Food Matters: a review.

So I just started reading 'Food Matters', by Mark Bittman, columnist for the New York Times. Its very commonsense, and has certainly outlined some of my issues with the current state of food in the US. He does make the point that 'agribusiness' is necessary now, but that having the government so tied into food isn't such a good idea. While I've known that studies on foods are generally made by the industries which they represent, I had no idea that a large number of people on the boards of government agencies have such links to Big Food Industry. And in these economic times, to have a program that costs taxpayers 19 BILLION and only benefits 3100 people??? There is something WRONG about that.

His book addresses what frustrates me about living in the US... so much is tied to Big Food that it is increasingly difficult to get good local food. What outlets there are are soon snapped up... or bought out. Even with the organic industry...if I had known that Whole Foods moving in would have wiped out our Wild Oats, I would never have supported that. Wild Oats did buy locally, in season, and not everything was trekked in from California in little plastic boxes.

I grew up in a country where we ate whole milk yogurt, whole wheat bread, fresh eggs, fresh meat, fresh veggies and fruits in season... we did have canned milk, but the majority of our food was fresh and whole. And I was skinny. We ate junk food occasionally, but even the soda pop was sweetened with Real Sugar.

When I spent two weeks in Paris last summer, and even on the boat over, the portions were reasonable. i took myself out to lunch yesterday, ordered a salad...it was ENORMOUS. Enough food for three people. We've gone overboard.

Bittman discusses this. He has a chart showing that the whole-milk yogurt, plain, is actually less calorific than the non-fat, fruit-laden kind. I've noticed that, in yogurt, most of them have gelatins, gums, thickeners.......

I do like this book, although, as with other books of its kind, it makes me wish there was a constructive way to get Big Food out of the government. To detach these giant sucking leeches that are destroying things.