the Senate passed the Food Safety Bill

Its implementation will:

_Allow the FDA to order a recall of tainted foods. Currently the agency can only negotiate with businesses to order voluntary recalls;

_Require larger food processors and manufacturers to register with the Food and Drug Administration and create detailed food safety plans;

_Require the FDA to create new produce safety regulations for producers of the highest-risk fruits and vegetables;

_Establish stricter standards for the safety of imported food;

_Increase inspections of domestic and foreign food facilities, directing the most resources to those operations with the highest risk profiles.

The bill would not apply to meat, poultry or processed eggs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/30/food-safety-bill-fda-modernization-act-s510_n_789775.html

A New Perspective on Eating

I have just started on Food Rules and I am a little overwhelmed. I have always considered myself a "healthy" eater, but I am seriously rethinking that. Most of my diet consists of processed food. I eat either a lean pocket, lean cuisine, cereal, cereal bar, dannon yogurt, or canned soup for every meal. Sometimes my roomate cooks punjabi red beans or curried chick peas, but not usually. Most of the meals that I eat with real food I get at resturaunts, and I don't really know what they do to their food. I feel like I don't have time to prepare food and eat at a table. I usually just find something quick and eat at my computer.

Food Fight

Check out this link to an article titled A Stale Food Fight, written for the New York Times by Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser. It is dated November 28, 2010. I think you will find it wonderfully interesting as usual!

Eating Meat

So after reading Don Lepan's animals I couldn't help but feel slightly guilty for complaining about the price of organic and free-range products from places like Whole Foods. My perspective on what I eat has completely changed. Especially considering the fact that I am not trying to feed an entire family (a different problem altogether) I think I can afford to pay more for meat, and eat less of it. I'm also trying to embrace the idea of change a little bit at a time because it's so easy to be overwhelmed with all of the products I feel like I shouldn't be eating, and then end up wandering in circles around the grocery store looking for something acceptable to eat (I did this on Friday afternoon). Pollan's Food Rules goes well with the movement not to eat factory farmed animals-- especially Rule #23 "treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food" and Rule 24 "eating what stands on one leg is better than two legs is better than four legs etc." and Rule #27 "eat animals that have themselves eaten well."

Animals not sitting well in the stomach

Against my better judgement, I bought a package of sushi the other day from Tulane in an impulse rush-buy, and as I was in line to pay for it, I looked down and read the tuna had been treated with carbon monoxide for preservation of color. It was too late to leave the line to get something else, I had to get to work, and I struggled deciding if I should eat nothing or force it down and try to put it out of my mind (it was hard enough conceding to eat fish to begin with). The line grew shorter and shorter (I thought again of Animals), like I was waiting for my doom. It was the worst sushi I've ever eaten--it felt like a punishment for eating flesh of an animal--and I am confident I will never get processed packaged sushi again.

Since reading Animals, I have not been able to look at or consider eating meat without a sense of uneasiness. When I go to the grocery store, the pale and slimy enlarged body parts in bulk stare up at me eerily from their plastic packages in remembrance of their harvest. When I see ground beef, all I can think of is flesh oozing through a grinder. Meat is no longer an object, a block of the food pyramid to me, I look at the chicken "wing" and see it for the limb it once was. It's not that I find it disgusting that one animal should consume another, I have accepted and been a part of predation my whole life, but the mechanized processing of it has become all too estranged and horrific to swallow without lump. Part of the curse of realizing how things are made from cradle to grave is a sort of x-ray vision that accompanies: I look at a food prospect, and now "see through it"--see what it's made of at molecule (plastic, carbon, faint moo), how it was made or grew or grazed (or didn't), what's in it that shouldn't be, whether or not it should actually be considered food. In a way, it "takes the fun out of" eating. In another, I am less of a fool for being able to choose to not participate in a culture of synthetics and mindless mass slaughter. But then again, I guess I am even more of a fool then for knowing and doing it anyway.

Food Rules: The Edible Experiment, Week Eleven

Journal Entry
Week Eleven
November 12, 2010

Rule 54 “Breakfast like a king, Lunch like a prince, Dinner like a pauper”

This particular rule has always proved to be a challenge for me. I was the queen of skipping breakfast in High School, and it was only after some major health issues later on in my life that I realized that this, among other bad habits I had developed, was the complete wrong course of action.

I’ve since worked extremely hard on eating healthily and really focusing on taking care of my body through exercise and good habits. Needless to say, breakfast is now my favorite meal of the day – so much so that I often eat breakfast for breakfast AND for dinner! Haha!

