Bites of Bittman: So Many Food Topics to Cover, So Little Time

I have so many things I want to write about on here. Literally I have at least 50 topics written down and I'm finding new stuff nearly every day. On Tuesday, I saw Mark Bittman's post on the New York Times Opinionator and proceeded to get more and more excited with each paragraph I read. He covers several topics I've been thinking about and wanting to touch on lately. And while I still hope to write more about them later, I'd like to do a quick rundown now.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 - I have such mixed feelings on this. While there were some certainly-healthier sounding ideas presented, I agree with Bittman that there seems to be too much tiptoeing and lobbying influencing these guidelines. When it comes to people's health, federal guidelines should have the everyperson as the beneficiary without money-making coming into play. Now if only it were that simple...

photo from dullhunk on flickr

I know the exact same rules of eating won't work for everyone - that's why their guidelines and not hard-and-fast rules, but still they seem a little too loose. If you tell someone to eat two to five servings of something - it does them no good if they don't know the practicality of what a serving looks like. It feeds right into the idea of putting calorie info up at every eating establishment - a step forward but without a reference point, useless to most people. I need to actually sit down and finish analysing the report, so more on this at a later time.

Oprah Goes Vegan... For A Week - I missed this episode. A newsletter I subscribe to even gave me the heads up. I'm trying to watch what clips I can and read what happened on her site, but in case you haven't heard, the gist is Oprah and her entire staff ate vegan for a week. Some people liked it. Some did not. Weight was gained. Weight was lost. Bittman notes that it came off like eating vegan meant eating fake-cheese and fake-meat - which is a small can of worms in my book because I see both benefits from and problems with that.

Regardless, if that's what was highlighted and the reasoning for not eating meat wasn't properly explained, viewers are probably going to walk away thinking, "Why should I eat fake cheese instead of real cheese? Real is probably better for you." Bittman does well to point out that just because something can be labeled vegan doesn't mean it's necessarily good for you. Again, hopefully we can devote an entire post to this later.


Wal-Mart Wants You To Eat Healthier/Have Cheaper Produce - When I saw this headline my first thought was to wonder if I can still dislike Wal-Mart to the same degree if they're pushing healthier eating options. Here Bittman raises the issue that someone in the chain has to pay for that cheaper price in one way or another. More reading is needed here as well as a need to wait and see how this all works out. Maybe Wal-Mart saw that scene in Food Inc where the little girl is crying for fresh produce as her mother explains to the camera that chips and soda are more affordable than vegetables. Yeah... probably not.

Read the full Mark Bittman post entitled Is 'Eat Real Food' Unthinkable?

For me, the answer is no. Is it doable? Yes, but there are some out there who make it more difficult for everyone else.

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