Posts Tagged ‘Food’

You’re Not What You Eat

Posted: March 19, 2013 in Uncategorized
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By Peter Stern, Philosophy Faculty.

Trust me!  Despite all you’ve heard and will continue hearing to the contrary, the title is entirely correct: you’re not what you eat.  Not now. Not last week.  Not next month.  Not next year.

87How can I be so certain?  What evidence do I have proving my contention beyond a reasonable doubt?   Here it is and it’s all very obvious.   Let’s do a thought experiment.  Imagine that this morning for breakfast you ate a big bowl of hot, high fiber, harsh tasting, steel cut oatmeal.

Next, picture yourself getting up from your kitchen table, putting your now empty oatmeal bowl in the sink, running some water in it, shutting off the tap, turning off the kitchen light, and then going to your front closet to get your coat and head off to work.  Lastly imagine putting on your coat, taking your keys out of your pocket, opening and going out the door, and then closing and locking it, before finally taking off for work.

What, you may be wondering, does this have to do with our theme?   Here’s the answer: though you do these things routinely, a bowl of oatmeal can’t.   Thus, you can’t be a bowl of oatmeal and my thesis is proven for you’re not what you eat, at least not the particular morning I have in mind.  And I’m convinced the same thing would be true if instead of oatmeal, you had some eggs and toast or, being in a terrible hurry, you only had time to grab a granola bar before rushing out of your warm comfy abode.

But might a skeptic claim my point’s pretty weak for I’m being much too literal minded.  Our title’s magic phrase doesn’t mean we become an actual glob of oatmeal after scraping  our bowl clean; instead, what’s meant is that our digested meal supplies what our bodies need to keep us healthy.

Yet I continue to hold we’re not what we eat.  Food certainly may influence how we feel and what we want to do, nonetheless the core of who we are isn’t defined by how our body functions as it may or may not be influenced in still not understood ways by what we’ve eaten.

As I see it, putting so much weight on how and what people eat leads to a host of problems large and small.  Slowly, we become preoccupied, even obsessed with food, as does our nation, which is blitzed daily by a media michael_bloombergculture which encourages the obsession.  Mayor Bloomberg’s recent effort to ban the sale of 16 once plus sized containers of soda provides a good example of an aspect of the food obsession now sweeping the land.

The mayor justified his ban arguing it would reduce the incidence of obesity.   One major reason his law makes no sense–and there are many others–is that there’s no data that shows the degree to which 16, or 17, or 18 ounce sodas cause obesity.  In an editorial written a day after a New York State Judge struck down the law, even the New York Times, usually a friend of trendy food regulations, stated that the law was ill conceived and wouldn’t work.

Thus in my view the notion that you are what you eat is both wrong and a symbol of a wider cultural trend which brings more harm than good.   Rather than worrying about becoming what we eat, we’d be better off seeing ourselves as a red red rose, or a dancing star, or the sum total of all we’ve surveyed and, after a good night’s sleep, still hope to survey as our train roars into the future.

Fresh and/or Quality.

Posted: February 8, 2013 in Uncategorized
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By Larry Larys, RMU student. 

Standards. Fresh. Quality. Every restaurant says they deliver these things, but do they really? We, as consumers, believe that fresh and quality carry the same meaning, but in actuality do they? We also believe that fresh is healthy. Subway is a great example. People always say, “Let’s go to Subway! It is healthy.” In reality, Subway is not much better than Imageany other fast casual restaurant. Americans have it in their mind that “Subway, Eat Fresh” means it’s healthy –especially after the addition of Jared, who actually lost the weight from his 3 mile walk there and back.

            While restaurants may have consumers confused that fresh is not only healthy but quality, it is our own fault because many of us don’t know what the word quality means. Quality is defined as “A degree of excellence,” something that is hard to find in a restaurant nowadays. Fresh is defined as “newly or just come or arrived,” and this may be part of the reason consumers are confused. Just because a product arrives that day in a restaurant does not mean the food is “fresh.” Personally, I would define fresh as never being frozen, quickly shipped to the location, and used within a few days. It is important that consumers make sure there is an understanding of what we want in a business and ensure it achieves that caliber of service.

