Sarah Fidelibus's Open Salon Blog

I refuse to see Alaska from my house.

Thu, 1 Apr 2010 21:04:57 -0400

If the information available in my Facebook Home feed is any indication of the cultural zeitgeist (and who am I to argue that that it isn't?), then I must conclude that what people are most panicked about lately is the news that Sarah Palin will have her own reality show on TLC (The Learning Channel). Because we now protest things by "fanning" certain slogans or joining groups on Facebook, activists were quick to note their disapproval of TLC's decision by joining, "I Will Boycott Any Company that Sponsors the TLC Show, Sarah Palin's Alaska."

As of yet, I am not a member of this group because, unless Strauss Family Creamery and Nordstrom decide to advertise during "Sarah Palin's Alaska," it is unlikely that I will have any companies to boycott in the first place (because, you know, I subsist entirely off of quality yogurt and expensive jeans). There is one show on TLC that I watch regularly: "What not to Wear;" but I never buy anything advertised during that show, despite the fact that the advertising is clearly geared toward someone like me--a woman between the ages of eighteen and fifty. (Read: lots of ads for makeup, tampons, and Kohl's Department Stores.)

My guess is that those buying time during "Sarah Palin's Alaska" will likely be companies like Wal-Mart--companies whose products I am already accustomed to not buying. Am I saying that people who shop at Wal-Mart also like Sarah Palin? No. Am I saying Wal-Mart thinks that people who shop at Wal-Mart also like Sarah Palin? Absolutely.

So I think the bigger impact would be to boycott TLC entirely. This is a real shame, especially since "What Not to Wear" finally got rid of the annoying Nick Arrojo and replaced him with Ted Gibson, a man who is not only a talented stylist, but also an obviously skilled psychotherapist who emotionally prepares the "contributors" (WNTW-speak for those undergoing the makeover) for the changes their hair is about to face.

Besides, are marketers really to blame for Sarah Palin getting her own show? Shouldn't the real blame go to the fans of "Jon and Kate Plus 8"? Quite frankly, they seem to me to be the most responsible for TLC's rapid decline from anything even remotely resembling a channel where "learning" might occur. By watching Jon and Kate, fans of the show, in effect, said, "Yes, TLC, there is an appetite for the kind of programming in which people who have too many children do nothing for an hour other than yell at their kids, yell at each other, and sit uncomfortably side by side on a devoid-of-love seat during interview segments." (I hate to sound snobby, but I won't be able to sleep tonight if I don't clarify that I have gleaned all of this info. about Jon and Kate from commercials for the show, not from watching any actual episodes.)

But to get back to my argument: Once TLC realized that there was apparently a market for reality shows featuring people with too many children, they got right to work giving viewers "Table for Twelve" and the truly disturbing "16 17 18 19 Kids and ~~(STOP PROCREATING ALREADY!!)~~ Counting." (Note to parents: Once your first grandchildren are born, you should stop having children--especially if you already have eighteen of them.)

With those offerings firmly in place, TLC apparently decided there was no reason to even pretend to have any shred of class or any pretext of not exploiting the "stars" of their series, so they started churning out the depressingly awful "Hoarders," the downright creepy "Toddlers & Tiaras," and a "special" with a title that was both unbelievably blunt and weirdly punny: "650 lb. Virgin: the Weight is Over." (Again, I know about this from commercials; TLC advertises its own programming relentlessly--so seriously, if you want to boycott those who "sponsor" Sarah Palin's show, you can start with the biggest spender, the network itself. Also, if you're wondering--because you know you are--the show about the "650 lb. virgin" was supposed to be about some young guy who was ready to get his groove on after losing an almost literal ton of weight. I'm starting to think that this post should be titled, "Everything I ever learned about TLC I got from watching their commercials.")

Anyway...

