The Boston Herald announced that Fenway Park is installing a kosher hot dog vending machine:
The home of the Fenway Frank, which claims to sell more hot dogs than any other ballpark in the country, is adding a new option for Jewish fans who adhere to strict kosher dietary laws. A new automated “Hot Nosh” vending machine, to be located in the big concourse under the bleachers, will cook and dispense all-beef, glatt kosher hot dogs in under a minute.
That’s cool at the ballpark, but how about in a Jewish day school?
Many people complain that it’s difficult to find a synagogue to join in New York City. There are just so many options, that none of them feel exactly right – you might call it The Shul-Goers Dilemma. These days, however, I’m feeling pretty good at Temple Bet Pollan.
Michael Pollan gets his fair share of love on this blog, and his new book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
has already joined its predecessor, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
as a New York Times Best Seller. Pollan is in the middle of his second whirlwind book tour in two years (I guess he sleeps on the plane) – and I hear the same account every where he goes. Huge venue, sold out show, knockout performance.
Like any effective leader – Martin Luther King included – he’s charismatic and big on the big ideas that change the way we think – or in this case how we eat. But as I devoured (pun intented) Pollan’s new book on my subway commute, I wondered what, if anything, does his worldview offer to the Jewish community? And, perhaps more interestingly, what wisdom does the tribe have to offer back to him?
(x-posted at Pickled)
Bonnie over at Ethicurean created a fascinating infographic for Wired that overlays the price per calorie of various foods with their energy payoff and sugar content. It depicts what Adam Drewnowski researched and Michael Pollan wrote about for the New York Times: 1. The cheapest available food is often the most fattening. 2. The most calorie-dense foods (usually processed and frozen convenience items) tend to be concentrated in the center shelves of supermarkets.
This supermarket setup seems pretty pervasive – it even holds true at my idealistic, non-profit Food Coop where I spent my monthly shift last night ringing up fancy cheese and (expensive) mixed-drink ephemera like limes and mint for people’s New Year’s celebrations. Check out Bonnie’s graphic above and, when shopping in the “middle aisles” of your grocery store, don’t forget Rambam’s “middle way” - moderation.
Progressive Magazine, Mother Jones, recently published an article denouncing conservative think-tank, The Heritage Foundation’s, recent report, “Hunger Hysteria: Examining Food Security and Obesity in America.” James Ridgeway at Mother Jones writes:
According to a November 13 Heritage article…there are no longer any hungry people in the United States…. Far from having too little to eat, they argue, poor people are eating too much.
“Hunger Hysteria” is the work of Robert Rector, Heritage’s senior domestic-policy man [who] argues that while the USDA’s numbers [of food insecurity in the US] might sound “ominous” on the surface, “the government’s own data show that the overwhelming majority of food insecure adults are, like most adult Americans, overweight or obese.”
I think I might lose my lunch.
It’s a familiar legend – whether it’s the Golem or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster (the latter perhaps inspired by tales of the former) – what we arrogantly create comes back to haunt us. America’s monster might turn out to be one that we encounter in its most powerful form each Halloween: corn. Not the sweet, buttery kind that we get from our CSA in July. The kind that industrial-strength petro-chemicals and lobbyist-induced grain subsidies have produced in quantities unfathomable even fifty years ago. As Michael Pollan noted in Omnivore’s dilemma, which so eloquently sounded the clarion call for the dangers of corn, much of this crop has been turned into food additives that are so commonplace that if we’re eating any type of processed food, chances are we’re eating corn, even if we don’t even know it!
Enlitened Kosher Cooking
Nechama Cohen
Feldheim Publishers (October, 2006)
Nechama Cohen’s Enlitened Kosher Cooking attempts to strike the elusive balance between healthy eating and traditional Jewish cuisine.
As a nutritionist and mother of five who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, Cohen originally intended her cookbook to be focused towards other Jews struggling with the disease. Ultimately, however, Enlitend Kosher Cooking makes the broader connection between diabetes and obesity. While enjoying meals is an important part of Shabbat and the holidays, Cohen suggests that these simchas can lead to overindulgence that contributes to weight gain and an unhealthy lifestyle.
A friend of my sent me an article written in the Washington Post about Google with the subject, “we should all be as lucky.” It talks about the amazingly top quality café (notice how they chose not to use the word cafeteria instead) which Google offers its employees. Did I mention that it’s free? For all three meals every day? And how by noon menus are distributed electronically for all the 11 cafes on its campus? Furthermore, I am happy to say that “Google supports local farming, organic produce, hormone-free meats and healthful eating.” Don’t you wish you could work there?
These words, from Pirkei Avot – Wisdom of the Fathers – and remind me of an article about school lunches published last week by Grist. ”Renegade Lunch Lady,” Ann Cooper, is working to change the face of school lunch in American public schools, starting with the 9,000 students eating at the 16 schools in the Berkeley Unified School System.
They also reminded me of a related and less-heartening article I read a few years back in Mother Jones, called Unhappy Meals, which painted a very bleak picture of the average school lunch.
