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From the author of the national bestseller The Culture of Fear comes a rallying cry to abandon food fads and myths for calmer and more pleasurable eating.
For many Americans, eating is a religion. We worship at the temples of celebrity chefs. We raise our children to believe that certain foods are good and others are bad. We believe that if we eat the right foods, we will live longer, and if we eat in the right places, we will raise our social status. Yet what we believe to be true about food is, in fact, quite contradictory. Offering part exposé, part social com-mentary, sociologist Barry Glassner talks to chefs, food chemists, nutritionists, and restaurant critics about the way we eat. Helping us recognize the myths, half-truths, and guilt trips they promulgate, The Gospel of Food liberates us for greater joy at the table.
Review:
"In his latest debunking project (after The Culture of Fear), sociologist Glassner argues that 'everything you think you know about food is wrong.' And Glassner really does take on almost everything, from Atkins to vegans, with particularly hard jabs at those who, in the name of nutrition, take the fun out of food. This includes some well-known food writers, the manufacturers of 'fat-free' foods, as well as 'natural' and 'organic' offerings — but surprisingly, he stands up for irradiated 'Frankenfoods' and for some processed fast food. Later, he tackles the American obesity 'epidemic.' Here, too, he finds conventional wisdom more mythic than real, with so much conflicting evidence (the book is formidably researched and footnoted) that he finds himself wondering if obesity really matters and concludes that it probably doesn't, much. Only two conventional bits of wisdom survive Glassner's skeptical approach: the rich really are thinner than the poor, and four-star restaurant cooking really is delicious. Glassner's myth-busting information is useful, but at times he takes jabs in too many directions, losing narrative focus." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"The cereal I eat promises to reduce my cholesterol, 'support' my arteries and promote healthy blood pressure. The chicken in my refrigerator is free-range, the fish sustainable and the apples local. The milk is nonfat and hormone-free, the bacon comes from a turkey and the word 'natural' is emblazoned on just about everything in my pantry. What an idiot. Turns out I've... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) been bowing down to the 'gospel of naught' and spending my tithe on foods with 'added value' in a desperate attempt to consume my way into the upper class of underweight fresh-food eaters. Or so says Barry Glassner, a sociologist at the University of Southern California. Glassner coined the term 'gospel of naught' to describe how foods are valued by what's not in them (fat, sodium, cholesterol, child-maiming pesticides, taste); 'added value' refers to anything extra that a food might do (support arteries, prevent cancer, save local family farms, the rain forest, the world). Luckily for my self-esteem, I'm not the only one getting lost in the supermarket. In 'The Gospel of Food,' Glassner reports that we've all bought into ideas about food that have more to do with class and culture than with the actual stuff we consume. 'When it comes to how we eat,' he writes, 'we're pretty freaky.' In this fact-saturated sermon, Glassner argues that what we read in the health and food sections of newspapers like this one — what we think we know about food — is wrong, biased and based on limited or faulty research. And in his eagerness to persuade, he rushes from organic food conferences to artificial flavor companies to sumptuous meals at renowned restaurants. If the options in the cereal aisle make your head spin, 'The Gospel of Food' will make you fall at the wheels of your grocery cart in a dead faint. But just as your favorite cereal reveals itself if you stare at the wall of bright boxes long enough, startling information occasionally leaps out from Glassner's kaleidoscopic text. For instance, the word 'fresh' does not mean what you think it does. Take tomato sauce. 'If a company does all of its canning in season,' explains Glassner, 'by the time its sauces end up in dishes, they may be a year old.' Yet those aged cans get labeled fresh because the tomatoes had just come off the vine when the sauce was made. Does this disgust you? Wrong about food again, says Glassner: Canned and frozen foods retain more nutrients than does fresh produce that has been shipped. If Glassner preaches anything in 'The Gospel of Food,' it is not to trust anybody's pronouncements about what to eat, be they from a scientist, nutritionist or well-respected diet guru. We just don't know enough about how food influences health, he argues. To prove his point, he calls up the then-president of the American Heart Association and asks him for 'the percentage that diet contributes to heart disease.' In other words, how large an influence is what you eat on the health of your heart? The response? 'Wow. That's a very difficult question to answer, frankly.' Nobody seems to know the answer. Glassner boils the numbers down for himself using the Harvard-based 'Nurses Health Study,' the source of much dietary advice: 'Although I regularly partake of forbidden fats and carbs, my day begins with a brisk walk up steep hills, followed by a breakfast that includes plenty of fiber, as well as fruits that contain folate. And hardly ever do I go for more than a couple of days without a gorgeously baked or broiled fish. ... Were I to adhere to the doctrine of naught, I might reduce my risk of a heart attack by about 9 percent — an underwhelming number, especially when it is translated into actual heart attacks.' Faced with those encouraging odds, Glassner digs into the 'sauteed Moulard duck foie gras' at Thomas Keller's French Laundry with a contented sigh. But Glassner's debunking should generate the same spirit of skepticism that he would like to instill in readers. He cites scientific studies with the abandon of a television announcer on a slow news day. And at times his barrage of information activates that same feeling of dietary hopelessness familiar to anyone who has read conflicting proclamations (all scientifically reliable, of course) on what not to eat. Why can't we all gorge guilt-free on foie gras? Why do we get food and diet so wrong? Because we look at our plates through lenses colored by class, Glassner says: 'The dietary-reform movements obviously differ in which foods they deem best and worst, but each portrays its preferred diet — meatless, carbless, artisanal, organic, or what have you — as the route out of the bad order of society and a safe haven from the blundering masses who consume the bad foods that society spews forth.' I take his point reluctantly, shamefully even. Each week, I travel 20 minutes out of my way, spending time and money I do not have, to buy my gleaming organic groceries. You see, the produce at the supermarkets in my transitional neighborhood doesn't look so fresh, and the aisles of canned foods go on and on." Reviewed by Rachel Hartigan Shea, who is a contributing editor to The Washington Post Book World, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Paul Perry, November 17, 2008 (view all comments by Paul Perry)
And yet... the average person IS fat, and unhealthy, compared to a couple of generations ago.
Glassner is just a journalist with a gimmick - selectively choose research & make a case against the current scientific orthodoxy.
He's doing well - people love to be told that they are doing the right thing, especially when they really know they aren't - but in the long term, he's doing nobody any good.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (2 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"In his latest debunking project (after The Culture of Fear), sociologist Glassner argues that 'everything you think you know about food is wrong.' And Glassner really does take on almost everything, from Atkins to vegans, with particularly hard jabs at those who, in the name of nutrition, take the fun out of food. This includes some well-known food writers, the manufacturers of 'fat-free' foods, as well as 'natural' and 'organic' offerings — but surprisingly, he stands up for irradiated 'Frankenfoods' and for some processed fast food. Later, he tackles the American obesity 'epidemic.' Here, too, he finds conventional wisdom more mythic than real, with so much conflicting evidence (the book is formidably researched and footnoted) that he finds himself wondering if obesity really matters and concludes that it probably doesn't, much. Only two conventional bits of wisdom survive Glassner's skeptical approach: the rich really are thinner than the poor, and four-star restaurant cooking really is delicious. Glassner's myth-busting information is useful, but at times he takes jabs in too many directions, losing narrative focus." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
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