Thursday, March 13, 2008

"...Not to much."

Finally, How to eat the food that you have discovered is good for you...

"Pay more, eat less...consider that quality itself, besides tending to cost more, may have a direct bearing on the quantity you'll WANT to eat."..to borrow Paul Rozin's term, exceptional food offers us more 'food experience'-per bite, per dish, per meal- and as the French have shown, you don't need alot of food to have a rich food experience. Choose quality over quantity, food experience over mere calories."

"Eat meals...at the dinner table parents can determine portion sizes, model eating and drinking behavior, and enforce social norms about greed and gluttony and waste. Shared meals are about much more than fueling the bodies; they are uniquely human institutions where our species developed language and this thing we call culture. Do I need to go on? (apparently so, what the western world considers a meal is not quite up to par. Then comes the fact that it used to be bad to snack between meals, now it is expected. Some good rules for eating the meal follow:)
1. Do all your eating at the table. No, a desk is not a table.
2. Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does...gas stations have become processed-corn stations: ethanol outside for your car and high-fructose corn syrup inside for you.
3. Try no to eat alone. (focus on feeling full, not when your plate is empty or you run out)
4. Eat slowly...is to eat with a fuller knowledge of all that is involved in bringing food out of the earth and to the table...offering a blessing over the food or saying grace before the meal...to make sure that we don't eat thoughtlessly or hurriedly, and that knowledge and gratitude will inflect our pleasure at the table." (hmm, this makes me think more about my prayer over the food too, 'bless the hands that grew this food' instead of being thankful that Bill has a job to buy the food.)
5. Cook and, if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it...So far I am more at home in the garden (that would be Mr. Pollan, NOT me! ) than the kitchen, though I can appreciate how time spent in either place alters one's relationship to food and eating." (pg 197)

LOTS of good stuff here. Maybe someday I'll borrow the book again and write down the great quotes from the beginning of the book!

1 comment:

Amanda said...

Looks like a good read. I'll have to see if they have it at the library.