What Are You Eating?

A local TV station here in Tucson has a segment called "Kitchen Cops" which focuses on the way restaurants treat your food before they serve it to you. They focus on food handling, but they, along with every other show of this type, never talk about the food itself and whether IT is worth eating in the first place.

I recently finished reading a book called "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan and it is scarier than any Stephen King novel I've ever read. Why? Because it tells the tale of the food we eat every day in clear concise English without any horror other than the truth of the matter. By the end of the book, you almost wonder if there is anything in your local supermarket that is worth eating. From the way we grow our crops in this country to the secrecy surrounding our commercial slaughterhouses, Mr. Pollan takes us on a journey following steer #534 from birth to slaughter to the table.

This book won't turn you into a vegetarian, (thank you, (insert deity name here)) but it will make you think twice before you buy that box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I do find myself questioning more about where my food comes from (Did those blueberries really come all the way from Bogota?) and I am seriously supporting my local Farmer's Market and Co-Op.

Read the book and decide for yourself, you'll be glad you did.