Tuesday, May 7, 2013

ABC News and Democracy Now on comfort food

Yesterday's and today's prompts are about comfort food.
Monday, May 6, 2013
What is your biggest comfort food?  Share the recipe if you have one.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013
What makes you reach for a comfort food?
I already blogged about comfort food on Sunday, so that takes care of one prompt.  Now I'll share some more videos about the dark side of comfort food from my YouTube feed on Monday.

First, ABC News presents Hunger Games in the Supermarket.  I know, I couldn't resist the title.



Secret things your brain can't control when you go shopping.

Grocery shopping while hungry induces one to go for comfort food, not more food.  That means it's still a bad idea to shop while hungry, but for a different reason.

Next, Democracy Now has a series of clips from an interview with food author Michael Pollan, who is one of the experts featured in Food, Inc., about his new book "Cooked."

Michael Pollan on How Reclaiming Cooking Can Save Our Food System, Make Us Healthy & Grow Democracy

We spend the hour with Michael Pollan, one of the country's leading writers and thinkers on food and food policy. Pollan has written several best-selling books about food, including "The Omnivore's Dilemma," and "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto." In his latest book, "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation," Pollan argues that taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make our food system healthier and more sustainable. "There is a deliberate effort to undermine food culture to sell us processed food," Pollan says. "The family meal is a challenge if you're General Mills or Kellogg or one of these companies, or McDonald's, because the family meal is usually one thing shared." Pollan also talks about the "slow food" movement. "Slow food is about food that is good, clean and fair. They're concerned with social justice. They're concerned with how the food is grown and how humane and chemical-free it is." He adds, "Slow food is about recovering that space around the family and keeping the influence of the food manufacturers outside of the house. ... The family meal is very important. It's the nursery of democracy."
Follow over the jump for Pollan and Amy Goodman swapping bread tips (I'm following today's prompt after all) along with Pollan explaining how the makers of fast and processed food have coopted our meals.

Amy Goodman & Author Michael Pollan Swap Bread-Making Tips, Stories

Before she became a journalist at WBAI 99.5-FM in New York City and later the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman worked as a breadmaker in Maine. Amy talks with food writer Michael Pollan about what goes into making bread, and recalls her bakery's struggle to compete with the chemically advanced, yet nutritionally devoid, Wonderbread.
Michael Pollan: U.S. Corporations Co-Opted Calls for Women's Liberation to Sell Us Processed Food

Pollan talks about how major food companies took advantage of women's liberation in the post-war period by pushing processed fast food as a solution to challenging traditional gender roles in the home. "When women went back to work [well after World War II], marketers found cooking was the housework they didn't want to give up," Pollan says. "But there was such an uncomfortable conversation unfolding at kitchen tables across America, renegotiating the division of labor in the house between men and women -- child care, housework, cooking. The food industry recognized there was an opportunity here. They leapt in with an advertising campaign directed at women [associating the act of] not cooking with progressive values."
Michael Pollan on How the Happy Meal Has Undermined the Family Meal, "The Nursery of Democracy"

One of the country's leading writers and thinkers on food and food policy, Michael Pollan, tells Democracy Now! that processed food has undermined what he calls "the nursery of democracy": the family meal. "There is a deliberate effort to undermine food culture, to sell us processed food," Pollan says. "The family meal is a challenge if you're one of these companies because the family meal is usually one thing shared ... The family meal is very important -- it's the nursery of democracy. It's where we learn and where teach our children how to share, how to take turns, how to argue without offending, how to learn about the events of the day. If kids are spending all of their time in their rooms, passing through the kitchen, nuking a frozen pizza, they're missing something very important." His latest book is called, "Cooked: The Natural History of Transformation."
The entire hour-long interview is available here.

2 comments:

  1. Narb loves Michael Pollan (in a detached, intellectual way).

    He also loves jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello jello.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just for that, I'll post some more photos for you.

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