Second only to their love of people who breed excessively and put on lots of weight (yeah--I haven't even mentioned their ongoing, "I didn't know I was pregnant" documentaries) is TLC's fascination with the lives of dwarf families. Now, I'll admit, I think "Little People, Big World" is fairly fun to watch; the kids seem like nice kids, and I love seeing the family cavort all around their beautiful farm. But I think by now we've established that TLC does nothing in moderation, so in addition to "Little People, Big World," you can also watch, "The Little Couple," "Our Little Life," and TLC's latest "little" offering, "The Little Chocolatiers," a program that appears to be TLC's way of competing with Food Network without sacrificing the crucial demographic that apparently can't get enough of little people. I am waiting for TLC to roll all of their programming into one craptastic special called, "Half-Ton Little People Who Hoard Chocolate Sarah Palins." God help us; it's only a matter of time.

So you see, we should have boycotted the network long ago, when Kate first started shrieking at Jon and Jon first started acting like the jackass he appears to be; that is to say: we should have nipped this shit in the bud. But now here we are, up in arms that TLC--a network obviously devoid of any programming standards to begin with--should give Sarah freaking Palin her own freaking show.

If we want for people like Sarah Palin not to have a platform, then we need to turn our eyes from the outlets that give her one. Boycotting companies we probably have no relationship with in the first place won't do anything; but cutting the audience for every show on the channels that exalt her just might. I've averted my eyes from the half-ton teens and the families with half the population of New Guinea, but so help me, I don't want to know a thing more about Sarah Palin--even that which could be gleaned from the commercials during "What Not to Wear."

My (Mostly) Unprocessed Life

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:03:20 -0400

Last night I watched the first episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, the latest reality TV offering from ABC, in which Oliver arrives from England to save Americans from the processed foods that are ballooning our waistlines and hurting our health. This is not a post about that show (my reactions to that will come later in the week) but rather is a reflection on my own experiences with making nearly everything I eat from scratch.

Since the year began, I have been trying to eat as little packaged food as possible. My decision is the result of a variety of concerns--concerns about what processed food could be doing to my health, and concerns over the environmental impact of the production. And truth be told, Michael Pollan's books The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food went a long way toward convincing me that whole foods are the way to go.

This new lifestyle (and, indeed, it often feels like just that--a lifestyle) isn't a complete redesign of my life; I've been an enthusiastic home cook and baker for as long as I can remember, and already cooked most of my dinners myself. Still, for lunch I often relied on "Healthy Choice" frozen foods or canned soup, but going "whole foods" on my food meant that I would have to think about what to prepare not just for dinner, but for lunch as well.

I knew going into this, some allowances would have to be made, lest I get frustrated with myself for buying that can emergency can of chicken stock, throw up my hands in defeat, and run straight to the Safeway for a frozen pizza and a bottle of root beer. So I told myself certain things could be slowly phased out until I either learned to make them well or had stockpiled enough of my own that I no longer needed to rely on someone else to provide them. So until I have quarts of chicken stock in my freezer, I'm occasionally buying it from vendors at the farmer's market. And until summer arrives, when canning in-season tomatoes myself will be an option, I'm allowing the already-canned variety into the pantry as well.

Some things I won't be able to substitute myself, like milk which is, to a certain extent, "processed," being that it is homogenized, pasteurized and put in a carton, then shipped to my local market. But my landlord doesn't even allow dogs in my building, so a dairy cow is sadly out of the question, which means I'll be buying my milk from a dairy I trust.

Good news, Bessie: You'll remain in the field instead of coming to live with me.

Also on my "OK to buy" list are yogurt, cheese, and pasta, three things I can't live without but am not prepared to start making myself. (I will eventually get around to the pasta and maybe even the yogurt, but cheese seems best left to the professionals.) I am also allowing myself the occasional crepe with Nutella from Genki.

Cripsy, melty, wonderful.

Even the little cone it comes in agrees with me:

This package don't lie.

Actually, even the crepes will likely fall by the wayside, as I remembered recently that I used to be quite skilled at making crepes and made them all the time when I was in college. So I am finding it harder to justify my trips to Genki, when I could make my own little pockets of perfection at home.

Still, even as someone who feels quite comfortable in the kitchen, my unprocessed life required at the outset a lot more thought and planning than I initially anticipated--and when I say "thought," rest assured that I spend a lot of time thinking about food. Take, for example, the fact that I am coming to the end of my stash of bread crumbs in the fridge. Normally, I might go out and buy a can of bread crumbs or buy a loaf of bread and throw a few of the slices in the blender. But living la vida unprocessed means that if I want bread crumbs, I will first have to make bread, then grind some of it for crumbs to keep on hand for when I need them.

