It's been about a week since I've been eating like Pollan recommends, and I've definitely become more conscious about what I'm putting into my mouth everyday.  I'm also concentrating on enjoying what I eat rather than just eating for "functional" reasons.  

I've also learned that about half of Pollan's recommendations are relatively easy for me to follow, and the other half is darn right hard.  It's been relatively easy to eat "real" foods that are minimally processed.  We're lucky in Madison to have lots of choices that way. And I'm cooking more.  But it's been really hard for me to eat locally.  To be more honest about it, I'm too lazy to go to the farmer's market and to other sources to search out locally-grown foods.  I probably could--again, we're lucky in Madison that way--but I've realized that that would require major changes in many parts of my life. I'm realizing the limits to my commitment to this project.  

So far, though, this experiment is making clear to me that Pollan's recommendations are as much a political statement as they are about health.  I can eat a delicious, wholesome, and minimally-processed cheese from Trader Joe's (there's an organic white cheddar from New Zealand that I'm liking lately), but it certainly isn't local.  I'm therefore benefiting my own health by eating well, but I'm doing nothing to help reshape business practices in ways that Pollan recommends.  

This experiment is forcing me to think more about what I eat, and as a consequence, I continue to cook more and therefore eat less processed foods.  But I fell completely off the wagon yesterday--dinner was a Tombstone Pizza.  At least it's a local company.  Or used to be.  I think it's now owned by Kraft and who knows where it's made.

They say confession's good for the soul... 

I continue to eat in a more conscious way, and cook more--which is all to the good.  But I'm less and less enamored by one basic premise of Pollan's book:  that if we all ate locally, we'd develop the local markets that would keep local farmers in business and keep agribusiness at bay.  

Sarah McDaniel sent me a link to an NPR interview with Pollan which I found suspiciously knee jerk.  First, his description of his visit to Madison made it sound like he was under siege and only through his own bravery did he prevail.  That wasn't my assessment of his visit; the "stand off" with the farmers, and even the farm industry, seems pretty overblown.  But more to the point, his basic position that farmer would do better if everyone simply ate like he suggests is beginning to sound thin to me.  

I'm a functionalist when it comes to the evolution of markets (as well as most things), and by that, I mean that if farmers were able to make a living serving local markets, then wouldn't they already be doing that?  Instead, the fact that they don't (except in a "boutique" sense and/or in special locations in the country) makes me think that the profit just isn't there for most farmers, and instead, they need to literally feed world markets.  I know that Pollan suggests that new markets would develop if more consumers were to eat locally.  But if all of us in Wisconsin only ate locally, could we possibly eat enough to support all the farms in Wisconsin?  I haven't seen any estimates of that.  Moreover, haven't people traded goods basically forever?  Should we be denying the rest of the world our cheddar?  Where do you draw the line between good trade and bad...?

I'm not anti-"eat locally.  But I feel like the "eat locally" message, and the controversies surrounding it, has overshadowed other more important issues raised by Pollan in his book.  And I'm no longer convinced that Pollan doesn't feed the controversy as a way to sell more books!  We're not talking about the more important problems he identifies with the so-called "western diet" and how some aspects of "nutritionism" have turned foods into component parts.  Eating locally won't necessarily solve either of those problems.

I've closed out my month of trying to eat like Michael Pollan suggests in In Defense of Food.  It's been a useful, and largely enjoyable, exercise, though I can't say that it's changed my life. Most of the good habits that I've retained -- being more conscious of what I eat, savoring the experience rather than eating for purely functional reasons, cooking more and eating foods that are least processed -- are things we've known before Pollan.  Yet his book was a novel way to be reminded of these good habits, and his admonition to "eat real food" encapsulates a lot of good things into a simple message.  And it's a good message to live by.

On the other hand, after a month of living with Pollan, I just haven't gotten behind the larger political and economic arguments that he makes. I don't believe that we live any more in a world the survives primarily on local markets.  There's no doubt that the niche for local foods can grow--who can argue with tomatoes from the farmer's market, or pass up dinner at L'Etoile.  But as I said in a prior post, I'm not convinced that if WI residents only ate locally, we'd be able to support our local farmers.  In other words, local markets can have a niche role to play, but I just don't see it as a dominant strategy to feed the world.

So in the end, Pollan's identification of the problem was a lot more compelling to me than his solutions. I'm all for "sticking it to the man" just like any other good populist, and I really appreciated the research Pollan did to highlight the role that "nutritionism" played to distort our tastes and perception of what's wholesome and appealing, which resulted in our (unhealthy) "western diet."  But I'm just too much of a functionalist to believe that agri-business, or big business of any kind, is running unchecked in the world. Organizations, policies, or systems of any kind that have no lasting value don't last.  A Yogi Berra-ism if there ever was one.