Cooked

A very enjoyable, if slightly too long, account of the provenance of food and our relationship to it. Pollan, a Californian academic, brings a passion to the subject and the work is also a self-discovery for him (and by implication for the reader) that engenders a newfound respect for what we eat. Having a desire to understand how things work in the broadest sense of the world is a laudable one. To some extent Pollan was preaching to the converted (at least for me) and his journey is conveniently divided into the four elements: fire (cooking meat); water (stews); air (making bread); and earth (fermentation — of vegetables, cheese and produce alcohol). He meets ardent practitioners of these crafts, learns from and is inspired by them. Pollan, unsurprisingly, is pro-natural and anti-processed food. At the conclusion of the work, he makes the distinction between “mouth taste” (how we all experience food) and “hard taste” (a heightened experience — apparently — based on being aware of the food's journey and the hands/work involved in creating the finished products). Lots of great vignettes. Being more mindful of what we eat surely can't be a bad thing.

By Michael Pollan