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March 17, 2009

What's in your fridge?

Posted by Melissa Wilson at 01:25 PM ET

If you're living in the suburbs, it's easy to hop in your Prius and drive to the closest mall parking lot-turned farmers market during the summer to pick up some locally-grown produce, but if you're one of the 13 million (ish) Canadians living in a large city, finding organic, locally-grown, real food can pose a bit of a challenge.

The foils of the ever-faltering economy (even Big Bird is not immune to layoffs) compound the issue further. As much as I would love to stock my fridge with organic, locally-grown green apples, my rigid grocery budget keeps me gnashing on whatever is ninety-nine cents a pound.

We all make our own concessions when it comes to eating properly. Some make hamburgers from scratch instead of downing McDonalds while others give in to potato chips once a week but never twice and never more than one serving. We all try to avoid the baddies, but no one is perfect.

Michael Pollan, author of the best-selling In Defense of Food, has made a career out of challenging the way we Westerners think about food. His food rules can be boiled down to the simple mantra: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. But of course, it's not always that simple, and his books explore the rule in further detail.

In a recent New York Times blog post, Pollan has reached out to the masses for a world's worth of cultural food rules.

"Will you send me a food rule you try to live by? Something perhaps passed down by your parents or grandparents? Or something you've come up with to tell your children--or yourself?

I will post your suggestions on my Web site and plan to include the best in a collection of food rules I'm now compiling."

So now I'm curious, BlogThis readers: what rules do you impose on yourself when it comes to food?

Some of my own rules loose guidelines for healthy eating:
- Don't eat food that isn't food (If Family Guy and the Simpsons have sketches about a snack cake that can survive a nuclear holocaust, I'm not touching it)
- Don't spend money on packaged food that I can make myself
- Don't eat food that has more ingredients than it should
- Don't buy lunch/dinner unless I am out with someone (Cutting eating out altogether will never work, but this significantly limits my intake of restaurant salts/fats/oils/etc. and saves me a ton of money)
- Whenever possible, substitute vegetables for meat
- If I make poutine at home from scratch, I don't have to feel guilty about eating it.

Some of my favourite replies from the comments to Pollan's request:
- Don't eat anything that comes in a krinkly bag
- If it needs a label, it may not be food
- Slow down. Your food isn't going anywhere.

In other thoroughly terrifying news, here's an article that details how French fries will kill you.

More entries on: Food Security and Agriculture

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