating habits, equally compelling. Without trapping us into thinking we need to follow some "new" prescribed diet where we can never eat chocolate again, Pollan proposes several common sense approaches to "watching what we eat."

And I love the philosophy that lives behind much of what he is saying. If only we Americans could learn to enjoy our food more; to eat food that tastes good (and no, a Big Mac is not really food), eat with other people while sitting down at a table, (a shocking fifth of all meals are eaten in the car according to Pollan), eat until we are full or, better yet, 80% full (that would eliminate any kind of "super size" whatsoever), and to savor the experience as well.

I think another important message Pollan writes about is that our health can be improved by eating better - and that doesn't mean we need to become obsessed with "healthy eating." In fact, the word "orthorexics" has been coined to describe people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. I think we, as women, are susceptible to falling into the trap of becoming obsessed with healthy eating and our health in general (and let's not forget our unhealthy obsession with the way we look). I know as a woman experiencing perimenopause I've become quite obsessed lately (admittedly about my health, and yes, my looks too). Not feeling well can quickly affect a women's sense of balance in the world. And I guess, that is one of the reasons Pollan's book is so good. Because it doesn't try to make us more obsessed about the food we eat but rather more conscious and pleasure-seeking -- freeing us up from thinking about food as a "diet" and more as a sensory experience to enjoy.

What’s in the Pot: Lenny Russo, Chef and Owner, Heartland Restaurant, http://www.heartlandrestaurant.com

Outstanding in Their Field: Herby Radmann, Soul Proprietor, Bullfrog Fish Farm, http://eatmyfish.com

National Spotlight: John Ikerd, University of Missouri Columbia, College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/default.htm

Gardens of Readin': In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Visit San Francisco's farmers markets.  Get back to basics, whole foods, whole grains, local (and seasonal) organic fruits and vegetables, and get educated about organic meats. For example, free range chicken many times means the chicken has a tiny dirt area to run around in for a very limited time. This is a big subject that could be written about at length but hopefully this will spur one to research further.

Pollan's recommendations:

Pay more, eat less. Buy the higher quality organic foods (which cost more) but overall you will be more satieted and eat less.

Eat meals. Not at your desk. Eat meals with others.

Buy a standalone freezer. It holds more food than a traditional refrigerator freezer so that you can buy in bulk at farmer's markets and preserve the food. Studies show you can freeze food and not lose as many nutrients as previously believed.

Bless your food. You'll eat less (so they say). A preschooler shared this saying with me recently. 'We love our bread, we love our butter. But most of all, we love each other!'

Green your San Francisco home and while you are at it, green your body! If you choose to live in a green, healthy environment, why stop there? Look at the quality of your food intake. You will be more satieted, possibly eat less and who knows, lose a few pounds while you're at it. I would bet there is a connection to healthy eating and better quality sleep too.  That's my guess and my hope as well.

www.jenndavis.com

jdavis@mcguire.com