Store food is food designed to be stored and transported over long distances, and the surest way to make food more stable and less vulnerable to pests is to remove the nutrients from it. In general, calories are much easier to transport – in the form of refined grain or sugar – than nutrients, which are liable to deteriorate or attract the attention of bacteria, insects, and rodents, all keenly interested in nutrients. (More so, apparently, than we are.) Price concluded that modern civilization had sacrificed much of the quality of its food in interests of quantity and shelf life…
Health depends heavily on knowing how to read these biological signals: This looks ripe; this smells spoiled; that’s one slick-looking cow. This is much easier to do when you have long experience of a food and much harder when a food has been expressly designed to deceive your senses with, say, artificial flavors and sweeteners. Foods that lie to our senses are one of the most challenging features of the Western diet.
- Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food, pp. 97, 104.
2 responses so far ↓
Kelly // August 21, 2008 at 3:42 pm |
Is the “Price” mentioned Dr. Weston Price? I have his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration — very enlightening.
Love your new layout — so much easier to read than the old one.
bennettcarnahan // August 22, 2008 at 1:49 pm |
Yes, that’s the one. Though a little monomaniacal, he does seem to have been a voice crying in the wilderness.