However, I often struggle with eating a lot during the major portion of the day and having a lighter supper. I was raised on eating a simple breakfast if any at all, a sandwich or whatever for lunch, and then a real meal at dinner time when dad would come home from work and mom would have supper prepared. These habits have stuck with me, and oftentimes, I find myself “waiting” to eat dinner and having a light(er) breakfast and lunch.

Plus, coming home from an 8 hour day of classes with an 1.5 hour commute on either end of that 8 hour day makes me RAVENOUS. So, I usually plan to eat a good amount at dinner.

HOWEVER, surprisingly enough – (or not surprisingly, as Pollan would say) – I’ve really found that if I eat a good breakfast and a decent sized lunch (aka, more than just a sandwich and a piece of fruit or something, maybe add a cup of yogurt and some veggies) I am not at all as hungry later on in the day!

So I guess this rule really does work… if/when you follow it… 

ReFresh

Animals has given me a lot to think about. Though I already don't eat mammals, I wonder if I can take it to the next level and not eat chicken or turkey, and eventually give up seafood altogether too. I'm not too hard on myself about it because I have reduce my intake of poultry and it's a process so it is hard to give up everything at once. I just wonder and feel horrible about the conditions that these animals have gone through. I'm definitely having more of issue of the way they are treated than actually eating meat. As you know I grew up in Vietnam and we tons of animals around our house. There were chickens everywhere, and they had a nice comfy place to nest and lay eggs and they were allowed to walk where ever they wanted and eat what they wanted. There was no lock or door, they came and went as they pleased. I had no problems eating those eggs and we've eaten some of those chickens, but they were killed humanly and quickly. They also had a good long life, usually at least 6 to 12 months if not longer. Compare that to the factory farm chicken which takes about 50 days or so from hatching to the slaughter house! 50 days! they are even bigger than the ones that are free range so can you just imagine all the hormones and toxins they inject these chickens with!!! It is crazy. I also remember how my aunt was raising about 60 ducks to sell at the market, but in Vietnam you always walk your animals and tend to them. They were allowed to swim in the ditches and ate what they want. It's just the way we have taken to producing animals that is so horrible and it wouldn't kill anyone to eat less meat. When I do my vegetarian period, so many tell me they couldn't be able to do it because they meat so much. I think a study once said that we are eating way more meat than we actually should, so if people just skipped the extra burger or steak we could help reduce the production of meat. It's just so frustrating to think about and knowing that if everyone made small efforts, then we could really change things. I'm not asking people to become vegans or give up meat completely, but if we reduce our intakes it would make a world of difference.

Back to my food rules, I'm going to celebrate Thanksgiving this Sunday because that's the only time the family can be together and I'm debating about getting a pecan pie or not. I LOVE LOVE pecan pie, though I know it's so horrible for you, but I can't help it. (I did end up buying that pie, and I don't feel bad at all) Then there is also the issue of the turkey, and how I feel about it. I just wanted to say that I am back on the Food Rules train and eating well again. It's okay to eat other things once in while especially with thanksgiving coming around, but we can't fall off track now. So close and almost at the end, but we'll have to continue this even after the class is over.

I disagree

I have decided I disagree somewhat with one of the food rules. I currently do not have my book on me as I type in the library but it is the rule where one should not pay attention to the nutritional information on containers. Example: antioxidants. I think people should be aware of what is in their food and should know what these are and how they help the human body. Of course I do not think it is a food companies responsibility to do so. I like being aware if certain things are in my food. However, it is my job to investigate the claims made. I understand the rule is trying to make things simple but food itself is not simple, at least not in todays world. I think these such words are making people more conscious of what they are eating. Maybe some people read such a label and think "what is an antibiotic." Perhaps this will lead one to know more about their food. Maybe in their findings it will say such and such a food helps fight breast cancer and one will eat more of the food. Also, if people where more aware they would know about such claims as "low fat" and that the products, in most cases, actually contain more sodium or sugar to replace flavors added by the fat.

just a thought.

Animals, Mongrels, and Chattel...oh my.

Reading Don LePan's Animals truly disturbed me. I finished it last night and was actual nauseous for a good half hour afterward. Honestly, I haven't been very good with keeping up in our Food Rules experiment, but last night made me rethink Pollan's rules on meat as a delicacy.

