Cooked - Earth

Part four of Michael Pollan's "Cooked" is entitled "Earth." Rather than being about soil and growth in that manner, it was about microbes and fermentation. Within this section, Pollan focuses on three main ferments - plant, animal, and alcohol (although alcohol comes from plant matter). Fermentation has always been present; it was the original preservative. Humans aren't the only to attempt to manage the microbes which ferment Earth's beautiful products; many animals seek ferments - largely for their nutrient, 'shelf life', and their flavor. Even when it comes to alcohol, there are a great many animals (humans included) who desire and seek it. Personally, I enjoyed the anecdote about elephants and their methods of finding large enough quantities of alcohol - even if it meant "busting into buildings suspected of housing a still or stash of booze" - in India (374).

One statement that didn't come to a surprise, but i still had never thought of it was the fact that humans contain an immense amount of bacterium and other microorganisms. Most of our cells and DNA don't belong to us, but to them. We house a "community of several hundred co-evolved and interdependent species" (323). That brings in perspective. I live in a community of other people which also live in a community of other species, all while having communities of microorganisms living inside all of us and in most things.

• "We have changed the human diet in such a way that it no longer feeds the whole super-organism, as it were, only our human selves. We're eating for one, when we need to be eating for, oh, a few trillion." (333)

Just a thought...If we can't reduce our foods to the summation of their constituent parts, then couldn't the same be said about us?

Cooked - Air

According to Michael Pollan, "Agriculture - which consists mainly of growing edible grasses like wheat, corn, and rice - is our term for this revolutionary new approach to getting food from the soil and the sun" (206). "Those in this industry "succeed not by dictating to them, as a carpenter might to lumber, but by aligning his interest with theirs" (218).

In this week's section of "Cooked," we dove into the effect air has on bread baking. As a species, we have the desire to understand and control everything we interact with. Food scientist continue to try to reduce food into a summation of its parts. This reductionist science doesn't work. In the situation of bread, specifically, "science can't reduce this complexity to a simple answer" - nor does it need to (262). Personally, I like to be able to have complete control over everything I'm responsible for. Baking, especially, has too many free radicals for my liking. Pollan's outlook is one that settles my need to control. 

• "The baker is the conductor of an intricate symphony of transformation that takes in everything from the grass seed to the millstone, the microbial fermentation to the pressure-cooking, and culminates in the salivation that a well-baked bread inspires in the mouth." (241)

I like this because it almost sounds like the baker isn't playing God for baking; he's more of a facilitator for learning (like a professor) - allowing various elements such as soil, sun, and air to explore and create, rather than telling them what to do.