Consider, too, that the other night, I polished off what was left of my supply of homemade chicken stock (my first!), which means it will soon be time to make that again (stay tuned for a post on the stock, which will be both a recipe and a reflection on the process). To make stock, though, I need to have bones. I have one chicken carcass in the freezer right now, but I need two more in order to make a good amount of flavorful stock. And to have the bones, I will, then, need to have chicken again soon.

So you can see why food might be occupying much of my brain space lately--not only as I consider what to cook for lunch and for dinner today, but also about the staples I need to replenish--like bread and chicken stock--in order to be able to make those meals now and for the next few weeks. I imagine that, as the year continues and I have good amounts of bread, stock, and other building blocks for great meals safely packed away in the freezer, I won't spend so much of my time worrying about what I need to make. But for now, as I adjust to this life of "not the processed food, but the food itself," I will continue to devote a good amount of time and energy to the meal-planning process.

I fear that I am making this experiment (which every day is becoming less of an experiment and more of a way of life) sound like pure drudgery--or, at the very least, an extensive exercise in anxiety. But really, it's quite the opposite. When I decided to eat less meat (because I am committed to eating only meat from animals that have been ethically raised, meat that is therefore more expensive than what you can get at a chain supermarket), I worried that I would lose the variety in my diet. Instead, my experience has been exactly the opposite. Because many of the dishes I make now are meatless, I've had to really think creatively about how to make a substantial, satisfying main course built around vegetables and grains. I have always been an enthusiastic eater who never met a cuisine I didn't like, but I didn't always prepare a variety of cuisines at home, relying instead on old standbys like chicken, pork, and ground meat to take center stage at dinner (and often at lunch as well). So I sought out help from Carol Gelles' fantastic cookbook, One Thousand Vegetarian Recipes, and now I have staples in my culinary repertoire that include Burmese Yellow Curry with Crispy Vegetables (one of my favorite things to fix for lunch), Curried Chickpeas and Kale (which is incredibly inexpensive to make, fast, and so flavorful), and Mushroom Paprikash (pure comfort food, perfect for the many rainy winter nights we had this year). I have also gotten to experience real moments of pride in the kitchen, not the least of which was the homemade stock, something I had long avoided making for fear that it wouldn't come out right or would lack flavor. How wonderful it was to taste the end result and find it was really quite good!

One of my favorite pieces of advice from Pollan's In Defense of Food is this: "Shake the hand that feeds you." I am lucky enough to live in a city that boasts several wonderful farmer's markets, so I can do exactly that: meet and talk to the people who grew my food and thank them for what they provide. I find that now even my trips to the market are enhanced; because I am trying new foods that I didn't used to cook very often (like broccoli rabe) and some that I had never prepared before (like arugula flowers), I am having longer conversations with the growers, asking them how they like to prepare what they grow. I feel more connected to my community, and more grateful for the food I take home and enjoy. In that way, embracing whole foods (as much as I can) has done what food has done throughout our history: bonded us in the sharing of experiences that food provides: its tastes, of course, but also the conversations that it inspires--those that begin with, "How do you cook this?" or "Should I roast the chicken bones before I use them for stock?" These conversations make the event of cooking that much more fulfilling, a real collaboration between all who had a hand in making the event possible.

So for now, I am enjoying my mostly unprocessed life, even on days when I get home from work and think I would prefer to just run across the street and grab a box of mac and cheese for dinner, rather than chop vegetables to saute or roast. I can't say for certain that, come summer, you'll find me in my kitchen prancing around barefoot, up to my elbows in jars of jam. But should you drop by in a few weeks, I'll probably have a pot of stock simmering on the stove and a loaf of bread in the oven. You can stay for dinner, and maybe afterward we can go to Genki for a crepe.

The importance of a good editor--in magazines and kitchens

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:03:41 -0400

Last night I read a piece in the "Dine" section of Asterisk San Francisco magazine, by someone named Mark Holland. Titled, "Eating Out," Holland's essay seems to be primarily an indictment of supposed San Francisco food snobbery, with a conclusion that offers street food as the "authentic" alternative to the creations born from the giant-sized egos of too many restaurant chefs.