I really feel like I am gain more and more perspective of not only what goes into my body, but also the destructive outlets I support just by buying certain products. It made me think of the times I (cave in) for my annual McDonald's run or my love of cheese and crackers - where the hell is that cheese coming from??? Finally, I even thought of Anne, my little beagle who I could never imaging living as Sam.

I think that these perseptives are not easily obtained and reading Pollan's Food Rules isn't enough. In order to really question the American Land Ethic lifestyle, you have to gain the knowledge and emotional understand why and why not to understand. More importantly you need out outlets than just a rule book to turn ignorance and laziness to concern and care.

This is my dog by the way:

*I know that she looks pissed, but I promise she was just really annoyed with me taking pictures. Shes actually a really happy dog.

Hehe

This is so arguably irrelevant it's embarrassing, but I saw this on nataliedee.com and thought it was HYSTERICAL (and somewhat pertaining to food rules, although kind of pushing it).




Have a good day.

Food Rules: The Edible Experiment, Week Ten

Journal Entry
Week Ten
November 5, 2010

Rule 51 “Spend as much time enjoying a meal as you took to prepare it”

I REALLY had a problem with this one. Now granted, I don’t always take a ton of time to prepare a meal... I'm always the one wishing I had more time so that I could actually cook! Haha. Ok so here is what my typical day usually consists of:

Breakfast: Pour cereal in bowl, add dried fruit, add milk. (3 minutes). Now eating a 3-minute breakfast seems insane… but trust me, it’s been done. Trying to get out of the door in the morning to beat the 1.5 hour morning traffic commute to make it to class on time? I’m lucky I get to eat at all! (Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, though, so I do make it a point to eat otherwise I’m falling over by 10 am) If I can, I usually try to sit at my kitchen table and eat my cereal… as slowly as I can… which sometimes is just simply “shovel it down and go”-style.

Lunch: Well technically, this better have already been prepared and sitting in my lunch bag in the fridge, ready to grab and go in the morning. It usually consists of a sandwich of some sort, and fruit or yogurt, or maybe a munchy vegetable like grape tomatoes, whatever I happen to have. I’d say lunch usually takes me about 10 minutes to prepare at the most, and probably about the same to eat.

Dinner: I am usually starving when I get home from school, so while trying not to ravage my fridge and pantry all at the same time, I usually try to cook a little something for dinner. This will take anywhere from 15 – 20 minutes, but probably only about 10 – 15 minutes to consume, provided its not too hot to burn my mouth as I’m eating it, haha.

Ok so yes, I know, I really need to work on slowing down when I eat! (Yes, it might even be nice to chew at times.) Grr Pollan, I haven’t mastered you quite yet. But I do have to say, some of the most memorable times I've had have been around the dining room table or with friends at a restaurant where there is actually time to relax and visit and enjoy each other's company before (and then while) sharing a meal together. And, needless to say, visiting Italy? They know how to do it right over there! 2 - 3 hours per meal... WOW! But so much is to be learned from that experience... there is value in eating slowly, especially when you're with others!

SIMPLY.

I think I have found a drink that is great. I love water but sometimes I would like an alternative. Constantly I am looking on the labels of drinks to find one I feel good about consuming. Well, I was in the grocery store the other night and I know the brand "Simply.." I purchase it from time to time. I usually buy the lemonade one even though it does have some added cane sugar. However, this brand came out with a new drink, Simply Apple (or it might just be new to me). Anyway, Simply Apple is literally just apple juice. It is not from concentrate and is 100 percent pure pressed apple juice pasteurized!!! It tastes literally like apples unlike the other brands that taste extremely sugary! Highly suggest trying!

mmmmm delicious!

comment and tangent on "on meat" post

I beg to differ a little bit in the perception that eating insects is in some way "degrading," while eating a maimed animal in a cage is not. Insects are an exceptional source of protein and have been eaten by many cultures for many thousands of years into the present. Far from being considered "lowly food" (which is a problematic perspective to begin with if we are working towards abolishing the notion of hierarchy amongst strange strangers), insects are often eaten as a delicacy. Check out these articles:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0715_040715_tvinsectfood.html

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/may/07-want-to-help-the-environment-eat-insects

With this last article, it did come to mind the possible devastation to ecosystems if some of the insects imported for food "fled the coop" and altered the surrounding ecosystems. Insects do seem to be a difficult crop to control.

