John Thornton
shag carpet bomb wrote:
> poking around at links Dwayne's pointed at, I came across refs to
> various books related to Pollan's work: Gary Tabues' Good Calories;
> Bad Calories, Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History, and Paul
> Roberts' The End of Food. All of which I'd recommend if you're at all
> interested in excellent scientific investigative reporting -- though
> Krulansky's more an encyclopedic look at salt that runs rather dry.
>
> I chuckled reading Salt. It's not that Pollan doesn't know this stuff,
> it's just funny that he prefers to leave it out because it doesn't
> assist his thesis. Salt was one of those goods that made it possible
> to preserve food and, thus, was important to trade in food stuffs. In
> addition, one of the things that Pollan complains about it the way
> it's difficult to make money off plain old food. In order to make
> money, you have to add some value. Corn on the cob is never going to
> be as profitable as canned cream corn, corn dogs, and high fructose
> corn syrup, beef not as profitable as a Lean Cuisine frozen meal of
> Beef Stroganoff. But of course, that was the way it was 2000 years
> ago, too. Only, in this case, it was salted whale tongue v plain old
> whale tongue, prosciutto instead of pork, and other examples that
> escape me entirely too uncaffeinated brain at the mo'. To make money,
> people had to produce a more refined product -- add value -- because
> otherwise there was no profit in it.
>
> Like I said, this probably wouldn't be news to Pollan, nor would the
> global trade in food that's been around for so long. Still, it's
> interesting that he makes, among other things, the value add to food a
> target of his critique when the issue is ancient. Also, as for the
> cuisines of the Mediterranean he's so hot on -- because knowledge that
> is close to nature (and mimics the logic of nature ) is better than
> that which is not -- well, I don't know, but it was interesting to
> learn why catholics don't eat meat -- or didn't -- on holy days, and
> the reasons behind why they weren't allowed to. Red meat is hot, and
> therefore causes sexual excitement, so no no on a holy day (and no sex
> either!). So, about 50% of their days were spent not eating red meat
> for some bizarre ass reasons promulgated by the Catholic church.
>
> Close to nature?
>
> tee hee.
>
> shag
>
>
>
> http://cleandraws.com
> Wear Clean Draws
> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
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