Last week Anna Zeide, the author of Canned, questioned the blogger about aspects he covered in his four-part series on the book. This week they resume their dialog and explore the differences between the food movement and the food industry to see if there is truly middle ground between the two perspectives. Once again, the author tends to ask more questions, and the blogger tends to … Continue reading Canned revisited: A dialog between the author and the blogger continued

After the four-part series on this blog about the meaningful book Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry earlier this summer, the author Anna Zeide and I engaged in a productive dialog via email. She raised some questions for me that led to a conversation, which I’ll reproduce here on the blog over the next three weeks. Can these two professionals engage … Continue reading Canned revisited: A dialog between the author and the blogger

  Finally, a book that challenges directly some of the major premises of the food movement with respect to food, nutrition and health! In The Bad Food Bible Aaron Carroll provides an objective look at some of the major myths that permeate so many popular books. In many ways he provides a measuring stick on how to evaluate the latest book on food at the … Continue reading The Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully

Chemical is NOT a four-letter word! Chemicals can be toxic, but we can’t survive without chemicals like protein, vitamins, minerals, oxygen and water. Somehow, we have become a society that is terrorized by the thought of chemicals in our lives. Here are just a few examples from my life. “When I have a wound, I rub it with Vitamin E, and it heals up quickly. … Continue reading Everything else is just a chemical

WARNING: Embedded in this article is an allusion to a disturbing mental image that may be difficult to expunge from the mind. Anyone of a sensitive nature may wish to skip this post altogether. Irony of irony. As a food scientist, I have become compelled to defend nutrients while the nutritionist on this site appears to be more concerned about food! Two weeks ago, I … Continue reading In defense of nutrients

My personal point of view about food and nutrition has been evolving over the three decades I have been teaching nutrition to undergraduate and graduate students who become Registered Dietitian Nutritionists as well as nutrition educators. The responsibility of educating future nutritionists and dietitians whose role it will be to give dietary advice to patients and clients is one that I take seriously. Thus the … Continue reading The changing face of nutrition by Andrea Boyar

Have we been misled by dietitians and nutrition experts into damaging diets because they have focused way too much on nutrients and not enough on foods? Can we blame these food professionals for the obesity epidemic we face as a country? The answer to both questions is Yes, contends Gyorgy Scrinis in his book Nutritionism. This concept has been echoed in numerous books that have … Continue reading Nutritionism: The Science and Politics of Dietary Advice

Is home cooking the key to America’s health problems? We are suffering an obesity epidemic and from a wave of chronic diseases. The problem, we are told, is too much fast food and too much processed food. The solution appears to be simple—go back to home cooking. Two reports have come out in recent years that seem to support this contention, particularly with respect to … Continue reading Will a return to home cooking bring America’s salt problem under control?

Fast food has become, for good or ill, one of the most dominant themes in American food culture. Its appeal and condemnation has spread to almost every corner of the globe. Fast-food operations generally emphasize a low price per meal ($4.00-$7.00) with a limited menu and minimal table service. Fast-casual restaurants tend to be a little more up-scale with higher prices, more items and some … Continue reading Fast food and its effect on regional cuisines

Do regional cuisines really exist in the United States? asked Sandra Oliver in one of the last issues of Food History News, the newsletter she started in 1989 and published for twenty years. Was it not the case that until the end of the nineteenth century everyone depended on a porridge of pounded corn, called mush or grits?  And that with the industrialization of food, … Continue reading Local Food: The Regional Food of Hawaii by Rachel Laudan