Real Food: What to Eat and Why

by Nina Planck, Nina Teicholz (Introduction)

Overview

Hailed as the "patron saint of farmers' markets" and one of the "great food activist," Nina Planck is single-handedly changing he way we view real food. A vital and original contribution to the hot debate about what to eat and why, Real Food is a thoroughly researched rebuttal to dietary fads and a clarion call for the return to old-fashioned foods. In lively, personal chapters on produce, diary, meat, fish, chocolate, and other real foods, Planck explains how ancient foods like beef and butter have been falsely accused, while industrial foods like corn syrup and soybean oil have created a triple epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The New York Times said that Real Food "poses a convincing alternative to the prevailing dietary guidelines, even those treated as gospel."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781596913424
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	06/28/2007
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	8.24(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.93(d)

About the Author

Nina Planck, author of Real Food, Real Food for Mother and Baby, and The Real Food Cookbook, is a leading expert on farmer's markets and traditional food. In London, England in 1999, she created the first modern farmer's markets, and in New York City, she ran the legendary Greenmarket. Nina lives in Greenwich Village with her husband, the pioneering cheese monger Robbie Kaufelt, and their three children.

www.NinaPlanck.com

@ninaplanck (X)

@ninaplanck (IG)

Table of Contents

I Grow Up on Real Food, Lose My Way, and Come Home Again     1
First I Explain What Real Food Is     1
We Become Vegetable Farmers in Virginia     4
I Am Forced to Eat Homemade Food     7
My Virtuous Diet Makes Me Plump and Grumpy     13
In London I Am Rescued by Farmers' Markets     17
I Discover Weston Price and His Odd Notions     23
Everywhere I Go, People Are Afraid of Real Food     31
Real Milk, Butter, and Cheese     39
I Am Nursed on the Perfect Food     39
I Remember Milking Mabel the Cow     44
A Short History of Milk     49
I Reply to the Milk Critics     53
Milk, Butter, Cholesterol, and Heart Disease     60
Traditional and Industrial Milk Are Different     67
I Describe the Virtues of Raw Milk     76
I Learn to Appreciate Proper Cheese     82
Real Meat     87
Why Even Vegetable Farms Need Animals     87
How Factory Farms Wreck the Natural Order     91
Why Grass Is Best (and I Don't Mean for Tennis)     99
The Virtues of Beef, Pork, and Poultry Fat     105
I Try the Winston Churchill Diet     110
I Am Skeptical That Red Meat Causes Cancer     113
Buying and Cooking Real Meat     117
Real Fish     122
How Our Brains Grew Fat on Fish     122
Life After Salmon: Obesity, Diabetes, and Heart Disease     124
Are You Depressed? Try Eating More Fish     128
The Truth About Fish Farming     131
Real Fruit and Vegetables     139
Why I Never Rebelled Against Vegetables     139
What Is an Industrial Tomato?     146
I Learn How to Answer the Question: Are You Organic?     151
How to Eat More Vegetables     157
Real Fats     163
Some Surprising Facts About Fats     163
If You Have Only Two Minutes to Learn About Fats, Read This     167
How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Saturated Fats     174
Please Butter Your Carrots     180
Make Mine Extra-Virgin     183
My Opinion of the Minor Vegetable Oils     187
Coconut Oil Is Good for You     190
Industrial Fats     196
How the Margarine Makers Outfoxed the Dairy Farmers     196
How Fake Butter Causes Heart Disease     200
Why I Don't Eat Corn, Soybean, or Sunflower Oil     203
I Am Not Convinced by Canola      207
Other Real Foods     210
The Abominable Egg White Omelet     210
Whole Grains and Real Bread     215
Traditional and Industrial Soy Are Different     225
I Explain the Difference Between Good Salt and Bad     234
Chocolate: The Darker the Better     238
Beyond Cholesterol     245
What Is Cholesterol?     245
How Cholesterol Became the Villain     249
The Cholesterol Skeptics     253
Diet First, Then Medication     258
A Disease of Deficiency     262
The Omnivore's Dilemma     269
Where to Find Real Food     276
Further Reading and Resources     283
Notes     290
Glossary     306
Bibliography     316
Appreciation     322
Index     323

Editorial Reviews

Nina's real food concept is critical for new parents and her advice on introducing solids is the best no-nonsense, eliminate-the-power-struggle option I've read in years.

author of The Big Book of Birth and founder of Rea Erica Lyon

Nina Planck is a good, stylish writer and a dogged researcher who writes directly, forthrightly and with an edge. She isn't afraid to make the occasional wisecrack ("No doubt, for some people, cracking open an egg is one chore too many") while taking unpopular positions. Her chosen field-she is a champion of "real" (as opposed to industrialized) food-is one in which unpopular positions are easy to find. As Planck reveals, in her compellingly smart Real Food: What to Eat and Why, much of what we have learned about nutrition in the past generation or so is either misinformed or dead wrong, and almost all of the food invented in the last century, and especially since the Second World War, is worse than almost all of the food that we've been eating since we developed agriculture. This means, she says, that butter is better than margarine (so, for that matter, is lard); that whole eggs (especially those laid by hens who scratch around in the dirt) are better than egg whites, and that eggs in general are an integral part of a sound diet; that full-fat milk is preferable to skim, raw preferable to pasteurized, au naturel preferable to homogenized. She goes so far as to maintain-horror of horrors-that chopped liver mixed with real schmaltz and hard-boiled eggs is, in a very real way, a form of health food. Like those who've paved the way before her, she urges us to eat in a natural, old-fashioned way. But unlike many of them, and unlike her sometimes overbearing compatriots in the Slow Food movement, she is far from dogmatic, making her case casually, gently, persuasively. And personally, Planck's philosophy grows directly out of her life history, which included a pair of well-educated parents who decided, when the author was two, to pull up stakes in Buffalo, N.Y., and take up farming in northern Virginia. Planck, therefore, grew up among that odd combination of rural farming intellectuals who not only wanted to raise food for a living but could explain why it made sense. Planck, who is now an author and a creator and manager of farmers' markets, has a message that can be-and is-summed up in straightforward and simple fashion in her first couple of chapters. She then goes on to build her case elaborately, citing both recent and venerable studies, concluding in the end that the only sensible path for eating, the one that maintains and even improves health, the one that maintains stable weight and avoids obesity, happens to be the one that we all crave: not modern food, but traditional food, and not industrial food, but real food. (June) Mark Bittman's latest book is The Best Recipes in the World (Broadway); he is also the author of How to Cook Everything (Wiley). Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

[Planck] is a cross between Alice Waters and Martha Stewart.” —Washington Post

“Science is finally catching up to what our grandmothers knew long ago: that traditional foods, and even fats, are actually good for you—and a whole lot healthier than the creations of food technology . . . Nina Planck has written a valuable and eye-opening book.” —Michael Pollan

From the Publisher