As someone who is equally passionate about food and media, I spend a lot of time engaging in discussions of both. And in fact, Holland's piece caught my attention in part because it makes for an interesting intersection of the theme currently dominating the larger discourse in each of these spheres: the question of “how the sausage is made.” With foodies, the focus is on the making of the literal sausage: Where did my food come from, and how was it treated before it ended up on my plate? With journalists and people who care about good journalism, the sausage here is literal, but the concern is the same: What information is being presented, where did it come from, and how was it acquired? Holland’s essay stands as a good example of why so many journalists are concerned about the rise of “citizen journalism.”

The argument that so many chefs are just elitist, talentless hacks is tiresome and old, yet Holland makes it anyway, stating early in his piece that, "Chefs love taking food off the dining tables of the poor, stuffing it with truffles, frying it in duck fat and serving it in the lofty dining rooms of some of the city’s finest restaurants." The phrasing is a bit over-the-top, calling to mind the image of a white-coated, toque-bedecked culinary school grad ripping a chicken leg out of the hands of a starving child, only to then stud the meat with expensive ingredients that will make this once humble fare no longer affordable to the masses. Granted, in recent years we've all seen examples of this trend in which a chef takes what Holland terms, "blue collar staples" and reworks them into a ridiculous--and cost-prohibitive--reincarnation. (Remember the $175 Richard Nouveau burger, featuring an ingredient list that read like a menu and a jewlery catalog? Foie gras, truffles, and even "flakes of gold leaf" topped the burger's half-pound-plus Kobe beef patty.)

But that kind of excess has--for awhile now--been ebbing, rather than flowing along in a stronger current. Restaurant newcomers like Frances and Marlowe adopt a pared-down approach designed to feature seasonal ingredients and celebrate what these ingredients have to offer. That these restaurants are among San Francisco's newest offerings suggests that local, seasonal, unpretentious food is replacing the love for all things over-the-top that was the hallmark of the culinary years leading up to the recession.

But to Holland, the answer to the excesses of previous years is not more restaurants, but rather something with wheels. Holland advises that, "If your food needs a clever twist, serve it out of a bike basket or a converted ice cream truck." His assertion, it appears, is that the "clever twist" is the method by which the item is sold to customers, not the innovation of the item being sold. At the end of his article, Holland lists some of the "Street Food Players," and the second one in this list is the Crème Brûlée Cart. Yet someone like Curtis Kimball, the man behind the Crème Brûlée Cart, is known for adding items like Frosted Flakes and S'mores fixin's to his custardy treats. I say this not to denigrate the Crème Brûlée Cart (indeed, I like many of his flavors), but rather to point out the contradictions in Holland's own argument. Holland derides chefs for making things like "lobster corn dogs," but isn't a Frosted-Flake-flavored crème brûlée the same thing? Or is it just that it's OK to play with your food as long as you're selling it from a cart rather than in a restaurant?

The growing street cart scene is particularly well-suited to this time in which people are increasingly interested in, as Michael Pollan would say, “shaking the hand that feeds them.” From a cart or a van or even a bicycle basket, food is served to customers often by the same hands that prepared it. (Though everyone who has had Chapeau!'s Philippe Gardelle greet them with a kiss on both cheeks can tell you such an opportunity exists in restaurants as well, not just on the street.) The growing rise of “citizen journalism,” on the other hand, often seems to be gaining steam for the opposite reason--that it's easy to put "information" out in the world without any nod to where this information came from, without any credentials to back it up, and therefore without any adherence to ethics or editorial standards. It's one thing for people to yammer away on Yelp, but to have the same kind of yammering (and fully unedited yammering at that) published in a magazine (even one in its early stages) speaks to the very concerns professional writers and journalists have about a world in which anyone with a computer, minimal software, and an Internet connection can produce "content." Such conditions can be "democratizing," for sure, but certain standards still need to be in place if that content is going to move beyond being just more yelling in an already very noisy place.

