Here’s the link to a really interesting article in the NY Times: Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch. It is 8 web pages so allow yourself some time to read it. It is written by Michael Pollan, whose most recent book is “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” In this article he talks about how America’s cooking habits have changed over the years. He starts out referring to the new movie Julie and Julia, and ends up giving us some interesting results from recent studies.
“But here’s what I don’t get: How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves? For the rise of Julia Child as a figure of cultural consequence — along with Alice Waters and Mario Batali andMartha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse and whoever is crowned the next Food Network star — has, paradoxically, coincided with the rise of fast food, home-meal replacements and the decline and fall of everyday home cooking.”
This is quite funny to me, considering that my last blog post was me raving about these micro curry dishes I’ve been eating! This is interesting:
“The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. In fact, the amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity rates more reliably than female participation in the labor force or income.”
I think it really is the paradox of plenty. We have so much food available to us that we have a hard time deciding what to eat and trouble limiting our intake of the “bad” foods that we love to eat. We often choose convenience over nutrition. When I was living in Shanghai, there were innumerable conversations that people had with me. ”Why are Americans so fat?” “Why is your roommate so fat?” “Why are you fat?” Weight is not a taboo topic of conversation there, along with age and salary. It’s just a cultural difference but you also have to understand that the girls in Shanghai are literally stick thin. They would even call Angelina Jolie fat by their standards just because she has curves. Don’t get me wrong, they know how to eat there (oodles of rice and noodles) but the girls in Shanghai are petite and on par with Twiggy.
Whatever the case is, the idea of celebrity chefs and food as entertainment is definitely a huge money maker nowadays. I’m a huge fan of Food Network even though I must admit that I don’t actually cook many of the recipes they present. I’m very much looking forward to being entertained when I go to see Julie and Julia. Anyone want to go see it with me?
