Science is the best method we’ve ever devised to answer questions we cannot answer with casual observations; it extends our observations and senses to the realms of the unseeable, unhearable and untouchable...
Your second paragraph gives one of the two best descriptions I’ve read about the methods and the reach of science. (David Deutsch wrote the other one.)
Who knows when the rot set in? I remember that in the late fifties and early sixties my mother, like millions of others, was in thrall to the convenience and space-age wonder of instant beverages, pudding mixes, canned or dehydrated soups, cakes made with Miracle Whip, and TV dinners, though technology had not yet advanced to the point of having the weird-tasting Salisbury steak and the apple crisp simultaneously hot. Soon, we were certain, we’d be squeezing boeuf Bourguignon into our mouths out of toothpaste tubes, thereby maximizing the two extra days we’d have for leisure by the swimming pool, once computers had relieved us of workday drudgery.
Yes. I know.
That wasn’t science, it was marketing; food voodoo. In the nineties, we endured Stop the Insanity! (remember Susan Powter?) as we were scolded about fat. Fat makes you fat! What could be more obvious? And we measured out our oil with teaspoons and bought hydrogenated margarine, and had salads with just vinegar for dressing, and took the crispy skin off chicken. We threw out our self-confidence and our taste buds to follow the self-proclaimed “expert,” becoming as boneless and skinless as our dry-as-dust entrées. No monastery could have devised ceremonies more penitential than our “fat-free” meals.
All was well, because we followed fat-free until 5 p.m., then, crazy with deprivation and resentment, gorged on six-packs of Tim Hortons Maple Glazed Donuts (served to mask the appalling taste of their “triple-triple” coffee) because there’s only so much self-hatred a boy can take.
Then, the miracle: We woke up to discover that fat was good again. We could start our days with a three-egg cheese omelet friend in butter and a gallon of fruit juice, but — minus the toast. Because now all those scientist-hucksters with sidelines in diet pills and whey powder had determined that carbs made you fat.
What could be more obvious? What do they feed cattle to make them fat? Carbs! (Yes, corn, or, for the deep-pocketed, grains; anything except what cattle evolved to eat: grass. Cattle fed grains become ill and this necessitates antibiotics…but that’s another horror story.) At the height of the no-carbs craze, I heard a member of something like the Citrus Fruit Production Board interviewed, and I still remember her exasperated outburst: “People are not getting fat eating oranges!” It was the last bit of common sense I heard for a while.
We reached our collective low point with the anti-bread hysteria. Bread is such a potent symbol for nourishment, home, togetherness, civilization: the staff of life, our daily bread, breaking bread, companion (someone you share bread with…) even, for the religiously inclined, a substance that might represent the physical presence of God… that to reject it was to throw out a body of knowledge that was not truly scientific, but at least empirical; amassed by means of trial and error, and from that perspective concrete, demonstrable. To reject bread was to reject our particular cultures, daily lives and even language; to pretend that all this time we knew nothing.
How did mankind manage to survive this long, I wonder?
And, sadly, with our cultural amnesia, we’ve also forgotten that food is a sensual pleasure. Taste those Omega-6 fatty acids! Thrill to those bioflavinoids! Seriously. This is not the way we need to think about food. We feast on pseudo-science and quackery, and forget that strawberries in January, flown in to Ontario from California, are as bloated and tasteless as they are inappropriate to the season; a sign of our consuming greed and disdain for the rhythms and simple timelines of nature. If we’d wait until June or July, we’d remember that strawberries are exquisite, to be treasured because their taste is as glorious and as ephemeral as summer.
Humans are omnivores, eaters of potentially everything (!) and the “omnivore’s dilemma,” as explained by Michael Pollan, is basically, “How do we know what to eat?” or even “What is permissible or safe to eat?” The answer is given to us subliminally, in the culture passed down from one generation to the next, at tables where, together with our families and companions, we learn traditions around food, perfectly calibrated for the seasons, for our local climate, even for the time of day. This is miraculous.
We just have to remember that, to find that culture, we’ll need to dig back about two generations, to a time when we weren’t afraid; when we could trust food enough to leave it, and ourselves, alone.
DR
