Book Review: Mark Bittman's "Food Matters"

Last year a friend of mine in DC mentioned that he'd been invited to a vegan potluck dinner. Sounded simple enough, but there were a number of stipulations: Aside from bringing a vegan dish to share (naturally), guests were additionally forbidden from wearing any leather or even, bizarrely, carrying cigarettes into the house. It sounded to me like the least fun dinner party ever. I'm not saying that I require dead animal to enjoy myself, but that degree of prohibition almost for its own sake just seems silly--and potentially self-defeating. Nothing makes folks want to do something more than strictly forbidding it. This is one of the reasons that I have generally found veganism to be obnoxious. In my experience, people for whom the choice to eat vegan is less a lifestyle or diet and more an identity, tend to be people who simply don't like food much--but really do like being uppity. Let's call this Veganism. A common argument made by Vegans (and vegetarians) for not eating animal products usually is some version of "But they're so cute with their big brown eyes!" I call this the Big Brown Eyes Fallacy, and it's a stupid argument. Things eating each other is how life works.

So the irony of the fact that I've recently been moving toward largely vegan diet is not lost on me. Why the change of heart? I still love meat, and will still eat meat--specifically the sublime steak-wrapped oysters at Loie Fuller's--but lately I'm thinking about what I eat differently. About the impact of all the animal products, processed carbohydrates, and sugar (specifically: the typical American diet) has been having not only on my body but also my planet. I've been a fan of eating locally for a few years now, blessed as I am with friends who are involved with food and farm issues, but what provided the nudge that has sent me down a road of significant diet change was Mark Bittman's new book, "Food Matters".

One of the great things about having your own blog is that you can make dramatic statements: Everyone in America should read this book. Go to the library, go to Amazon, steal it, I don't care. There have already been many good books about food and the food system by luminaries such as Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan, but what really hooked me about "Food Matters" is that it's written by a serious chef and gourmand--a diet book by a man who really loves to eat. I've been a Bittman fan for years; my copy of "How to Cook Everything" is well-thumbed and stained. I read his blog and love his column. So when I first hear him talking on NPR a few months ago about this book, it really spoke to me. I finally picked up a copy a few weeks ago.

"Food Matters" is roughly broken into two sections: A thorough and unflinching description of the American food system and how we got here along with some simple and clear recommendations for what you can do to help yourself and the environment, followed by a set of recipes. Most of the information Bittman covers in the first section I was already familiar with: The gross failure of regulation due to overwhelming influence of industry in policy making. The USDA's perversion of its stated goals. The pernicious effect of marketing. The suppression of real science. Sadly, the story of how we got here in the world of agriculture reads pretty much like the story of America: Public Policy Manipulated to Benefit Private Industry, to the General Detriment of the Population and Environment. Yuck.

Bittman follows this with more specific data about what is happening today. In essence: we're producing too many calories, and way too many empty calories. Factory farming--particularly meat production--contributes hugely to environmental denigration. It takes a massive amount of energy to produce factory farmed meat. A few stats from the book: A steak dinner for four has the same environmental impact as driving an SUV for three hours while leaving all the lights on at home. It takes 40 calories of energy to produce one calorie of meat. It's not enough to call our current food system unsustainable, it's unendurable.

That's not even going into the fact that Americans get over seven percent of our total calories from soda (or the fact that it takes 2,200 calories to produce one 12oz can of soda). The things we eat are often packed with sugar and useless calories even when they're supposedly "healthy". Yogurt, for instance, has had more and more sugar in it recently, until it is now basically nutritionally indistinguishable from ice cream. I had a bit of a crisis of faith myself when reading his explanation of simple starches and he pointed out that white flour is nutritionally identical to white sugar. Mind you--I'm trying to become a bread baker.

So we're eating shit, and it's making us sick (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer). It's killing the environment. We can't hope for change from the government, and certainly not from the same industry trying to sell us all that high fructose corn syrup (aside: Bittman makes a lovely rebuttal to those stupid "corn syrup's just the same as sugar!" ads. It's not. It's much worse). We have to make change ourselves. As Pollan says, vote with your fork.

This is where "Food Matters" gets into the good stuff. Bittman lays out a system of eating that, basically, is just "eat less meat, eat more plants". That's pretty much it. But, unlike "diets", the kind of eating that Bittman describes is not based upon strict prohibition. Eat meat, he says, meat is delicious (Bittman is a butter man), but don't eat it every meal, every day, in huge quantities. Cutting out one meal of meat per week makes a difference. Do what works for you. What works for him is: vegan from dawn until dusk, then anything goes. By allowing yourself to continue to eat the things you're used to eating, you put yourself in a much better position for making real and gradual change to the way you look at all food. His recipes are all well-written and clear. And he makes the reader re-think preconceptions about what we eat when. Does breakfast have to involve sugary things? Does dinner require steak? His recipe for wheat berries "cereal" was my gateway drug to this book, and this way of eating.

I've been following a version of this plan for about a week now, and I've already seen changes. I feel different. I'm thinking about food differently. I made wraps the other night, and where just a few weeks ago I would have put chicken in them, instead I roasted some broccoli, sweet potato, and red onion and it was delicious and satisfying. I've even (finally) started buying and cooking dried beans.

There's a great deal more to the book, and once again let me encourage every one of you to read it. "Food Matters" is a book about saving the world, but saving the world through deliciousness.