Being a bug-lover, I have always found it extremely interesting the innate sense of aversion so many feel towards bugs. At what point in the collective consciousness did bugs become "gross"? I thought maybe it had to do with the sheer abundance of them, but then again the sight of thousands of tiny fish does not draw the same effect on the stomach as a thousand baby beetles. Do we dislike them because we see them as our competitors to which we refuse to accept inevitable loss? I can think of no other category of creature so widely despised as insects. Except perhaps bacteria. And maybe some kinds of fungi (for those familiar with the abominable black mold). What characteristics do these three loathed enemies share? Perhaps fecundity (see Annie Dillard), the inhabitation of the "dark places", the ability to withstand or thrive in conditions that other living beings would perish in?

An Ammendment to the Rule ...

Frozen Seafood Benefits -- National Geographic

I found this article amidst several other articles in the "Ocean" section of environmental news on National Geographic.com. Some of the other articles included the article on the "Marine Food Chain" which talks about how consumption of different kinds of fish affects the environment and our health. I found this interesting and relevant to Food Rules because it offers a different perspective on the types of fish we consume. Apart from what kinds of fish offer the most in nutrition, we should consider the other effects our choices could be having. For example, eating farm-raised salmon supports jobs and the American economy while cutting down on the overfishing of wild salmon. Also, many fishes such as the Chilean Sea Bass have a low level of sustainability, making it much more likely they will end up on the endangered species list. There are alternative options to these fish such as the Alaskan sable fish (similar in taste to the Chilean sea bass) that are much more sustainable. That is just one example. One of the articles I read provided more sustainable and "environmentally friendly" options for lots of popular types of fish.

The link I provided gives a list of the many benefits to eating frozen seafood-- similar to the lists supporting many of the food rules! One of my favorite reasons to eat frozen seafood is the cut-down on waste. Fresh fish goes bad really quickly whereas you can choose your portions of frozen fish to fit your needs exactly, and save the rest for later.

As an avid lover of seafood AND of the ocean, these articles changed my perspective completely. I love to scuba dive, and alot of the fish I enjoy watching in their ocean habitats are also on the dinner menu. Choosing what types of fish to consume based on environmental costs and sustainability is a totally new concept for me. In the past on this blog I've talked alot about how expensive fish can be, but never the environmental consequences behind what types of fish we consume most regularly. I think this could be an important part of the next Food Rules, after all, our Food Rules should and do pertain to the preservation of our planet as much as possible. I also think that this could expand to much more than just fish, some meat farmers definitely have more humane practices than others, and some types of meat are endangered and could potentially be more harmful to the environment when killed for consumption.

Wendy's has been reading Food Rules

So just saw this article about Wendy's wanting to get more natural with their ingredients and read some very funny things. First here's the full article from Yahoo.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101110/ap_on_bi_ge/us_wendy_s_new_fries

Here's a quote from the article:

"We want every ingredient to be a simple ingredient, to be one you can pronounce and one your grandmother would recognize in her pantry," said Chief Marketing Officer Ken Calwell, who declined to say what the Dublin, Ohio, company was spending on the effort.

On Meat

My friends and I have argued about meat, that it's a part of natural human diet, that it's unnecessary, that there are morale implications to eating it. Timothy Morton mentioned that he had never heard a successful defense for eating meat. Polan skirts around meat suggesting it as flavoring to a dish, and even then to not eat it often. My first impulse, first idea when discussing the morality of meat is to contrast/compare vegetation to animals. Animals are conscious, able to feel pain (a characteristic found in many plants), scream, yelp, howl, and thrash during processing, effecting our senses and morality beyond the crunch of vegetables. Accepting recent research that plants too feel pain implies we accept a certain level of death and pain in our food. Here is a line, a fickle line like that of a pile of sand metaphor: you have a pile of sand and take a single grain, then another, then another, until one grain is left and you wonder at what point it stopped being a pile. At what point is there too much blood and death on your plate? What creature between carrots and chimpanzees is the highest up the evolutionary ladder that we are willing to consume? The lowest? Bugs seem degrading to eat and elephants are too noble.

Do plants feel pain?

My distaste for imagining an animal's excruciating agony doesn't eclipse my craving for a salty meat, medium-rare meat, dried meat, blackened meat, greasy meat, bloody meat. Realizing this is compelling, something that has an impact on my sense of my own morality, my own sense of compassion, and my own black/white, good/evil, selfish/generous balance.

