Whole(some) foods

I finally finished Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which—as he intended—has gotten me thinking about the hidden costs of "cheap" food and wondering what to do about it. I've also come across a few other thought-provoking pieces on similar themes:

• Michael Pollan: Unhappy Meals (New York Times Magazine, 1/28/07); see also his In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.

• The author of this article about Alice Waters, who's been running Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley for 39 years (!), describes her as "a fierce ideologue, a food Calvinist whose commitment to local ingredients, produced without hormones and pesticides, is uncompromising." Her stance raises hackles with some, but I found it interesting to learn more about how she thinks about food.

• Mark Bittman, who as "The Minimalist" writes about food for the New York Times, gave an excellent and thought-provoking speech about "What's wrong with what we eat." He suggests that the extreme "locavore" position represented by Alice Waters is both elitist and unrealistic (at least for those who don't live here in California). His main emphasis is on the ecological disaster represented by the over-production—and over-consumption—of livestock. Have a listen:

• Other books and films worth checking out: Dirt: The Movie | Food, Inc. 

[This is continued in Eating green on a budget...]