Michael Pollan is definitely one of my favorite writers. Although I do not share all of his views on nutrition, I cannot but feel captivated by the way in which he can put complex ideas into simple words or by his sheer enthusiasm for good food. Reading Pollan, you realize that food is more than nourishment for the body. It is nourishment for the soul as well and it can tell, to the one who listens, many stories about human emotions, traditions, evolution and, last but not least, about our relationship with the world around us.
My favorite quotes
How is it that at the precise historical moment when Americans were abandoning the kitchen, handing over the preparation of most of our meals to the food industry, we began spending so much of our time thinking about food and watching other people cook it on television? The less cooking we were doing in our own lives, it seemed, the more that food and its vicarious preparation transfixed us.
The outsourcing of much of the work of cooking to corporations has relieved women of what has traditionally been their exclusive responsibility for feeding the family, making it easier for them to work outside the home and have careers. It has headed off many of the conflicts and domestic arguments that such a large shift in gender roles and family dynamics was bound to spark. It has relieved all sorts of other pressures in the household, including longer workdays and overscheduled children, and saved us time that we can now invest in other pursuits. It has also allowed us to diversify our diets substantially, making it possible even for people with no cooking skills and little money to enjoy a whole different cuisine every night of the week. All that’s required is a microwave.
[S]ince cooking detoxifies many potential sources of food, the new technology cracked open a treasure trove of calories unavailable to other animals. Freed from the necessity of spending our days gathering large quantities of raw food and then chewing (and chewing) it, humans could now devote their time, and their metabolic resources, to other purposes, like creating a culture.
Cooking is all about connection, I’ve learned, between us and other species, other times, other cultures (human and microbial both), but, most important, other people. Cooking is one of the more beautiful forms that human generosity takes; that much I sort of knew. But the very best cooking, I discovered, is also a form of intimacy.
This book made me think about...
...what cooking really means for us humans, taken as a species, as a group or one at a time.
...how our world, including ourselves, would look like in the absence of cooking.
...how different cooking methods can support or not a healthy lifestyle.
...why I don't cook more often, though I love it when others cook (good food) for me.
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