We are what we eat by Ira Boudway - The Toronto Star

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We are what we eat
Cheaper, mass-produced foods are a huge burden on society, author argues
Dec. 11, 2006. 05:26 AM
IRA BOUDWAY
SPECIAL TO THE STAR


"On the long trip from the soil to our mouths, a trip of 2,500 kilometres on average, the food we eat often passes through places most of us will never see. Michael Pollan has spent much of the past five years visiting these places on our behalf.

"Industrial food," as Pollan defines it, "is food for which you need an investigative journalist to tell you where it came from."

We have been eating such food for so long that most of us have no memory of the much shorter and less complicated food chains that once tied people to the land. We need someone, in other words, to tell us where food of any kind comes from. A long-time writer on food for the New York Times Magazine and author of the bestseller The Botany of Desire, Pollan is a good man for the job.

In his new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Pollan traces meals across four different food chains, or, if you prefer, markets, arranged in order of popularity: a McDonald's drive-through meal, a Whole Foods dinner, a meal raised on a "beyond organic" pasture farm in Virginia, and what Pollan labels the "Perfect Meal," one whose ingredients he hunts and forages for himself.

..............SNIP"

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1. K&R.nt

[sui generis]

2. this is the perfect reason that employers should start

testing cholesterol as a condition of employment.

It's always funny to hear some progressives say "I don't want to pay for someone else's higher health costs with my premiums", which sounds so downright republican it makes me cringe, while taking another bite out of their chili cheese triple decker and washing it down with a gulp of their half-gallon "super size it" Big Red, followed up with deep fried chocolate covered lard balls for dessert. I don't want to pay for your emergency room heart attack visit, knee, hip and ass replacments or statins, nor the extra fuel charge on every bit of public transportation that they ride.

I am kidding but it's about that absurd.

on edit: I am referring to the "draw and quarter the smokers" threads

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3. I like the idea of trying to eat only stuff from local markets.