Food Hangover

So I've been horrible to myself this weekend! Yesterday we have this Vietnamese ceremony event where we honor passed ancestors, this one for my uncle and grandfather. So you make a lot of food, invite people over, etc. So I was on rule #64 yesterday. I had fried shrimp chips, 5 Duncan Hines fudge brownies, 3 cups of soda, two bowl of WHITE noodles, some fried chicken, and many other unhealthy things. I don't think I even really had a vegetable yesterday. I was just eating and eating and today I'm paying for it!

I felt so out of it this morning. I had my average amount of sleep, but today I feel sluggish, tired, sleepy, un-energized, aloof, and just uggghh. That's what I really feel like. I think over the last few days I haven't been eating too many fruits or veggies so that hasn't helped either. It's so strange to see how evident the way my eating behavior has on my body. When I eat a lot of fruits and veggies, I have so much energy and feel great, and days I eat bad things, I really feel the bad effects like I'm feeling right now. I think as the semester is winding down, a lot of us are losing steam, cause I know I am. And as Derrell said, the holidays are coming up soon and that's going to be even worse. But it's never too late to start fresh!

Sushi and... Anisakisis

In Reference to Danielle's Post below:

Here's so y'all can all be aware...

My dad was telling me about this AWFUL program he saw on Animal Planet... WARNING: don't watch this if you have a weak stomach. (I have to be careful or I'll become a serious hypochondriac) This parasite, the Anisakis worm, can be found in sushi. It is killed if the sushi is pre-frozen (or if fish is cooked to 140 degrees). But the problem is, when you walk into a sushi restaurant... do you know if their fish is pre-frozen? And if you ask them if it is, how do you know they are telling you the truth? Furthermore, sushi is a food that is handled with someone else's hands. I know restaurants supposedly have regulations on washing hands and cleanliness and strict protocol that they have to follow, but here's the scary thing: These worms are visible in the fish's flesh with the naked eye. What if one of the Sushi-chefs sees the worm, chops off that part of the fish, but assumes that the rest of the fish is "ok" because he doesn't see any worms? And what if that part of the "supposedly ok" fish ends up on YOUR plate? Now, I LOVE sushi, and I was DEVASTATED when my dad told me about this horrible show (thanks dad). Yet while this parasite is rare in the US, it obviously isn't rare enough. Watch:

http://animal.discovery.com/videos/monsters-inside-me-really-bad-sushi.html

Food Rules: The Edible Experiment, Week Nine

Journal Entry
Week Eight
October 29, 2010

Rule 34 “Sweeten and salt your food yourself”

So this past week I’ve really tried to work on sweetening and salting my food myself. I really feel that Pollan makes great points about the dangers of refined sugars – and I had the pleasure of attending a prayer breakfast this morning and listening to an incredible testimony from a friend and two-time breast cancer survivor, who had tried everything from traditional to alternative and herbal medicine and reflexology before undergoing her chemo, mastectomy, and radiation. She is such an incredible witness – wow, what we could all learn from the suffering she’s been through – but one of the things that stood out to me today in her talk and that she talked a lot about was food in relation to the process of ridding her body of cancer. For the two years that she was sick, she had a nutritionist who repeatedly told her that she needed to get rid of “bad carbs” and non-natural sugar (aka, anything besides honey or unprocessed sugar) and to exercise, or else she would not get rid of her cancer. She was also told to eat hormone-free meat. Now, having personally known this lady while she was going through her illness, I know that she was religiously following a strict nutritional diet that was extremely healthy. Ultimately, she did undergo radiation (twice) and chemotherapy due to the severity of her illness. However, when she told her nutritionist that her cancer had come back the second time, he blamed it on her “not eating well” and for “violating her diet,” as if it were her fault. This hurt me to hear her say this, and I cannot imagine how she must have felt when her nutritionist blamed her cancer coming back on her and pegged it as her fault! She adhered to a healthy diet so rigorously, has cut all refined sugar out of her diet, and has sacrificed so much with her bouts with cancer, that I was simply floored to hear the lack of compassion that the nutritionist had for this woman!

For in her testimony, she said that one thing which helped her stay away from all refined sugar and processed product was the very fact that when patients fasted from refined sugar before a PET scan, their results were much more accurate… because when they had not fasted from refined sugar before the scan, they (and I quote) “lit up like a Christmas tree.” In other words, the sugar had such a negative effect on their bodies that the PET scan detected the refined sugar in their system – the sugar in their system was what was showing up on the PET scan image!!!

