Michael Pollan: Zero For Geography
Michael Pollan’s new book is called IN DEFENSE OF FOOD. In it, he disparages something he calls “The Western Diet”. This “Western Diet” is made up, not of food, but of “foodlike substances” sold in supermarkets. Michael wants to get us back to eating real food.
Hello Michael? Hello? What is this “Western” nonsense?
Has Europe been wiped out of Western culture singlehandedly, by Pollan? Apparently it has. Is he ignorant of our existence? Is he ignorant of our food? Does he think we’re somewhere in Asia? Or is he smearing us out of some misguided reluctance to call a spade a damn spade?
What Michael really means is not a “Western Diet”, but an American one. Let’s call it what it is, Michael, OK?
As a real, bona-fide, EC-passport-carrying European, I am rendered tres fatiguee by the assumption continually made by some apparently-educated-but-clearly-ignorant Americans that “European” is synonymous with “white American”. It’s not.
And in terms of food, we, in the European part of the West, do not eat “The Western Diet”. We eat food.
My mother lives in North Yorkshire. (Note to Michael: Yorkshire is a region of a small country called Britain, on the Western edge of Western Europe.) She drives carefully out every week to a miniscule farmer’s market in a neighbouring village, where she can buy ducks to roast, fresh goat’s cheese, and local organic vegetables. The choice is limited because the produce is local, and this is Yorkshire where they have rain and clay soil and frost, so there are no mangoes, bananas, avocados; it’s cabbage, carrots, spuds.
In France you expect to handle and smell food before you commit to it. I’ve seen people squeeze a baguette and pass it back because it’s not crispy enough, and I’ve seen the baker stick it back in the basket, and then rummage around to find a good one, and pass it back to be tested before it’s paid for. You eat it with live cheese covered in blue mould, along with a dandelion salad dressed in fresh olive oil and wine vinegar.
In Spain I’ve bought fish right off the quay, and little tomatoes, and heads of white papery garlic, and gone home and cooked them on the spot.
I won’t speak about the markets of Italy, for the sake of Pollan’s health. It could kill him, just hearing about them. I don’t want him to gork out, mid-orgasm, as he reads about buffalo mozarella and fresh wild arugula, and pasta made that morning, and steamed trout, and zabaglione.
Only in America have I heard people say, “I actually a made a cake from scratch today. With eggs!” Only in America have I had people, once they find out I can cook, quite seriously hand me recipes that include a can of this, a can of that, and a packet of marshmallows.
Michael, your country is not “The West”. Your country is America, and it is a case unto itself. If you want to discover the real Western Diet”, go tour Europe, and weep.
Tags: consumption, culture, diet, european-culture, food, home, the-west, travel
Oct 29, 2008
…and here I thought you were going to object to the NORTHwest being called “The West”. I live in Latin America, and a whole lot of the foodlike substance consumed here (especially by the indigenous inhabitants of the region) is in fact food. Although the American diet is becoming more and more of an influence, with the result of rising diabetes and obesity indices.
And I’ve spent a few months in Europe, and frankly I think the same is true there as in Latin America (more and more canned and prepackaged food is being consumed), so I wouldn’t wax idyllic about either place quick so readily.
I think that Pollan deserves criticism for conflating all of “The West” with the US, but unfortunately your geography skills are also a bit challenged (they only include things north of the equator) and therefore your valid point is lost in the stench of petty eurocentrism.
