Food proper
Michael Pollan is a great speaker and gave a talk at google. He makes a lot of interesting points about how to eat well when there are so many possible food choices and conflicting information about food. Basically a 40 minute summary of his new book, "In Defense of Food". Two random nuggets I found interesting:
- Humans have big brains and that enables us to be such capable omnivores. Cows eat grass, koalas eat eucalyptus, and they don't have to think about eating those things. Humans can live off of just about anything but we need to consciously choose food if we want to thrive. Expecting to buy a fully prepared meal at the store that is also perfectly healthy and cheap is unrealistic.
- Agricultural subsidies not only favor those growing corn and soy ("industrial raw materials") over real food, any land ever used to grow subsidized crops cannot legally be used to grow non-subsidized crops! Fuck the state. Why is there this rule? Because California produce growers wanted a monopoly on fresh produce in return for not getting a cut of the subsidies.
The most important point that he makes in my opinion, and he only gets to this in the Q & A, is that good food is worth spending money on and Americans do not spend enough on food. $6 for a dozen eggs is not outrageous. They're an entirely different and better tasting food than eggs that cost $3 a dozen. If you have two for breakfast then it costs a buck. Are you willing to spend a buck for a great breakfast?
Here's a good article on diet pimping the low-carb thing. Apparently there's a glucose poisoning epidemic.
Getting hammered
Pollan rails against being cheap and against reductionist nutrient-ism, trying to isolate the healthy and unhealthy components of food. When I want to get wrecked though, the only nutrient I care about is EtOH and I want to get real trashed real cheap. That's why the internet has info on how to make hobo-hooch on a budget.
For times when I feel like having some class, I found recipies for blueberry melomel. Honey and blueberries, is that not the best combination? It takes more than a year to fully mature—good things take time.
I've made neither yet, but I'll fix that when the football (read: drinking) and blueberry seasons roll around, respectively.
