Foodie thesis that’s hard to swallow

Michael Pollan is America's foremost politico-foodie and this new book is another polemic with recipes. His point, as ever, is that our diet has changed radically and we have lot touch with the narrative of our food and its effects. Alex Renton is not convinced he is right.
Alex Renton30 May 2013

Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
by Michael Pollan
(Allen Lane, £20)

Britain invented serious writing about food. Over a century ago, George Bernard Shaw, the first celebrity vegetarian, gave beards and bean-eating a bad name that still endures. But for all the amazing outpouring of books now that food is bigger than Jesus — hey, which gets on the TV more? — there is a lack of philosophising about it. Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals is a record-breaking bestseller, but he does not delve into why we eat the way we do.

No matter: there is Michael Pollan, America’s foremost politico-foodie. He has been writing big think-books about food for more than a decade, and they’ve proved popular here. Some of his prescriptions have become quotable items around the farmers’ markets: “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food” is one, along with “You are what you eat eats”. A pokerwork homily treasured by eco-foodies and locavores across two nations is “Eat food, not too much, mainly plants”.

The use of the word “food” there is sarcastic: Pollan means stuff you’ve cooked yourself from raw ingredients, rather than, to paraphrase, the profit-gouging, addict-making packages of toxins provided by an immoral food industry, in league with complacent, corrupted government. You may not buy all of this thesis, but few of us now, post-horsemeat ready-meals, think there’s nothing in it.

Pollan’s new book Cooked is another polemic with recipes. His point, as ever, is that diet has changed more radically in the past half century than at any time since we discovered that scorched wild boar tasted better then raw. In the turmoil we have lost touch, disastrously, with the narrative of our food and, fatally, with its effects. If this sounds dismal, don’t worry, because Pollan is a generous writer of The New Yorker magazine school, with a light touch and an eye for the telling story.

Journeying with him on his anthropological quests into “real” food is always fun and illuminating, whether we’re barbecuing a whole hog in North Carolina, delving into the chemistry of toasting flesh, or exploring the role of food as a social definer in the Old Testament. He’s right: there is enormous pleasure and benefit to be had in understanding food, and in that “accessible magic”, cooking. Jamie Oliver knows that.

But, much as I enjoy Pollan’s company, I’m at odds with his core credo. There’s no doubt that industrialised food and the enormous shift to meat-eating has caused much trouble at both ends of the production tract. But I don’t go with the “palaeofantasy”. There was no golden age when human consumption was in a balanced accord with the planet and our bodies. There certainly won’t be now, with nine billion to feed in 2050.

There is a contrarian view to that of Pollan and his hordes of well-eating fans. It is that we have deployed our agricultural resources admirably. There are more of us on the planet than ever and we live to three times the age of our ancestors. Many of us eat more food, more cheaply than any predecessors could have dreamed. Though the hungry — 870 million at the moment — will always be with us, they are fewer in proportion to the whole population than at any time in history.

I think the truth lies between the “food apocalypse” and the “food triumph” positions. But I am sure at least one of my great-grandmothers would have known a Cheesy Wotsit for what it was. If reports are correct, she’d have scarfed the whole packet.

Go to standard.co.uk/booksdirect to buy this book for £16, or phone 0843 060 0029, free UK p&p

Alex Renton’s book on meat and the future of food will be published later this year.

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