The conclusion of Holland's essay suffers from the same ailment as the rest of his piece--a complete lack of support that would help establish him as someone worth listening to when it comes to food culture in the Bay Area. In his conclusion, Holland tells the reader that the tone of his essay reflects not any "venom" toward the restaurant chefs who so clearly annoy him, but rather, "the bridled excitement in my heart to see what San Francisco turns out in 2010." I can only guess that Holland means "unbridled," seeing as how "bridled" refers to the act of keeping something restrained, and I can't imagine why someone would write a piece championing his restrained enthusiasm for anything, especially if he feels that what he is championing (in this case, street food) makes for the most "authentic" (to use Holland's terminology) food experience one can have. An editor should have caught such a mistake, but if Holland actually knew what he was talking about, he would have been unlikely to make such an error to begin with.

This is to say nothing of the fact that the "predictions" Holland makes about where food trends are headed in 2010 are just downright strange. (I'll leave it to the reader to puzzle why Asterisk would publish a piece throwing out "predictions" for a year that is already more than well underway.) Among Holland's seemingly random glimpses into the future is the vision that, "vegetarians may have even fewer places to eat in the New Year, even in a town like San Francisco." But it's not in any way clear why he thinks that's the case. And in fact, anyone closely watching the evolution of the larger "food conversation" in San Francisco (and, indeed, surrounding areas) would have to make the opposite prediction: with the rise of the popular "meatless Monday" trend among food bloggers and food "tweeters," as well as the success of Michael Pollan's books and the Academy-Award-nominated documentary, Food Inc., growing numbers of passionate eaters are making an effort to eat less meat. If the consumer drives the market, then a more logical prediction would be that we will see more vegetarian options from restaurants and street carts alike--not less. (Roaming Hunger, for example, sports a full six pages of carts and trucks in the Bay Area alone that are either completely vegetarian or even vegan, or that offer vegetarian options. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Frances and Marlowe both offer multiple vegetarian dishes, and it's worth noting that, unlike the vegetarian dishes on menus of restaurants past, these items have been prepared with as much care and attention as the establishments' meat-centered dishes, making them entrees that anyone--even a card-carrying carnivore--would be happy to devour.)

Despite the fact that Holland's essay lacks an informed point-of-view, Asterisk's editors called it "great," and one reader remarked on the magazine's Facebook fan page that he "loved" the piece. But the absolute lack of research, not to mention the number of typos and errors in usage, make the essay undeserving of such praise, and instead contribute to the opinion many professionals journalists have of the "civilians" trying to walk in their shoes: The magazine's glossy graphics, designed with a high-end e-reader in mind, appear to be the attractive wrapper that obscures what exactly it was that went into this particular sausage.

It's clear from Holland's essay that he feels that San Francisco's hot-shot chefs need to engage in a bit of self-editing, lest they become parodies of their craft rather than examples of it at its finest. After reading his essay, I would have to offer him the same advice.

Slow Food for the Baker's Soul

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:01:39 -0500

_{Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sophistechate/3335477703/}

For most, kindergarten is a time of adventure and fun, of field trips and naptime, of making things out of construction paper and crayon, chunky paste and marking pens. Kindergarten marks a time of firsts: first words you could read, first time you successfully tied your own shoes, first friends that you made outside of your neighborhood.

But my happiest memories of kindergarten involve none of these firsts, nor do they involve the making of seasonal crafts—paper chains that count down to Christmas or colorful turkeys made by tracing my hand. My favorite days in kindergarten were those in which my classmates and I, in fidgety groups of five and six, would take a special trip to the kitchen at our school, where we would (under the guidance of a few knowledgeable room mothers) learn to prepare simple snacks that we could make all by ourselves. These were special days when we would get to use the ovens in the school’s kitchen, learning about temperature, timing, and the importance of potholders.

I still remember the first thing we ever learned how to make in that kitchen: little “pizzas” assembled from an English muffin split in half and topped with tomato sauce and grated cheese. And I can still clearly recall each of the steps involved and how pleasing they were to my five-year-old self: brushing the muffin halves with olive oil, then sprinkling them with oregano before moving on to smother the crusts in tomato sauce from a jar and finish things off with some grated mozzarella. When the snacks came out of the oven—soft, warm, and melty with cheese—I couldn’t believe we had made these ourselves; they were delicious!

