Read Online Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies by Michael Dane - Free Book Online

seventies
notwithstanding.
    I was a vegetarian for
two weeks in 1987, a commitment which, in retrospect, lasted longer than a lot
of my relationships in 1987.
    I might have stayed
with vegetarianism, except that in the eighties, I was on the road all the
time, and options for the aspiring herbivore were limited at your various
Perkins and Stuckey’s locations. You get really tired of iceberg lettuce and
warm ranch dressing.
    I don’t imagine there
were too many vegetarian dining options in the seventeenth century, but in
1622, the first ‘health food’ cookbook was published by Tobias Venner. It was
called
    “Via
Recta ad Vitam Longam, or a Plaine Philosophical Discourse of the Nature,
Faculties, and Effects of all suche things as by way of Nourishments and
Dietetical Observations made for the Preservation of Health.”
    That catchy title
translates as either The Straight Road to Long Life or Avoid Eating
at the Olive Garden (my Latin is sketchy at best). His advice:
     “Cut
down on heavy sauces, meats and desserts” and “Avoid eating at places which
offer unlimited breadsticks, for they will surely lead to ill humours,”
    Ellen Swallow Richards
is credited with the first American health food cookbook, called First
Lessons in Food and Diet, in 1904.
    At the time, Miss
Richards was already known for the success of her earlier books. At the turn of
the twentieth century, the hipsters were all reading her classic, The Effect
of Heat on the Digestibility of Gluten.
    Fans of ESW raved about
her provocative book, The Adulterations of Groceries, which I think is also
might be the title of a Merchant-Ivory film.
    I did some research on
Ms. Richards, and I’m not trying to turn my little column into a post-feminist
screed here, but I have a question . . .
    WHY IS THIS
WOMAN NOT FAMOUS ?

    Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911)
    First american woman admitted to a school of science
    First american woman to earn a degree in chemistry.
    First woman admitted to MIT
    First female instructor at MIT
    One would think that
the history books could give us one less paragraph on, for instance, the Monroe
Doctrine to make a little room for Ms. Richards.
    About a century after
Ellen Swallow Richards, the USDA introduced the first ‘food pyramid,’ but it
was doomed to failure. C’mon, people . . . Americans don’t remember their high
school geometry! For the average American, you might as well have called it a
Food Dodecahedron.

    Recently, the USDA
replaced the Food Pyramid with the even more remedial ‘Choose My Plate.’ But you
know there will still be confused people wondering, “Do I have to
have dairy with grains?” and “Is this part of the socialist takeover of the
government Fox News mentioned?”
    Other
countries have tried to get creative with the whole “If we draw a picture of what they should eat maybe they won’t get fat like Americans” thing.
    In France they have
twenty-five separate nutrition guides, NONE of which are followed by the
French. And Canada has a Food Rainbow. Of course they do.
    The Chinese use a Food
Pagoda, whereas in Japan, it’s a spinning top. Too bad the Japanese couldn’t
find a way to use anime, because a hot alien chick with a machine gun could get
a lot of teenage boys on the right nutritional path.
    Forget foods you should eat — I’m just glad there aren’t many foods I can’t eat. It’s true that I don’t eat a lot of dairy, but I refuse to be called ‘lactose intolerant,’
because I’m a liberal, and I feel I should fight intolerance. See—food choices
really are political choices.
    The intersection of
politics and food has given us the ‘locavore’ movement, which, if I understand
it correctly, means I can only eat Chilean sea bass at local restaurants.
    If there are
‘locavores,’ why not ‘ loco vores,’ who only buy their food from crazy
people? Or maybe we could call people who only eat bland, boring foods
‘bori-vores.’ And, if you keep strictly kosher,