Recent source of inspiration: Michael Pollan's (he of The Omnivore's Dilemma) article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine about Nutrition trends.  He comes up with the perfect diet for everybody:

Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.

Yes, that's it.  It reminds me terrifically of a wonderful article in The Onion from way back when...

His plan reads: Avoid saturated fats and simple carbohydrates, eat mostly fresh vegetables and and exercise.  As the son of a physicist, I've always been attracted to the "Theory of Everything", which is to say, a real theory is as simple as possible.  Pollan's new plan is pretty friggin simple, no?

So this Summer's Fancy Food show was a gas- all that cheese, all that wine, all those hot sauces.  This Winter's show was a lot of the same, with some big-boys showing up to strut their stuff (Ghirardelli OWNED that place).  Surprisingly, though, it didn't really distinguish itself from the Summer's entry- lots of sauces, lots of crispy snacks, lots of refined foods trying to follow trends into the sunset.

I guess I expected that since we were in sunny California (whch hasn't seen the sun all week) there'd be lots of, you know, "Healthy" stuff.  But WOAH was I wrong.  Aside from some regional farms, orchards,  and fruit growers (YAY Bella Viva!!!), it was all just the same old processed crap, mixed in with lots of innovators from the plain states and the East.  Go figure.

This of course links to Pollan's article, Unhappy Meals, because he basically asserts that processed food is getting us further and further away from what we should be calling food.  An early assertion in the article is that supermarkets have less and less "food," yet more and more "food-like substance".  He takes on the notion of "nutritionism" (eating by nutrients rather than by food) as a grave trend in American diets.  But isn't all that "nutritional" stuff supposed to be GOOD for you?

My Father-in-law once entertainingly lambasted me for just this sort of thinking.  He caught me taking a Vitamin C pill with something like 25,000 mg of C (or something silly like that).  I believe he put it something like, "boy, your pee sure will be loaded with citric acid!" (excess, unused vitamin C gets flushed through the kidneys).  I defended my action as being, you know, "nutritional."  But rarely, if ever, had I bothered to really define "nutritional".

Pollan makes a great case for ditching such notions, and focusing on FOOD.  You know, CARROTS.  APPLES.  RICE.  All that good stuff.  Sure, we can presume to get all the "nutrition" in a carrot from some kind of a pill.  But what's in a CARROT that they can't get in a pill?  Something, surely, that will be missed.

Pollan supports a "5 ingredient rule":  Eat things with that many ingredients, because then it's still food.  While I must respectfully disagree (Peeled Snacks have 6 ingredients), I think I'll take his comments as an unintended, accidental thumbs up for our tasty treats.  I'll also take them as a "tisk-tisk" for most of the over-processed muck I saw at the Winter Fancy Food Show.

This being California, I can, surely, get plenty of REAL "food."  All I have to do is go to my local supermarket, the Berkeley Bowl, which is (simply put)...

THE GREATEST SUPERMARKET IN THE WORLD!!!!!....

But that's for the NEXT Peeled Skinny.

But that's for the Peeled Skinny that comes NEXT.

Happy Groundhog Day,

EN "Peeled Skinny" K 

An Omivore's Dietary Haikus

Eat Food.   Eat REAL food.

Don't eat too much food, fatso!

Mostly plants, tubbsy! 

I ate food today.

Not too much, though.  Just enough.

Mostly plants?  As IF!!!

Ask me what "Food" is.

All that fits within my mouth.

You included, chump....