Natural Food

I'm impatiently waiting for "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan to get to my local library branch so I can finally read it. I've seen Pollan interviewed on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and I can't wait to dive into it. The basis of the book and Pollan's new book "Food Rules" is that we don't really eat food anymore, and instead we consume food-like products. Dr. Oz basically says the same thing. Your body doesn't know what to do margarine (which is like, three molecules away from being plastic... or something like that) but it does know what to do with butter, which is the fat from cream which is the heaviest part of milk which comes from a cow which eats grass which grows in the ground...

Which got me thinking, you really shouldn't eat anything unless you know the basic story behind it. Like, mayo is a blend of oil and eggs, oil is pressed from olives and eggs are laid by a chicken. Miracle Whip is...????

Try it with your lunch today. I'm having sweet potato fries and spinach salad. Sweet potatoes grow from the ground and spinach does too! Feta is a cheese that is made from milk which comes from a cow. Raspberry vinaigrette is made from raspberry vinegar which is fermented from raspberry juice which is pressed from raspberries which grow on a bush.

I think you get the picture.

For bread and other products that you don't completely make at home, do the same thing for each ingredient. If you get to something you don't recognize, put the item down and find a version that all the ingredients are recognizable.

happy hunting!