There was a minor scramble for treadmills and stair climbers yesterday evening at the 14th Street Y in New York; the room was twice as crowded as it would have been on a typical winter Monday. Once I found a suitable machine—the only one facing a column, thus limiting the willpower-strengthening view of fellow penitents and sufferers—a parade of New Year’s resolvers streamed by continually, guided by knit shirt–wearing staffers pointing out the sweat den’s various advantages. Yesterday also saw the publication, on Salon.com, of the first review I’ve seen of Mark Bittman’s new book. The review has the blunt title “How to live what Michael Pollan preaches.” We all know who Pollan is, and according to bestseller lists many of us have read his two books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. But, as Miller notes,
Granted, it’s a blast to read, in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” about Pollan’s efforts to bond with a conventionally raised beef steer or to serve up a meal made entirely out of foraged materials, but a delightful reading experience doesn’t always translate into a course of action for the average person. Conversely, Pollan’s prescription for judicious eating — “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” — is catchy enough to have achieved mantra status in some corners of the Internet, but as recommendations go, it proves a tad gnomic, like the utterance of a Zen master that becomes harder to get a hold on the longer you think about it.
We also probably all know who Bittman is, what with his weekly New York Times column, blog, and cutesy homemade videos available for download from the paper’s website. So it’s useful that Bittman’s Food Matters, by contrast, “explains exactly how to follow Pollan’s advice and why.” For those of you who doggedly pursue healthy lifestyles and want to espouse them to family and friends, it may be useful to wrap up Pollan and Bittman in one package:
The formula is very simple (Bittman is the Minimalist, after all): “Eat less of certain foods, specifically animal products, refined carbs, and junk food; and more of others, specifically plants, in close to their natural state.” It is a recommendation that owes much (as Bittman repeatedly acknowledges) to the work of Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food“; the spirit of Pollan presides over this book like the Virgin Mary over a Catholic Church. In fact, you could describe “Food Matters” as “applied Pollan,” because Pollan, for all his endlessly inventive, inquisitive and adventurous writings on American eating and food production, lacks Bittman’s pragmatic touch.
I’m fairly confident that one or both of my parents read this site, and since I want them and my sister to live long and healthy lives, this post is for them as much as for anyone else. We’ll return to regular programming shortly.
UPDATE, 01/07: Today’s edition of Bittman’s weekly column has sensible suggestions for a well-stocked pantry.
Tags: healthy eating, Laura Miller, Mark Bittman, Michael Pollan, Salon
January 6, 2009 at 4:03 pm
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