I haven't even watched this. I pulled up yahoo this morning to check on my fantasy hockey duel with Dircks and the front page headline at yahoo was "Is corn making you fat?" I'm not sure if this has anything to do with Michael Pollen's work. As some of you know, I've read and enjoyed both The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense Of Food . For me it started vaguely, hearing something about McDonald's burgers explaing why kids were getting bigger and taller. Something to do with the growth hormones in the meat. Not really something that would effect my decision to eat there. Then I think the backlash against fast food started to pick up steam with Supersize Me breaking through. I never saw it, but I get the idea from some clips here and there and what I have seen that it may be slightly off for me in that Michael Moore vein- kind of losing his impact by being showy or funny and letting their bias for the topic show clearly. I think when you are trying to be subversive and go against "the powers that be" it can be counter-productive to be cocky. Anyways, I'm sure it codemns the hell out of McDonald's food as that isn't difficult these days. A better bet for that, and fast food as a whole was Fast Food Nation.
The book kills the movie of the same name like an immigrant kills a diseased cow at the meat packers (or Javier Bardem in No Country! Was that some kind of comment on industrialized meat packing? I just thought it was a cool way to kill people...the Coen brothers kick ass.). Anyways the movie is isn't that bad, it's just the book is so comprehensive and damning. This is what actually got me to start making choices about food. Have I been to a fast food joint since? Yes. Have I been to McDonald's? Yes, sadly, probably more so than other places. I think Pollen's books, while not perfect, really brought it all together for me. He looks at modern eating and food comprehensively. The questions he poses in Omnivore he trys to answer in Defense. While it is fascinating to see him skewer what we claim to know about nutrition (basically debunking the concept as we know it), it just as frustrating following his guidelines, which in some ways could be considered fallible as well, not to mention less accessible and more expensive. Anyways, my point was supposed to be: knowing what I know now, or knowing what I believe to be true, why am I not acting on it? I've made some changes and I am trying to do some things differently. I sit back when I see videos like this and say "Oh, I've read about that, I've known about this". I see commercials like Wendy's one about knowing what their food is, their whole campaign about being "wayyy better than fast food", it makes me want to talk about how bullshit that is and comment on how even the fast food places are picking up on this trend. But who cares? If I'm not changing my diet it basically just adds guilt to certain eating choices. As if anyone needs more of that. This is going longer and less focused by the minute. Let's just watch the clip for now.