The object, then, is not only to live, but to live economically, agreeably, tastefully, and well. Accordingly, the art of cookery commences; and although the fruits of the earth, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea, are still the only food of mankind, yet these are so prepared, improved, and dressed by skill and ingenuity, that they are the means of immeasurably extending the boundaries of human enjoyments. I. Beeton The Book of Household Management, S.O. Beeton 1861. Ch4 Section 76
All these foods were sourced from the Hawkesbury River region on the outskirts of Sydney, and purchased direct from the producer/maker.
I’ve been thinking about food a lot lately. I want to live more lightly on the planet but I don't easily give up the life I have become comfortable with. This is a life in which I need to buy my food in a one-stop shop so I don’t have to trudge all over town finding ingredients; a life in which I take for granted that I can stock up on meat to the extent that my freezer will hold it all; a life in which I am annoyed at food that doesn’t ‘keep’ because it means I have to trudge back out to the one-stop-shop all over again.
I am the last person who wants to live exactly as my great-grandparents did, without our modern food conveniences. However, I do find myself debating which whether our quicker faster food really makes our lives easier, in the long term.
I am the last person who wants to live exactly as my great-grandparents did, without our modern food conveniences. However, I do find myself debating which whether our quicker faster food really makes our lives easier, in the long term.
"Make [food] simple and let things taste of what they are."
Curnonsky (Maurice Edmond Sailland), French writer (1872-1956)
These deep thoughts are all the fault of Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan and, most recently, Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon of the 100 Mile Diet fame. I’m thinking about what I’m eating, where it’s coming from and damn it, whether it’s good for me.
I have been making my own stock ever since I noticed that the stock I was using had no recognisable food in its ingredients list (except water and salt); I have become the whiny pain at the grocer when I notice that the garlic comes from Mexico and the Asparagus from Peru*; and I won’t let my kids drink clear apple juice because it contains things other than apple juice (it contains added colour and flavour for heaven’s sake, I always thought apples were the flavour). In the US most of the fruit juice I bought contained high fructose corn syrup. Why?
We now only buy apple juice that is made of ...apples
Our diet has changed remarkably over the last 100 years. The onset of industrialised agriculture may have made it easier to feed the greater number of people with vastly cheaper foods but these foods often have to travel a vastly greater distance to get to our plate which not only uses additional energy but means producers must add preservatives and additional packaging to ensure that the food is edible when it gets to us.
If we go way back before our time, back to our Great Grandparents, or great-great grandparents, what would they make of the food we eat? Or how the food tastes? Many of the simple foods that great-grandma would've known were made of one or two ingredients (eg. apple juice, butter). Many of these are now multi-ingredient foods containing inputs unknown in our great-grandparents time (can you imagine great-granny serving apple juice with colour and added flavour, or high fructose corn syrup?)
I recently met a sufferer of adult reflux and chronic indigestion. She finds her condition is controllable provided she only eats foods whose ingredients she recognises as a real food (not a number or chemical compound) otherwise she is reliant on medication to control her condition. This just seems to make sense, perhaps there’s a lesson in that for all of us.
Is this something you’ve started to think about? It has certainly made me stop and think about what I am buying before I pick something off the supermarket shelf and it has encouraged me to try to cook meals from simple ingredients whose provenance I can prove. Just like my great-grandmother would've.
*Dear Mexicans and Peruvians I am sure your products are fabulous, but they had to travel too far to get to me and I just feel I should wait until my local producer can supply these in the right season.
17 comments:
Great post. I have long thought about what we feed our babies. My eldest child had food from jars (albeit organic ones, but still with all of the foods mushed up) as I went back to work when he was young,although now an adult he is a picky eater with a penchant for junk food. My second child I was at home for and he had fresh home cooked food, he will eat anything and wouldn't give you a thankyou for fast food, and I am convinced that the way their food was presented to them as babies had an impact on this.
It does make you wonder. Mind you, my pickiest eater is the one who ate home-cooked food as a baby!
As the parent of a 'tween' I am being exposed to views that suggest that the highly processed, hormone-filled food some children eat is causing early onset of puberty. How do we know if this is true?
In some ways we eat so much better (more variety?)than our grand-parents but in other ways so much worse.
Oh my God, I thought *I* was the only one made the greengrocer check where their garlic was from! You've touched on an issue that I (and probably lots of us) dwell on more and more: just how is our diet impacting on us? A great post.
PS I should add that my beef with garlic arises from the time (about 2 years ago) that I wrote a piece for the magazine I work for. In this piece (a kind of '10 easy ways to be green' story) I looked at why you should give garlic from China a BIG miss. It's fairly complicated but it boils down to the fact that those $1 for a bag of 10 garlics are sprayed with a chemical (fungicide, from memory) that has been banned in Australia for a while. Steer well clear.
Now I'm really glad I insist on locally grown garlic! I bought fresh garlic from the Hawkesbury Farmers Market in the city last week. It's fabulous, but you don't need much of it...
Michael Pollan's books first led me in this direction as well. An idea of his that I found very useful to cut down on doing so many trips to obtain the food is to invest in the biggest (most energy efficient!) freezer you can - preferably one of those stand alone models. And something I got from Barbara Kingsolver is to do your own frozen vegies while in season! Many vegetables do lend themselves very well to freezing or in cooked/sauce form.
