Who's this "we?"
Michael Pollan teaches us to think before we eat
Q: In your book, you call us 'processed corn, walking.'
A: That's us. That's what we've become, because we eat a diet that really consists of processed corn, in the form of the meat and milk we consume. It's all corn fed. All the beef, all the chicken, all the pork is really processed corn.
Uh, no, that's what you've become. To the extent I'm corn-fed it's from directly eating corn, no intermediate medium of delivery.
Q: What are you eating for dinner tonight?
A: Tonight, we're cooking for some friends from New York and we're having salmon.
Q: I assume it's wild.
A: (Laughs.) I'll tell you what. It's not.
Q: You're kidding.
A: No. There's no wild salmon right now on the market. There's a place in Scotland, called Loch Duarte, which grows sustainable, undyed, no-hormones salmon. It's the most sustainable farm salmon you can get. Yes, it's not local. It's come a really long way, but what it shows is we all make compromises.
Or what it shows is that your convictions are expedient. One of the things I had always understood eating locally to mean was eating more seasonally and in tune with availability - avoid tomatoes in the winter, gorge on them in summer. It makes them all the sweeter. You often hear self-congratulation about the ease of eating locally in California, but it's also spoiled them; they're less able to deal with the seasonal deprivation we experience here in the East. Eating locally becomes "eating locally if convenient." Otherwise, rather than going without salmon for a season, import foodporn "gourmet" salmon and shrug it off as a "compromise." It's really all about justifying your conspicuous consumption as "ethical."
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