Oct 29, 2008
Hello!! I have news news for you, not ALL Europeans eat the way your mother does in North Yorkshire ( which sounds heavenly BTW) — MANY Europeans eat disgracefully, with plenty of “foodlike” substances as staples of their diets, and in terms of eating produce from the farthest reaches of the planet — the EU is no shining example! While America has certainly become an example of how not to eat, and deservedly so, NOT ALL AMERICANS eat like this either. I for one grow much of my own produce, organically. In fact, many of Americans with immigrant heritage, like the Italian side of my family, grew our own vegetables, raised rabbits in the backyard for stew, made our own cheese, and homemade pasta, (while the rest of America was eating wonder bread and McDonald’s)and many of us still do. And it’s not just those Americans with European immigrant culture, there are Americans who live near the coast who eat superb local seafood, Americans who live in cities who shop at farmer’s markets, Americans who are growing organic heirloom vegetables. We are certainly the minority, but there is an active farm to table, local, organic, and homemade food movement in America. And we have some of the most AMAZING regional cuisine, that is still going strong even in the face of fascist corporate homogenized processed factory farmed chain food like Applebee’s, etc. There are MANY Americans who would rather not eat than step foot into one of these chain restaurants. Don’t lump us altogether in the stereotype of fat stupid American, while there are plenty of them, there are plenty who arent, they just get more attention! And all of this, while children all over the world are hungry! How did we get to this point
Lets fix it!
Oct 29, 2008
Excellent article, Rachel — I couldn’t agree more!
Regarding Michael Pollan’s book, which I have read, I’d also like to point out that the Province of Quebec, in Canada, hasn’t embraced the “Western Diet” he mentions.
As a Quebecker, I know first hand that the way we eat is lightyears away from his view of a “Western” way of eating. In fact, when Americans come to visit us, as tourists, they usually add lots of sugar and salt just to “taste” thing when, in fact, the “original” meal was near perfect.
Good cuisine doesn’t have to be “lean” cuisine. Wholesome foods, fresh vegetables and tasty fruits are all about health and some Americans get it. Michael Pollan obviously loves food and he’s trying to make a point about the importance to value the food we eat but wrapping that within a “Western Diet” label is just wrong.
As individuals, we need to learn about food -outside- the mainstream media who usually see no problem with GMOs, fast foods, mass animal slaughters and a certain level of “mass produced” food contamination.
Having our own herbs garden is a wonderful way to start things moving in the right direction. Let your inspiration take it from there and if you read Michael Pollan’s book, like I did, focus on his passion for food and not his weird obsession with the “Western Diet” thing.
Oct 29, 2008
Ridiculous. I am New Yorker with tonnes of family and friends in Europe. I have spent many a long month in Europe and Central America, both of which boast grocery stores filled to the brim with products that have mile long ingredients lists (half of which are not pronouncable to laymen).
To cover the converse point, I grew up in Southern United States where my family (and my neighbors) grew our own veggies and fruits for the majority of the year. We had chickens in the yard and pigs in the barn. And yes, this was a regular, common lifestyle; we were not unique.
If you really want to get all crazy with analyzing an accepted term such as “western diet” (which I think we all know is a concept more than a geographical pigeon hole) let’s take a look at what is coming out of the east : melanine?
Oct 29, 2008
M Polan is correct in all ways, rerad his other books.
Oct 29, 2008
Your article and the responses posted above all resonate with my experience of both U.S. and European cuisine… with the conclusion that no “one” geographic area is completely at fault or guilt-free.
Like Simone, I know many people who try to “fight” the system here in America by growing their own, shopping locally, frequenting farmers markets, and cooking with wholesome ingredients. My family was never a “fast food” family, and while we did put together ingredients with the help of some pre-packaged simmer sauces, etc. we never ate what was later referred to as the “American” diet when I lived abroad in France and was gawked at for saying I never stepped foot in the McDonalds in the center of town. “But you’re an American!” my host mother would say. Then then she, who was the queen of cooking with the most wholesome ingredients bought straight from the market, would admit to eating at “Mac Doh” for lunch the week before.
The truth of the matter is that very few of us are true purists. And yet we make sweeping assumptions that others must be “this way” or “that way” without regard to the fact that our globalized world has become a hybrid model in every regard. When in America, I tended to romanticize European markets and shun the American food system. When in Europe, I saw that the McDonald’s were always full (AND often more expensive than local, fresh counterparts) and I found myself fighting hard to paint a picture of non-main-stream America… I had to push hard against the stereotypes of all Americans as overweight guzzlers of hamburgers and hotdogs and the assertion that those food substances were the only “American” cuisine, when as Simone mentioned above, REGIONAL (and often ethnic) cuisine plays such a strong role in cultural pockets across America.
