Travel Blog

I'm glad we didn't stop for a Big Mac and fries on our way to see Michael Pollan last night because by the time we arrived at Temple Judea in Coral Gables the lot was full and the side streets were filling up quickly.

We found two seats in the back of the synagogue which, by the time the event began, held approximately 700 people. They all looked rather healthy and fit, suggesting that the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food was going to be - to borrow a metaphor from another house of worship - preaching to the choir.

Pollan, looking wiry in a light-colored sportcoat, began by speaking of a new condition which he described as "an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy." He said Americans were particularly susceptible. We have replaced talk of food with talk of nutrients, depriving ourselves of the joys of tasting, eating, cooking, sharing. The French, he noted, still eat with great relish seemingly lethal delights (fatty cheeses, creamy desserts) but in small quantities, and in convivial company. And they suffer less for it.

Pollan is quite funny, in part because he is taking an everyday activity - eating - and pointing out the popularly accepted absurdities of it - sort of the way George Carlin did with other aspects of life. He stated his rules for eating well: Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Don't buy food where you buy gas. Don't buy any food that makes health claims. Shop the perimeter of the supermarket, for that's where the living food is - the processed food is all in the middle. Don't buy anything that has more than five ingredients.

He said that some food manufacturers have caught on to his rules and begun making junk food with fewer than five ingredients. So he created a new rule: Don't eat any food that's advertised. He had read from his book of the vegetables sitting in the corner of the supermarket "as silent as stroke victims."

It was an enjoyable and enlightening evening - the only thing missing was a table of crudites.