The Joy of Cooking -- or the Fear of Food? The 2018 Food Revolution Summit

I've just listened to the the final day of a 25 speaker Food Revolution Summit moderated by John and Ocean Robbins. Although I did learn enough to make it worthwhile, it could have been reduced by 75% if all the speakers just agreed to stipulate that 1) eating more organic veggies and fruit is good and 2) not so good --Monsanto/ glyphospate, transfats, feedlot meats with antibiotics, farmed fish, junk food, and anything with ingredients you can't pronounce -in short, much of the Standard American Diet (SAD). This was not a cooking seminar; there was no enthusiasm for the Delicious. Nowhere did I hear clever ways to use the five flavors--sweet, sour, bitter, salty and savory (umani) -- to send intense aromas wafting from my kitchen. Rather the point of most of the talks was summed up in the title of one of the speaker's book: How Not to Die. 

The take-away idea, hardly new but good to repeat, is that if you eat organic whole foods you may avoid or delay getting one of Four Horseman of the Biological Apocalypse-- cancer, heart disease, dementia and diabetes. (Side note: a complicated message for those living where affordable organic food is not available.)

The result of this lurking shadow on the horizon for those of us who are retired and inching up in age is a crazy/whacko bunch of contradictions as the current nutrition industry tries to define what is good for us. On occasion I have grumble at nutritional advice my friends are getting.  I think of three bizarre examples:

1)  "No one over 55 should eat any fruit except blueberries." 

2)  "Further reduce your already carefully limited diet and buy $1,000 worth of supplements."

3)  Stop eating the skins of fruits and vegetables and don't eat beans.

This last from the Bad Boy of the Nutrition Summit -- Stephen Gundry. His Plant Paradox made several speakers apoplectic; two used the word  "criminal" in regard to his infomercial that suggested spending thousands of dollars a year for his supplements to block lectins, which if eaten in raw beans, and (he says) almost all other foods, can make you sick. (Note to Dr Gundry: Who eats raw beans?)  The Atlantic recently did an anti-Gundry piece. It's not surprising that a book with a smashed tomato on the jacket would be unpopular here. At the same time I hear of people who are enthusiastically handing out his book. I'd like to know if there is anything to his theory.

Because the Keto diet generated the most questions from the 300,000+  webinar attendees,  John Robbins ended the seminar with a summary of why he thinks the Keto diet is an unhealthy fad that will pass-- not surprising from the leader of a plant-based diet movement reviewing the suggestions of a plan that makes bacon into a health food and eliminates fruit.

The gluten-free craze got a similar pass from Ocean Robbins: 1% of people are celiac, a small percentage more may really be sensitive to gluten-- but maybe the majority of people following the gluten craze are not. Is this a reverse placebo effect? The takeaway: maybe getting a gluten sensitivity test makes sense before assuming all bread, pizza, cookies, soy sauce will make you sick forever?

The debate about saturated fat continues with the dean of the low fat movement, Dean Ornish, squaring off against the high fat Paleo, Keto and the Weston Price proponents.

Stepping back, it seems there is always someone warning about just about any food --mercury in fish, lead in chicken broth, arsenic in apple juice, thallium in kale, adulterated olive oil from Italy, neurotoxins in wheat, Roundup in Northern California wines (including organic), tapeworms in wild salmon, aflatoxins in peanuts. A Dirty Dozen list of popular veggies lists the ones with the most pesticide residue. Not even the current Apple Cider Vinegar craze escapes. Or grapefruit.

The anti-dairy people maintain that "Milk is only for baby cows." There go cheese and butter. And on and on.

It is easy to find someone to post something against just about any food. 

How to decide what to eat with all this confusion?

Early most Sunday mornings I wander around the Farmers Market with my friend Dianne, talking to the vendors and pretending I'm Julia Child in rural France, buying unusual things, like ducks' eggs.

After patiently listening to most of the lectures in the series, I'm still an omnivore but I've tweaked a few thing about how I eat. I cover my nutritional bases by eating a wide variety of food. My favorite is the idea to eat the rainbow with seven different colors of fruits and vegetables a day. 

My mother, who had a stack of Gourmet Magazines and a well-worn copy of Gourmet Cookbook, was a fine cook who fed me what I consider now to be a well-balanced diet. Thinking back it seems that food tasted better then, maybe because I had a kid's taste buds.

Here are ten happy food memories from that time:

1.  Hot apple fritters dusted with powdered sugar

2.  Raw clams shucked on a seafood cart and passed out to the kids who clamored after it

3.  Fresh milk delivered by a milkman

4.  A lobster feast (lobster was $.25 a pound) with steamed clams and melted butter

5.  Sunday prime rib with Yorkshire pudding

6.  Corn on the cob cooked within thirty minutes of picking

7.  Liver and onions

8.  Kadota figs with heavy whipping cream

9.  Minestrone soup with each vegetable cooked separately

10.  Wild blueberries picked with my grandmother above the ocean in Maine

Although this list looks like flavors that you could only find today at a fine restaurant like the French Laundry, most of what my mother cooked was simple, which made the special meals even more special. Food was local and inexpensive, we never ate out, and we didn't eat junk food.

So today, for me, the search for whole foods with delicious flavors and textures wins out over the Fear of Food.