But it wasn’t just that I had made something “all by myself” that excited me so; it was that I had made something with actual ingredients (such as they were to my five year old mind), something that had to be cooked in the oven—something that tasted good. It was a joy and a victory I haven’t forgotten, and that I have pursued with enthusiasm ever since.

I come from a family of food lovers and food makers. My mom has long been a great cook and excellent baker who would make crepes for dinner during a time when things like sloppy joes and Hamburger Helper were at the height of their popularity. Meanwhile, my father—like many other dads—knew his way around a grill, but he also annually turned out wonderful Thanksgiving meals, with perfect giblet gravy and savory stuffing seasoned with sage and thyme. At home my parents experimented with different cuisines, making complicated Chinese dumplings for a dinner party or frying tortillas for tacos and making fresh guacamole from scratch. This was the ‘80s, when most people I knew got their guacamole from a plastic tub at the supermarket and their taco shells from a box because doing something like frying tortillas seemed like, “too much trouble.”

So I grew up with a healthy respect for food you prepare yourself, and I saw how enjoyable the preparing could be. I was obsessed with cooking shows as a kid, watching them the way most of my other friends watched Mighty Mouse or Inspector Gadget. From my parents and from the cooks whom I loved to watch on TV, I learned that no dish was impossible to realize: if you paid attention to ingredients and method, you could prepare any kind of food you wished, a prospect that sounded both daunting and exhilarating; the opportunities seemed limitless.

***

I have a KitchenAide mixer; it is one of the first major purchases I made when I moved out into my first apartment without roommates. The mixer is blue like a pastel Easter egg, and everything about it—from its color to its soft, rounded edges—is friendly to me. Often just the sight of it makes me want to don my frilly half apron and whip up a batch of cookies.

Lately, though—spurred by the book, Baking Unplugged, by Nicole Rees—I have come to appreciate the special pleasures that come from mixing by hand rather than by machine. Mixing by hand is a method that employs all of the senses: Not only am I watching for what the mixture should look like, but I’m also paying attention to how it feels when I’m stirring it. When I’m mixing up Coffee Cocoa Snack Cake, for instance, I whisk the eggs and sugar for a solid minute, keeping myself tuned to how the mixture feels: thick and gloppy at first, then smoother and less gritty as the sugar begins to dissolve, the whisk moving through with greater ease. I add the sifted dry ingredients, folding them into the wet in a gentle scooping and turning movement that I know is finished not only when the batter looks moist, but also when I can no longer feel the skid of the rubber spatula hitting large pockets of flour at the bottom of the bowl.

Meanwhile, other recipes involve even more of the senses in the baking process, increasing the satisfaction. The recipe for Brown Butter Banana Cake requires browning two sticks of butter slowly over a medium-low heat. A baker like me who is prone to multi-task, to try to prep some ingredients while others bake or bubble or reduce in volume, will find that the process of making browned butter demands full attention because the butter can go from melted to burnt in a matter of a few seconds. The proverbial “watched pot” may be reluctant to boil, but the process of gently cooking butter will yield immense pleasures while one looks on intently as the yellow sticks melt, then froth, then slowly turn a nutty brown. Once the butter is browned, the bananas must be mashed fine. The bananas are sweet and fragrant like vanilla; their scent fills the air, mingling with the brown-sugar-sweetness of the cooling browned butter. All senses activated, increasing the anticipation: This will be one amazing cake.

As one might imagine, sweets mixed by hand take a little longer than recipes in which the ingredients are combined with a mixer. They require an extra bit of care and attention, an extra few steps to complete. But the steps are not complicated, and in fact are part of what makes the recipes so rewarding. Every moment of the process brings with it the opportunity to savor each ingredient—what it looks like, how it smells, what it feels like in the hand.