Pollan’s book is perhaps guilty of simplifying things in just the same way that our cultural stereotypes do. And just as Rachel felt the need to lash back against being lumped into an assumption that didn’t feel right, so do us Americans who identify with a much more diverse (and healthier) food system than the “American” one at which all fingers are pointing.
My advice? Read Pollan with a grain of salt and take what lessons you feel resonate. He’s got a lot of good things to say but is by no means exempt from the common human folly of simplification.
Oct 29, 2008
OK folks, I’m clearly busted for prejudice! The encouraging thing to me is the global backlash against the agro-food industry, in the form of farmer’s markets and home gardening and slow food and all the other things you mention.
Oct 29, 2008
I would call it a corporatized diet and it affects all of us.
Oct 29, 2008
The best way to describe the Standard American Diet is in the name itself, SAD. Full of process, fatty, salty crap! I have been a vegan for 5 years now. I look and feel better then I did in my 20’s. When I was working at a grocery store, I really got a good look at what people where buying. Soda, Chips, meat, dairy products, liquor and all kinds of candy or process snack crap! Fruit, Veggies, few and far inbetween. I noticed the customers that were lower income buying even larger amout of the process crap. You think, if you don’t have alot to spend, you would want to get some real food! Sadly most americans don’t know what real food is. Most don’t even know how to cook, unless it is from a can or box (instant) God help them if they can’t microwave it! All of my family and most of my friends think I am crazy for going vegan. They keep asking me what do I eat. I tell them Whole grains, beans, fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds. I get the same response over and over “that’s it, you can’t survive like that, your going go get sick” Well, look who’s getting sick! Not me! The only things I am missing out on is fat, salt, process crap! The only supplement I take is B12. The vegan diet is low on B12. However, there is plenty of protean, clacium and all other inportant nutrients that your body needs in the vegan diet. Americans have been hearing from the government, meat, dairy industries and other sources, that they need all this crap to be healthy! Most never learn how to cook, due to no one is teaching it in the schools or at home. I learned from my mother and from school (what use to be called home economics) It’s all about big business and industry, not what people really need. Until we americans and our government, learn to get back to basics, slow down a little and start living a more natural life style, we will have problems.
Oct 29, 2008
keep in mind all of us reading this book, and more critically this article by Rachael, are far more aware of these issues to begin with than the average American, and we probably cannot assume we are a standard cross section of western society… though that would be great if it were so!
Correct me if I’m wrong, (its been a month since I read the book) but I’m fairly certain he makes a large distinction in his definition – he is fairly clear that he means North-American/United States of America(n) diet when he refers to the Western diet – this he compares explicitly to the Mediterranean diet and the French diet, and by deduction the similar Quebecois diet. He makes no direct link between the ‘western diet’ and the ‘western world’ (assuming that means the developed, European-rooted culture of the north/first world/developed/industrial world).
Further, he makes more comparisons to the US because that’s where the meaty statistics are. And as to diverse diets WITHIN the west, Pollan makes explicit comparisons between recent immigrants who retain their traditional “food-skills,” and those who have lived in the US for longer periods of time – I guess one could then deduce that those who reclaim those food skills (Jackie’s comment is quite pertinent here), or who eat outside of the standard North-American industrialized diet, can gain the same benefits. I think the debate so far has largely been one of semantics, but what is refreshing is everyone’s knowledge and appreciation of these issues – something Rachael also brought up in her recent reply.
Nov 03, 2008
As well, referring to ‘America,’ there is North America, Central America, and South America. Three completely different locations.
If somebody wants to refer to the United States as ‘America,’ they must be geographically uneducated.
and simply, this is a problem occurring throughout the world. All each of us can do is eat ‘real food’ and educate others on what they are putting in their bodies.