Symphysis
Kinnari Thakker's Personal BlogArchive for About Food
Daily Adventures
Its one kind of an adventure, venturing out into the market (farmers market) to buy your fresh vegetables. Of course, the bhaajiwalas (who occupy an entire street) a couple of minutes from my house, are NOT farmers themselves, but are middlemen with access to sufficient transport, with which they bring in produce from the surroundings.
Its Monsoon time here in Mumbai and the streets are full of water and mud and other unimaginable things, so its very important to wear closed shoes and skirts – sarees and pants are often full of kicked up mud and road-dirt.
Reminded me of the time we visited the farmers market in Torino – its an adventure not only to buy your daily supply of vegetables, but an adventure to understand cultures, people, society, fashion – there is just so much you can do. Grrrreat place for photography lovers, because there’s always something happening!
The Farm Aquatic with Dan Barber
Amazing talk by Barber, who takes us on a walk through his life, and his experiences, and what they teach him and us about relationships and nature. Wont say more. You should watch it.
notes: In Defence Of Food
by Michael Pollan
Common denominator of good health is to eat a traditional diet consisting of fresh foods from animals and plants grown on soils that were themselves rich in nutrients.
Weston Price said, “The dinner we have eaten tonight – was part of the sun but a few months ago”. He understood that, ultimately, eating linked us to the earth and its elements as well as the energy of the sun. Industrial food obscured these links and attenuated them.
Processing of food typically robs them of nutrients, vitamins especially. Store food is food designed to be stored and transported over long distances, and the surest way to to make food more stable and less vulnerable to pests is to remove the nutrients from it. Nutrients are more likely to attract bacteria, insects, rodents…
we need to start looking at food as less of a thing, and more of a relationship. in nature it has always been this – food chains are relationships between species, that reach all the way down to the soil. Health is, among other things, the product of being in these sorts of relationships in the case of an omnivore. So – our personal health cannot be divorced from the health of our food web.
We have to give more credit to our senses – this fruit looks ripe, this food smells rotten, this tomato is just the right hardness, I feel hungry, I do not feel hungry, I want to eat something sweet — etc.
shifts:
1. From Whole foods to refined – refined = glamor/rich
2. From Complexity to simplicity – concentration of high yielding crops and monocultures, causing diversity to attenuate; fertilizers which simplified soil compositions, and did not accommodate for complexity
3. From Quality to Quantity – quantity and cheap produce is given more importance, this compromises on quality. 3 modern apples – 1 old apple
4. From leaves to seeds -
5. From food culture to food science – culture was neglected, and we started depending on science and marketing to decide our food for us.
tips:
1. Dont eat something your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food
2. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are: unfamiliar, unpronounceable, too many
3. Avoid food products that make health claims
4. Avoid the supermarket
5. Eat mostly plants
6. Drink a glass of wine with your food
7. Pay more, eat less
In Defence of Food, Michael Pollan
A summary and talk about “In Defence of Food”, Micheal Pollans latest book. If you dont read the book, atleast watch this video.