Since reading Pollan’s book, I have switched to turbinado cane sugar and only use refined white sugar when no other sugar is available and in the shower as a body scrub (which by the way works great!) I also use Stevia – I wonder what Pollan would say on this. Stevia is supposed to be all natural (like cane) and from the Stevia plant. I used to use SweetnLow and then switched to Splenda, but having heard of all the horrible things associated with those artificial sweetners I stick to raw sugar and Stevia now.

As far as salt goes, I had been practicing salting my own food since before I read Pollan’s book, but I made a conscious effort this week to take notice of the salt I was adding to my food. I already buy “low sodium” Boar’s Head deli meat (you guys, it tastes SO much better and doesn’t leave you with that horrible overwhelmingly salty taste in your mouth!) and have noticed that since processed foods have much more sodium in them, that no “extra” salt is needed when cooking with those foods. (For example, I like American cheese in my scrambled eggs. I know that’s about as processed as you can get, and it is one of the only processed foods that I eat, but something about that melty cheese in my eggs… mmmm) Ok but seriously, I used to add cheese and salt, but now I just add cheese and pepper or paprika to give a little added flavor. There is plenty of salt in the cheese to begin with, and when you must cook with processed foods, take notice – I bet you’ll find that you don’t need any additional salt.

I think I’m going to ask Pollan about the artificial Sweetners and Stevia – I’ll suggest it as an idea for his new book! I’d love to hear the real deal with all that!

subtlety is key

I've been trying to retrain my pallet to find junk food disgusting. When I eat, I imagine tasting the nutrients in the food and my stomach being happy (somehow imagining my body as its own creature or entity makes me more inclined to want to feed it well, like a pet). The converse goes for "tasting" what chemicals and empty calories junk foods consist of. I am also trying to appreciate more foods that are bland or "don't taste like anything," such as plain oats and rice. I figure if I learn first to like these foods alone, if I introduce more flavors and ingredients later, I will be less inclined to overdo it or add something unhealthy like soy sauce. If my sense of sweet is acclimated to that of an apple, sugary snacks will be too intense and unenjoyable. This is what I hope.

Sad to face the truth..

I absolutely love sushi. It has grown on me like I never thought it would. I have noticed there is a big sushi crazed going on and everyone thinks they are eating healthy by jumping on this

delicious band wagon. However, as I was eating sushi tonight, I looked on the ingredients label

and was utterly disappointed. The fish was loaded with "no no's" from the Food Rules book.

Such as, ingredients I cannot pronounce, much less, a fifth grader, way more than a reasonable

amount of additives, ingredients I would not cook with, etc. This realization had me running to my computer to google sushi and here is some of what I found..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-381958/Sushi--raw-truth.html

"The contaminants found in fish often overpower its beneficial effects. People think they're improving their health by eating sushi but they are in fact poisoning themselves."

Green Couture vs. Food Couture

So forget my Green couture project. This is some crazy amazing designs! Check it out.


http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/food-as-fashion-2404731/#photoViewer=1

Satsumas

I want to let the world know that I just ate the most delicious satsuma.

And according to the sticker, it was grown locally (in Louisiana)!

BOLO BOLO: mini, orange, sweet, squatty spheres of heaven.

Hyperobjects 2.0: Oil Remix mp3

I just posted my talk here.

Yellow Breakfast

I find it very difficult to eat my colors for breakfast.

The Orleans Room serves up a plate of yellow: yellow scrambled eggs, yellow grits (too much butter), yellow biscuits (too much butter), and bananas.

If I wanted to add some color too my plate, I would need to add some red bacon or brown sausage.

waste not

So this may stray a bit from Pollan's food rules, but in the spirit of the weekend and the declaration made in class last week that there are robots that can assess tastes and found human flesh to be like "pork," I couldn't resist.

http://www.rotten.com/library/death/cannibalism/

http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Cannibalism

I find the idea of the acquistion of a certain quality or power symbolically executed through the consumption of a specific body part or organ particularly intriguing. It definitely gives a new spin to the worn-out expression "you are what you eat." Or rather you become what you eat. If this were a true effect it (and who is to say it is not), I wonder qualities would be inherited from the eating of a root vegetable. Or the flowering part of a plant (broccoli). I think I am going to experiment this week and attempt to only eat foods I would "like to be." I don't imagine enjoying being "mechanically separated" as is the chicken ingredient of a Slim Jim, nor stamped into shape by molds, presses, intense heat and steam, being mass produced with millions of others that look "just like me."

In a weird kind of inverse of previous attempts in class to avoid anthropomorphism (by Abbey, for example), I will personify my foods. And then decide if I still want those Cheerios.