Is Michael Pollan a sexist pig?
A great piece about blaming feminism for our current food issues, and how romanticizing a false past is bad for food cuture. A bit of it:
...read moreFighting bad health, not obesity
In the Guardian this week I’m writing about how advocates for healthy food and journalists covering addictive junk food should focus on the bad health outcomes of that food instead of body size. I differ with much of the Feministe commentariat on a lot of food issues, especially insofar as I think the government should absolutely incentivize healthy eating and exercise, and I’m fine with limiting sizes of nutritionally useless, almost-entirely-bad-for-you processed items like soda (I’m also fine leveling taxes on products like soda, alcohol, cigarettes, etc). I prefer positive incentives — letting food stamps count double at farmers’ markets, for example — but I’m fine with doing both. That’s because at a basic level, it is the government’s job to promote the public health. How we eat is central to our health. My issue comes in with the obesity justification. Promote everyone’s health, whether we’re fat or thin or somewhere in between — because bad food is damaging to all bodies, not just fat ones. A piece of the column:
...read moreTip your servers
Laura Beck is right — if you’re budgeting to go out to eat, you need to include a tip in that. And you need to tip even if your waitress isn’t as pleasant as you’d like, and even if the service is imperfect. It is a gender issue, and servers (who are disproportionately female) need tips to make a living wage. I also suspect that female servers are more often on the receiving end of a bad tip for not adequately stroking a diner’s ego — not laughing enough at his jokes, not flirting back, not smiling. So tip! Yes, 20%, even if the service was mediocre.
...read moreMore reasons not to eat at Applebees, Papa Johns or Denny’s
Just in case you weren’t aware that the owners of some big-chain restaurants and huge jerks, check out this piece by Matt Yglesias highlighting the temper-tantrums being thrown by the owners of Applebees, Denny’s and Papa Johns over Obamacare. Their problem? Under Obamacare, small businesses don’t incur any additional tax burden; businesses that already provide health insurance are also in the clear; and so are businesses that pay their employees a living wage. But businesses that both employ more than 25 people and pay extremely low wages have to put some money into the health care system. The multi-millionaires who pay their employees pennies and are the beneficiaries of Republican tax breaks don’t like that, and they’re throwing fits:
...read moreThe Meat We Eat
True story: I was mostly vegetarian (technically pescetarian) for 11 years. Then I moved to Sardinia to be a nanny for an Italian family. After a few weeks of not eating any meat, I started to feel bad about the fact that the family always had to make a different dish for me, so I abandoned my vegetarianism. The first piece of meat that I tucked into was a tough little hockey puck with some garlic and butter on top. I figured it was over-cooked beef until, after polishing it off, the father of the family asked me if I enjoyed the cavallo.
...read moreTwo pieces I love
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these two pieces over the last week or so: A Woman’s Guide to Hasidic Street Harassment by Lilit Marcus over at Heeb Magazine and The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater by Erica over at NW Edible. The first one has me thinking about how we police [...]
...read moreOwning my food crazy
Trigger warning for discussion of dieting and food restriction. I have a confession to make. Over the last six months or so, I’ve lost a significant amount of weight. It’s my first time that my weight has gone down since I jumped on board the fat acceptance train, and I feel great. I have more [...]
...read moreGoodbye, Sylvia.
A local hero and an all-around awesome lady. Sad to hear she’s gone.
...read moreDrinking While Pregnant: Not The Worst Thing.
You can drink while pregnant and, as long as it’s done in moderation, everything is probably going to be ok. Or maybe it won’t be ok. Heavy drinking during pregnancy can cause serious health issues for the baby, and no one seems to know exactly how much is too much, so the current guideline is “don’t drink.” No drinking means no fetal alcohol effects. But it might also mean a miserable pregnant lady. And stress and miserableness can lead to a series of health issues as well, including miscarriage.
...read moreCracking Down on Sugary Drinks
This is one of those points where I know just about every Feministe reader is going to disagree with me, but: I’m glad that NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg has banned the sale of extra-large sugary drinks from some establishments.
...read moreDinner Talk
There’s a post up in the Times Style section this week about dinner table conversation, and how it varies from family to family. The author notes that at her childhood dinner table, the parents did the talking and the kids kept to themselves. In the Foer family, no one ever asked “What did you do today?”; instead, the Foer father, “a lawyer who served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union, led his children in debates about economic policy and civil rights issues, but with an open ear: a conversation about Reagan’s Star Wars policies might lead to a discussion about “why we couldn’t build a giant shield over the United States out of Legos.”
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