What did you eat today?

Food is one of the topics that over the past few years has managed to hold my interest. After all, a majority of us live to eat right ? :) we are what we eat and still most of the times we pay little attention to it beyond the taste factor.

As a poor graduate student, I remember me and my roommates being awe struck the first time we entered a supermarket. Row after row after row of choices . Like most graduate households, canned beans became our best friends and we literally survived for two years on "Chole" and various bean dishes.

Then, after moving to Seattle, my food choices remained pretty much the same till a few years ago when we found of this ingredient called high fructose corn syrup. Its present in almost all packaged food and yet we were oblivious to the fact that there is very little fructose in it, that in fact its made of corn but its so highly processed that its almost a chemical, that it increases tendencies to packing calories, that it seems like a bad ingredient to eat over and over and over again.

Later I read two excellent books on food practices in America by Micheal Pollan, 'The Omnivores dilemma" and "In defense of food". It was surprising to learn that when you break down chicken nuggets to its molecular level, its just corn. Corn flour, corn oil and corn fed to chicken. Both these books have had a profound influence on me and got me thinking about this whole business of processed food and whether I really need to eat all the xanthan gum, HFCS, the enriched bleached flours, the waxed apples and an variety of other chemicals that I can neither pronounce nor spell. Clearly even the bacteria and fruit flies dont seem to care for this and generally leave it alone.

Now, I try to follow the rules by Micheal Pollan from "In Defense of Food":

1) DON'T EAT ANYTHING YOUR GREAT-GRANDMOTHER WOULDN'T RECOGNIZE AS FOOD.
No Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt tubes. (She wouldn't be able to identify high-fructose corn syrup, modified corn starch, kosher gelatin, carrageenan, tricalcium phosphate, natural and artificial flavors, etc.) No "protein waters," "nondairy creamers" or foods that never grow stale.

2) AVOID FOOD PRODUCTS CONTAINING INGREDIENTS THAT ARE A) UNFAMILIAR, B) UNPRONOUNCABLE, C) MORE THAN FIVE IN NUMBER, OR D) THAT INCLUDE HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. Pollan's example: Sara Lee's Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread, which fails every test proposed by this rule. "If not for the indulgence of the Food and Drug Administration, (it) could not even be labeled "bread," he wrote.

3) AVOID PRODUCTS THAT MAKE HEALTH CLAIMS.
If a food has a health claim, it probably has a package and that means it's very likely processed. Moreover, the FDA's "qualified" health claims" are all but meaningless.

4) SHOP THE PERIPHERIES OF THE SUPERMARKET AND STAY OUT OF THE MIDDLE.
"Processed foods products dominate the center aisles of the store while the cases of ostensibly fresh food--dairy, produce, meat and fish--line the walls," Pollan wrote. Be careful though, because high-fructose corn syrup lurks in the dairy case.

5) GET OUT OF THE SUPERMARKET WHENEVER POSSIBLE.
"You won't find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer's market. Also look into CSA (community supported agriculture), in which you can subscribe to a farm and receive a box of produce.)"

To summarize, keep it simple, cook from scratch and enjoy every bite of it!