***

Anyone who cooks with children learns very quickly that kids like to touch everything—pie crust, cookie dough, a fluffy mound of sifted flour; the child’s first question is always, “Can I touch it?” Followed by that question are the ones that address the other senses: What does the batter look like? Can I smell it? Can I have a taste? What makes the crackling sound when something is sizzling in a pan? Children delight in the experience of discovery, of seeing what it looks like when bread dough has risen or marveling at how slimy egg whites fluff into silky, shiny meringue.

Mixing by hand brings this sense of discovery back into baking, slowing things down and requiring the baker to be present and involved in each of the recipe’s steps. And it is this precise involvement that reminds me of what I loved about making that first ridiculous little English muffin “pizza”: the doughy-soft texture of the muffin “crust,” the woodsy fragrance of the sprinkled oregano, the salty bite of the mozzarella sprinkled on the top. Each element had its own unique appeal, and in smelling, touching, and tasting the ingredients along the way, I got to appreciate how each contributed to the finished product. It is the same with hand-mixing: my senses have a part in each of the steps, making them all the more gratifying to complete. I whisk the sugar and eggs, melt the butter, brew the coffee that will be added to an already intensely fragrant chocolate cake batter, each step heightening the anticipation that comes with waiting for the ring of the oven timer. Soon—but not too soon—it will be time to eat.

Faux Your Health: NBC's Nutrition Advice Hard to Swallow

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:01:39 -0500

_{Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/buzzbishop/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0}

I don't know very many people who make New Year's resolutions. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that my friends (like, I would imagine, most people) tend to make changes in their lives as needed, rather than arbitrarily waiting for the ceremony tied to the ushering in of another year. Other friends and family feel that resolutions are rather hollow, made--as they often are--by folks who by February (if not by late in the day on January 2) have forgotten all about what they resolved to do this year, finding themselves swept up instead in the swirling current of life as it always has been.

But for those who do make New Year's resolutions, particularly those who make the resolution to lose some weight and make healthier choices, January is a boundless cornucopia of tips, tricks, and how-tos from a variety of experts who parade across our media landscape like so much flora-laden floats at the New Year's Day Rose Parade.

One of the experts who wants to help America "eat this, not that" is Joy Bauer, the resident nutritionist on the set of NBC's Today show. Rail-thin and a bit high-strung (early last week she actually recommended that viewers "learn to become fidgety" in order to burn extra calories throughout the day), Bauer performs various functions, including answering viewer questions and, on two Monday mornings a month, inducting people with weight loss success stories into the Joy Fit Club.

Despite the exuberance that Bauer's first name might seem to connote, "Joy" instead seems rather joyless when it comes to the subject of food and eating. As a nutritionist, she offers meal suggestions to the audience that take into account calorie counts and nutritional value, but rarely does the potential pleasure of a dish--of making it and eating it--figure into her advice on how to live healthfully and happily. And that's a real shame, because in disregarding the pleasure principle, Bauer--however unwittingly--perpetuates the common misconception that the practice of maintaining a healthy diet is a particularly stoic, bland, dissatisfying endeavor. Indeed, whenever Bauer is on the screen, it's hard not to think of George Costanza yelling at Jerry, "Have a yolk! It won't kill you!"

Of course, one might expect a nutritionist to think first of health and not of flavor when it comes to doling out advice to those seeking to lose weight. But to think in these terms is to reinforce the myth that those two things (flavor and nutritional value) are necessarily mutually exclusive when in actuality, the opposite is true: In fact, lots of things that are incredibly enjoyable to eat happen also to contain quite a bit of nutrients. Think of in-season tomatoes, which need little more than a sprinkle of salt to be enjoyed. And what vegetable isn't fantastic when tossed with just a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted in a hot oven until the edges have begun to brown? Then there are sweet potatoes to consider, grilled marinated flank steak, tenderloin of pork, a bowl of glistening, jewel-toned strawberries, slices of sticky, spicy mango.

All of these are foods Ms. Bauer could have mentioned one day last week when responding to an email from a viewer who worried that she might never be able to lose weight because she "hate[s] 'healthy' foods." The question itself requires some follow-up queries: What does the viewer mean by "healthy foods," and what has she not liked about those foods in the past? If this is someone whose idea of "healthy food" involves little more than rice cakes, cottage cheese, and over-cooked broccoli, then some education is in order. What I'm getting at here is that there are a million good-for-you foods this viewer could make that would also taste fantastic. Her question, though, seemed to indicate that she prefers processed foods to whole foods, and that she assumes if something tastes good it must not be good for you.

