The Flavors of Existent Eating

by

Nicki Leone

 

If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.

—Julia Child (attributed)

She understands that when I say “real food,” I mean food that is cooked for you after you place your order. Food that has to be eaten at a table, on a plate, with at least some utensils. Food that can’t be handed to you though a window. And most importantly, food that still resembles what it was before it was dinner. I like my tomatoes to look like tomatoes, and my steak to look like cow.  

Nina Planck agrees. In fact, she agrees so emphatically that if she had her way, not only would her steak look like cow, but she would prefer to have the option of walking out to the pasture and picking out the cow she wanted to eat. And I’m only exaggerating a little. Planck has been called “the patron saint of farmers’ markets.” She grew up on a small family farm in Virginia, helped to create one of the first farmers’ markets in London, ran the famous Greenmarkets in New York City, and has become a tireless advocate for local foods and small scale sustainable farming (and eating). She wrote The Farmers’ Market Cookbook, a volume that to this day remains paragon among cookbooks for its actually useful and non-fussy recipes. Now she gives full reign to her zeal in her new book (just released in paperback): Real Food: What to Eat and Why (Bloomsbury; $14.95).

Real Food is not a cookbook, but it is a strident plea for a return to common sense eating at a time when our approach to food ventures on the manic and paranoid. Besieged by frightening reports of poisoned pet food on the one hand, and a bewildering array of  “scientific” (and often contradictory) health reports on the other, left to navigate a veritable minefield of dietary regimens that measure your caloric intake and cholesterol levels with the kind of intensity the IRS usually reserves for corporate CEOs with too many offshore accounts, eating in this country has ceased to be an act of pleasure or an opportunity for social interaction. All too often it is now a source of stress and even fear.

“Enough!” cries Planck, “Get a grip!” Planck faces off against most of the current food fads and fashions in her book and argues—passionately—for a more reasoned approach to eating that can be summed up in the comment she makes when she talks about her own migration from strict vegetarian to a more rounded diet founded on the pleasures of eggs, dairy, and bacon. “Without really trying,” she says, “I stopped thinking about the food and started tasting it.”

Planck defines “real food” as foods that are traditional, and that are old. Old as in “we have eaten these for thousands of years,” not as in “hey, that bread looks moldy.” Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables and fruit, butter and milk are all old. Hot dogs and margarine are not. “Traditional” means, by and large, “the way we used to eat them”—fruits and vegetables mostly eaten fresh in season.Grains left whole, oils unrefined. Bread left on its own to rise from yeast or sourdough starter is traditional. Krispy Kreme donuts, alas, are not. Planck is adamantly opposed to little trays of pre-formed meals that go in the microwave. But she is equally opposed to things shaped like hamburgers that are made out of soybeans. Her ire falls equally upon the sanctimonious proponents of the vegan lifestyle as it does upon the evil purveyors of five-minute pasta Alfredo. Indeed, she spends as much time in the book defending red meat to the vegetarian reader as she does defending real butter to the diet-addicted.

The book is divided into about ten chapters, each of which takes a hard look at a different aspect of the average American diet. There are chapters on meat, fish, vegetables, dairy, and cooking oils. There are a fair number of charts and lists (because people on diets love charts and lists) of food that is or isn’t eco-friendly, and why they are or aren’t more nutritious. Planck is a trained nutritionist, and is able to talk knowledgably and clearly about things like fatty acids, lipids, LDL cholesterol and the general processes by which our bodies turn food into energy. But what makes Real Food convincing isn’t the scientific evidence the author cites ad infinitum, but her tone of impassioned frustration at our culture’s tendency to go off on ridiculous and potentially dangerous food fads. When I was a child, says my mother, the latest scientific theory was that children shouldn’t have milk once they stopped breast feeding. Mom scoffed at this idea, and was vindicated a decade later when the latest scientific data showed that children who didn’t drink milk had lesser bone density. Planck does lots of scoffing in Real Food. It’s hard not to be charmed by some of the section titles in the book: “I Am Skeptical That Red Meat Causes Cancer”  or “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Saturated Fats” or “The Abominable Egg White Omelet.” I am with her on that last one—who in their right mind would want to eat an egg white omelet?

Planck is, in her own way, a culinary fanatic. She doesn’t make many concessions to the realities of a modern lifestyle, and it is hard to imagine that anyone will be able to religiously follow her own self-appointed diet of entirely locally-produced, organically-grown, unrefined foods. Where, for example, does one get raw milk on a regular basis? Raw mild from grass-fed cows  who have never been treated with antibiotics and have only ever ingested pesticide-free grass? But the saving grace of the book is that the author acknowledges her own fanaticism and does offer a few compromises for those of us whose lives preclude daily trips to the local farm in search of freshly-laid eggs and milk still frothing around in the pail. Eat locally and organically grown vegetables, Planck advises. And if you can’t find organic, at least eat local. And if you can’t find local, then at least eat vegetables. One suspects that she looks upon vegetables found in cans with the same kind of favor that strict parents might regard certain nightly practices of their adolescent children. She doesn’t quite say “You’ll go blind!” but you get the feeling she’s thinking it.

Planck has her own weaknesses, which to be fair she freely acknowledges. It is rather amusing how much time she spends justifying her inclusion of chocolate into the category of “real foods.” Even though—let us be honest--chocolate is one of the most nontraditional, overly-processed (and in its current form) incredibly “recent” foods to be found in the supermarket. “Everyone has his poison” she says, “or ought to,” and goes on to discuss the healthiest incarnations of cacao.

Planck’s tone is often somewhat didactic, (as evidenced by the rather bossy subtitle of the book) and one can’t help but think that she is preaching to the converted. The scientific data she spreads liberally throughout the book is probably only convincing to those who are already looking to be convinced, especially when weighed against the thousands of  nutritional “studies” published and reported on every year. Real Food works best as a kind of antidote to the often extreme claims of the various dietary systems and health movements. It is remarkable in that it takes a lot of the fear—and guilt—out of eating, and allows us to enjoy ourselves while eating responsibly. And while it is not a diet per se, Real Food does offer a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card to indulge ourselves in delicious things, at least in moderation. Planck is follower of the Julia Child school of eating: “The only time to eat diet food,” Child once said, “is while waiting for the steak to cook.”


Nicki Leone showed her proclivities early when as a young child she asked her parents if she could exchange the jewelry a well-meaning relative had given her for Christmas for a dictionary instead. She earned her B.A. in Russian and Middle Eastern History from Boston College, supporting her college career with a part-time job in a bookstore. Since then, she has been in and out of academic institutions, but has always managed to work with books no matter what. She began working for Bristol Books, an independent bookstore in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1993, and three years later became its manager, which is where she stayed for the next fifteen years. Currently she works for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, developing marketing and outreach programs for independent bookstores. Nicki is a book reviewer for several magazines, an occasional on-air book reviewer and commentator for the Wilmington public radio station WHQR, and a co-host on the television program “Let's Read” on UNCW. She is one of the founders of The Cape Fear Crime Festival, an annual book festival for mystery readers and writers, and currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network. She manages all this by the grace of a very patient partner and the loving support of three dogs and two cats. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it