"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants"

The Auckland Writers, Readers and Eaters Festival is on at the moment. Well, actually it's just the Writers and Readers Festival, but eating was high on the agenda at the lunch session with American journalist Michael Pollan at Soul bar this afternoon. (On the menu: an entree of roast beetroot carpaccio with vodka potato salad and rocket, followed by crisp duck leg on silverbeet and chorizo, with tamarillo creme brulee for dessert.)
Michael is the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and, more recently, In Defence of Food. Both are jolly good reads if you're interested in how your food gets from paddock to plate, and what you're actually consuming at the end of the food chain.
In Defence of Food is intriguing because, although it's a timely read from an environmental perspective, its central concern isn't saving the planet but defending real "food" - the unprocessed stuff that comes from nature, rather than the synthetic low-fat, low-carb, sugar-free, Omega-oil-infused substitutes you'll find in boxes on supermarket shelves.
Michael reckons food needs defending because it's under attack from what he calls "nutritionism" - the scientific ideology that food is no more than the sum of its nutrient parts and can be improved by fiddling about with those parts in a lab.
Proponents of "nutritionism" look at an apple and see only vitamin C, vitamin A, iron, fibre and boron to keep your bones healthy. (When I look at an apple, however, I see apple crumble. Or apple pie. Or apple fritters drizzled in lemon juice and sugar.) But the food industry forgets about such cultural pleasures because it's too focused on antioxidants and phytochemicals (not to mention making a profit).
The problem with nutritionism as a concept is that, as Michael points out, instead of suddenly getting healthier by cutting carbs or banishing fat or swallowing more protein or gulping down gallons of fish oil, all that's happened is that we've got fatter. And unhappier. And unhealthier.
(Personally, I've never given any thought to nutrition or the advice you get from nutritionists: my theory is that you should never trust anyone who insists you eat cottage cheese and tinned tuna every day.)
Michael's book concludes with a few rules about eating. Namely: don't eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognise on a plate. (Clearly someone had tipped him off about Kiwi cuisine of old, though, because he relaxed that rule at lunch today. He said it's perfectly ok to substitute your own culinary-challenged great-grandmother for one of those Sicilian ones instead.)
But his general philosophy can be summed up in seven words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." To which I'd add, "And grow the darn things yourselves!"
I've suspect I'm fast approaching "terminal bore" status when it comes to trying to encourage people to grow their own food, but I had a captive audience at my table at Soul. (Captive as in they couldn't escape because their bosses had paid them to be there, rather than captivated as such.) Talk turned, as it invariably does when I've got anything to do with it, to rising food prices... and one of my dining companions confessed that during the recent school holidays, her weekly grocery billed topped $800 to feed two adults and six children.
$800!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I would have choked on my tamarillo creme brulee. If I hadn't already polished it off.