chargirlgenius

Has anybody else read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan? I'm listening to it on CD while painting the bedroom, and I'm loving it. I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself for coming up with "Eat food, not products" on my own over a year ago. Anyway, I recommend it to anybody who has ever dieted, or, well, ever eaten an American diet.

Although, listening to it on CD is a tad on the annoying side. The reader gets a bit of preachy, smug attitude in his voice, and while I'm sure that the book is full of plenty of preachy, smug attitude, I can handle it better in print. Annoying, but it doesn't detract that much from the book itself.

I've also recently read The End of Overeating by David Kessler. Admittedly, I haven't read the final chapter or two, where he lays out his plan for beating the system. I'm sure it's good, but I can't imagine it's the much different from Michael Pollan's Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. mantra. Kessler hits HARD on the food industry and their marketing of highly processed foods. Pollan seems to aim more at "nutritionism", and science-based eating that is seemlingly prevalent in our culture. The books enhance each other's messages.

If Pollan hits on science, and Kessler nails industry, Marion Nestle (no, no relation) focuses on government (and industry, really) in her Food Politics blog (and in her book, too, I'm sure, although I haven't read it).

I'm looking forward to more reading... Food, Inc., the movie or the book, and Fast Food Nation, among others. I'll definitely check more Michael Pollan, including The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Other suggestions? Oh, and while I'm talking about food, do any of my southern friends shop at "Earth's Fare" stores? Jeff was in Huntsville for work this week, and I read an article about one of those stores opening in that area. Sounded intriguing.

I love Barbara Hanawalt, but man, is she depressing. She wrote about every day life for children in London, and now I’m finally reading The Ties that Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England. She used coroners’ inquests for her main source of evidence, so every anecdote used to prove a point includes somebody dying!

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Obviously, people in the past faced death much differently than we do today. When you could easily die of a fever or an abscessed tooth, life, death, and risk took on different shapes than they do now. We now live in a world when we can know days in advance that a deadly storm is coming, and can get out of the way. I can’t even fathom what life (and death) was like before this was possible.

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Stay safe, everybody. I don’t think I have many on my flist from Texas, but I’m sure that people have friends and family there.