Joy advised the woman "try a new food every day," with the idea that she would then "hopefully learn to like" healthier foods. But such "advice" is really useless, since it is unlikely a.) that the viewer even knows what kinds of "new foods" would be good to start with, and b.) what to do with those "new foods" in order to maximize--and thus fully enjoy--their flavors. After all, if this is someone who usually eats frozen entrees and canned soups, it's unlikely that she will suddenly wander into the produce section and decide on a whim to see what she can do with a leafy bunch of kale. Diet advice fail!

In Bauer's defense, the Today show allots her a rather small chunk of time in which to share her expertise with the viewing public, so it's possible she's simply providing the best information she can given the time constraints. It is interesting, then, to turn one's attention to NBC's hugely popular show, The Biggest Loser, which, with a running time of two full hours every Tuesday, could (in theory) offer plenty of good advice to those watching at home. And while the show's stars, trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels, do offer instruction about how to prepare healthy meals, more and more of the "education" on the show has been ceded to product placement, often in the interest of endorsing some processed food at the expense of a healthier (and, I would argue, tastier) whole food alternative.

Of course, all reality shows at this point are bedeviled by the problem of product placement, with the producers unable to resist such an obvious cash cow, thereby forcing viewers to listen to cringe-worthy dialogue as the show's participants try to make a blatant whoring of products seem like just a casual conversation about, say, Extra Sugar-free gum. But the product-placement in The Biggest Loser is particularly problematic because it involves a kind of tacit endorsement from Bob and Jillian, who--in playing both coach and parent figures to the contestants (a group whose collective starting weight seems to increase with every season of the show)--are seen by many viewers as the arbiters of all things healthy.

So it is therefore deeply troubling to see Bob suggest (as he did in one recent season) that the contestants enjoy a cup of fat free Jell-o with a dollop of Cool-Whip on top as a sweet treat during the day. First, it probably goes without saying that Jell-o topped with Cool Whip hardly counts as a serving of food, being as both of these items are merely additives and flavorings held together by stabilizers and preservatives. Possibly even more disturbing, though, is the idea that someone might think that she would actually prefer Jell-o and Cool Whip to a bowl of ripe berries topped with a small scoop of real whipped cream. (Never mind that if the berries are in season and fully ripe, you might want to simply enjoy them sliced in a bowl, with nothing else on top.) Anyone who does choose jello over berries is not only missing out on key nutrients (in the berries and, yes, even the cream), but is also depriving herself of the sensuous, wonderful pleasure that comes from the flavors and textures of these real foods.

In other words, eat this:

Not this:

Bob, you've got to be kidding me.

Michael Pollan believes that our country suffers from what he calls a "national eating disorder," one in which we cede more and more of the control over what and how we eat to other people--to the industries that provide the food we eat, to the nutritionists and scientists who urge us to incorporate this or that particular nutrient into our eating repertoire, and to the manufacturers of processed foods who go to great lengths to sell us their products. In watching how food is treated by our national media, one gains a keen understanding of what troubles Pollan: "Experts" appear on our morning news programs to lecture us on what to eat right now (I say "right now" because the advice seems to be constantly in flux, changing almost daily based on the findings of the "latest study"). Meanwhile, we learn that we can have our Jell-o and eat it too (and this information is presented to us as though it is a great boon for our taste buds). It's hard not to accept Pollan's point-of-view that we have been goaded into listening to others rather than...well...going with our gut feeling about how, when, and how much to feed ourselves. Meanwhile, those bringing us this "information" continue to profit--from the advertising that pays for the morning show's production, to the product placement that has been weaved into our entertainment programs in an effort to ensure that even those with DVRs get their minimum daily value of commercials.

And in the meantime, Americans get heavier and heavier, increasingly hooked on processed foods and less aware of how to avoid them. Many of these Americans will resolve to get healthier this year. One hopes they'll begin that journey witha bowl of fresh fruit and thereby proclaim there really isn't always room for Jell-o.