Also (sorry, I do go on as I love this topic too!) I have basically reduced my visits to the supermarket to once a month only (I mainly use independent fruit & vegie shops, organic home suppliers and markets). They are generally the source of most of the over-processed "food-like substances" and I recently taped a show about their impact on farmers which I have yet to watch that was on Four Corners recently. My friends and I call them the "evil empire" - they are so bad on so many levels but unfortunately very convenient ;-)
P.s. also just saw an ad for the latest Jamie Oliver show - it seems alot of people do not know even the basics of cooking (this seems to be a big talking point in the media etc at the moment) - this would mean less of a reliance on pre-packaged processed foods I should imagine.
I think it was in the Michael Pollan book that I read a rule I have started to live by: if a product lists more than five ingredients on the side of the packet, I won't buy it. And if I can't pronounce an ingredient, I won't buy the product.
As a farmer I can assure you that the food (lamb, wheat etc)that is grown in Australia is some of the cleanest and fresh in the world, for that Australian are very lucky. Some of the vegies I'm not so sure, but they are alot better than the stuff from Aisa. You the consumer drive what we produce. If you want bigger chops that means we have to feed the lambs longer with more additives. If you want lambs in May - August than means they are fed in a feedlot again with additives bucause they don't normally grow at that time. My tip is to buy your food when it's in season, buy local first and preferably from a butcher or growers market. We don't buy any processed food, if left out it doesn't have mold on it after three days it's not good for you.
p.s. grow your own vegies.
we have been trying to do this for a while now, eating simply and eating whole foods. I have the Michael Pollan book and it is very interesting. Just small changes can make a big difference like having butter instead of marg. I think it's Michael Pollan says margarine is just one molecule away from being plastic! that did it for us!
we use alot of apples. Apples are one of the most universal foods avalable. They replace fats in cooking, such as margerine, and sweeteners. Here's a chocolate cake recipe made with apple sauce that is fat free. But like all good things it needs to be eaten fresh. So make the cake cut it in half, freze one piece and eat the other over the next two days (after this it may get stale and if exposed to the air it may grow mold (See previous comments)) then thor out the other piece and eat it when ready. My girls (6&2) say it tasts better with green icing.
1 1/2 cups SR Flour
2 egg white
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup apple sauce
1/2 teas bicarb soda
3 table spoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk (soy if you like)
Pre heat 180 C. Beat egg whites and sugar till stiff. Mix bicarb with apple sauce (it will froth) add to bowl. add remaining ingredients together and gently fold into egg whites in one go(DO NOT BEAT) Place in tin. 25-30 min in oven, check at 20 min.
Cheers
So so good.
Loved the comments too.
It is something we are thinking alot about lately too.
The Blue Mountains City Council has launched an initiative whereby every householder grows their own vegetables.
Farmdad knows his stuff - thanks to him we now eat fresh vegies from our own garden!
High-fructose corn syrup is in almost everything here in the US. Manufacturers pour it in so that (a) the skinny types won't see the word 'sugar' in ingredient lists and go 'Eeeeew!'; and (b) to appease corn farmers, in the same way the US is pushing for ethanol to be considered a worthwhile alternative fuel.
I thought I'd share with you the ingredients of a loaf we picked up at the supermarket, labelled 'Organic white bread'. (No-one in Australia would ever buy this, let alone eat it. It stinks. It falls apart in your hand as you try to remove a slice. It tastes like shit. It leaves an acidic lardy coating on your teeth. In fact, the entire bread aisle in the supermarket stinks like this.)
Contents: organic unbleached wheat flour, water, margarine (palm oil, water, soybean oil, salt, natural flavor, milk, soy lecithin, beta carotene color, vitamin A palmitate added), honey (corn syrup, sugar, water, honey, molasses, artificial flavor, citric acid, sulfitting agents), non-fat dry milk, vital wheat gluten, yeast, salt, dough conditioners.
Now, the margarine myth — there's a good one for you. Isn't there some link to kerosene? With yellow colour added?
We aim to (and manage mostly) to avoid packaged and processed foods as much as possible. I teach in a sustainable classroom. Product lists on packages scare me - I read the side of a Sui-Min noodle cup to my son, he asked 'where's the food' ?
I can tell you Megan's Grandmother's favourite foods:
Sardines from a can
Bega vintage cheese
Tomato Salsa (with red onion and coriander)
Cott seed loaf or soy-lin
Mini roast with garlic and rosemary
Bacon and eggs
Fish
Cornflakes with milk and cream - to make the milk taste like it should!
Emily
When in the US, I go out of my way to source sourdough from local bakieries - it's the only bread I trust over there. Everything else is crumbly and 'cakey' and quite frankly, scary .. like Lesley said.
We try and do the right thing here, it's hard work and I often think of my Great-Grandma, on her farm with her watertanks and woodstove, as I toil about. It's no work for a woman with a 'real' job ( ie: an 8-6 one where someone other than family pays her ), it's just so time-comsuming .. I think about stuff like this every day.
Every day.
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