            To compare the health benefits of restaurants let’s compare Subway, which people think of as healthy, to McDonald’s, thought to be the worst of fast food. Two favorites are Subway’s Chicken Bacon Ranch Melt and McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Subway’s “healthy choice” has 570 calories to the Quarter Pounder’s 520. And, personally, the second choice has more flavor. Also, realize the Chicken Melt isn’t figuring all the extra toppings and other dressings, such as oil, you may want to add—tacking on more calories. Everyone thinks fish is a healthy substitute for red meat but Subway’s Tuna sandwich packs 470 calories. McDonald’s Filet-o-fish comes in at a mere 390 calories.

            I am not saying eat at Subway over McDonalds, because the fries and other sandwiches can be much worse if you don’t shop smart; however, this proves very strongly that what most consumers deem as fresh doesn’t necessarily mean healthy. People need to do research on what they are eating and not put their fate into the stores that feed them confusing material, both at fast food restaurants and full service restaurants. It is okay to eat fast food in moderation as long as you are an informed shopper. The most important thing to remember is that fresh doesn’t always mean healthy. 

Who Invented Our Food?

Posted: December 13, 2012 in Uncategorized
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By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty.

I’m teaching a food history course right now, and I was recently thinking about some extra-credit assignments for my students.  I found some inspiration reading a fascinating book by Ina Lipkowitz called Words to Eat By: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language. Lipkowitz reminded me that the world’s oldest recipe book was written in the fourth or fifth century AD by a Roman gourmand by the name of Marcus Gavius

Apicius?

Apicius?

Apicius.  This man lived and died for food, and I mean that literally. Evidently, Apicius committed suicide when he could no longer afford to throw the lavish feasts he so enjoyed.  That is an interesting aside, but the idea that really grabbed me was using his recipes from his book De Re Coquinaria as an extra-credit opportunity. Since many of my students are culinary students, I would think many might be interested in testing their hand at some ancient Roman fare.

But, I thought, maybe I should try it first. After looking through Apicius’ recipes, I settled on an easy one to start:

Sautéed Squash in Herb Sauce

1 medium onion, thinly sliced.

1 T. olive oil

¼ t. pepper.

¼ t. celery seed.

¼ t. oregano.

Dash of cumin.

3 c. diced squash

½ c. squash stock.

¼ c. white wine.

1 t. olive oil.

Directions:

Sauté sliced onion in olive oil. In a mortar, grind pepper, celery seed, and oregano. Add to onions, with a dash of cumin. Stir. Then add diced squash. Add stock, white wine, and olive oil. Stir repeatedly over medium heat until the gourds are cooked. If you wish, thicken the liquid with flour and serve.

 

The oldest recipe ever found is for beer.

The oldest recipe ever found is for beer.

So, this is a roughly 1600 hundred year old recipe.  Doesn’t look too hard, or odd. Now admittedly, I skipped over the recipes with calf brain and garum (fish sauce) to find some that I could easily make, but it struck me how similar this is to a modern recipe.  Maybe this shouldn’t be surprising though when you think about how recipes are handed down from generation to generation. Our family recipes are often based upon regional or national traditions that simply have riffs and slight alterations of what people have been cooking for millennia in a certain part of the world.  So even the food of Apicius is quite simple; or is it?

Look at this recipe.  Think of the processing of food that needs to go into this.  Getting oil from thousands of olives.  Fermenting grape juice.  Discovering and growing herbs that will not poison you, and will make your food tasty.  After all that, there is the chemical mixture of all these foods to create a pleasing taste.  Who was the first person to figure this stuff out? How did they do it?  I believe such a question is one of the great mysteries of human civilization: who invented our food?

Think of something as simple as bread (even non-leavened).  Process wheat into flour, process olives into oil, and add water.  Mix it together, and bake in an enclosed oven.  What?  Who thinks of that?  And, that doesn’t take into account more complex bread recipes that would add salt (from the sea/salt mine), honey (from bees), eggs (from a chicken), milk (from a cow or goat).  What mad scientist first put those things together, and then heated them at a certain, perfect temperature for a preordained time?

Such a question is obviously impossible to answer, but it should make us respect those anonymous cooks who came before us, and provided the knowledge that our civilization of food rests upon.  I wonder if my students will feel that sense of awe and respect when they are elbow deep in calf-brain and fermented fish sauce.

The Pleasure of Peas.

Posted: June 11, 2012 in Uncategorized
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By Michael Stelzer Jocks, History Faculty. 

If you remember my previous post, you know that my wife has created an incredible fruit/vegetable garden in our yard. In a small amount of land, she has peas, beans, carrots, strawberries, beets, and much more.  At this time of year, there are a good number of plants producing; asparagus, chard, lettuces, onions. My two favorite plants producing this time of year are strawberries and peas.  We must have 15 strawberry plants, and 20 pea plants.  We should be able to harvest this, and use it in a fresh culinary innovation, but we never get a chance.  We have two major pests that grab the fruits of the plants before we can.  They are not insects, rodents, or marsupials.  The pests are our children.

Our girls are 5 and 3 years old, and they are pretty adventurous eaters.  Like all parents though, my wife and I have to cater our desires to their tastes.    I would love to make some wonderful Indian dishes, but to our girls, this is “too spicy”.  So, it is a nice homemade Mac and Cheese with three cheeses and broccoli.  They will gobble this up, so I really shouldn’t complain.

As with most children, the girls have their seemingly irrational likes and dislikes.  The oldest will eat raw broccoli all day, but she won’t touch it if it is steamed or sautéed.  She literally turns up her nose.  The younger one enjoys sautéed asparagus, but only the stems, and not the ‘gross’ tops, even though there is no difference in taste between the two.   Though this can be infuriating at dinner time, it is an interesting phenomenon to watch from an unemotional distance.  I wonder why they, and most children, are so seemingly random in their tastes. I can’t say for sure what causes this, but I do have a hypothesis: my girls and other children want the autonomy of making a choice for themselves.

This brings me back to our garden, and the two little girl pests that eat our produce before it can be brought inside to process.  One of the girls’ favorite things to do is picking the veggies and fruit directly from the plant, and popping it right into their mouths.  They don’t want to be told to eat it, because it is good for them; they want to eat it because it is fun. In fact, when I asked my elder daughter why she so voraciously ate all the green and purple peapods right from the plant, she simply replied that “it is fun”.  I think it must be fun for the same reason that it is fun for my wife to work in her garden; it is a wonderful feeling of making your own choice, your own world.

Picking peas “is fun.”

Unfortunately, with the industrial food system, this experience of grabbing your own food by yourself is rare for some, and nonexistent for most.  Food is packaged to an absurd extreme in today’s world. (Del Monte produced an individually wrapped banana last year!)  At the same time, we face a mounting health crisis where the closest children get to a homemade meal is Old Country Buffet, and the closest they come to fresh fruit is Snapple.  Many times parents simply say that children will not experiment, and hence, they give them the easiest mass produced food-stuff for their growing bodies.  However, the garden has proved to me that kids do crave experimentation if it is autonomous.  This was driven home to me when the girls got their hands on arugula, and ate it direct from the pot.  That’s right, I said arugula. I really don’t even really like plain arugula.

Harvesting your own food is fun; cooking your own food is fun; food should be fun. The mass production companies realize this, and take advantage of it by stuffing horribly made toys in cereal, calling their ‘food’ happy meals, and marketing “snap, crackle, and pop.”  What we need to remember is that nature still provides kids with much more fun than any factory in Battle Creek, Michigan ever could.