The dirty secret of eating well: You have to cook

Mark Bittman is pretty good at dancing around difficult subjects. He constantly mentions that he is not vegan, even though his new program has you eating vegan before 6 p.m., and it is a program which he has followed for many years. And when asked, he often admits that he eats vegan after 6 p.m. as well. It's a healthy diet - Bittman is an avid runner, and he avoids starches like pasta and white rice. (And although he understands if you want to eat them, he gently suggests you avoid them.)

Even so, even as delicately as he soft-pedals his message, Bittman himself has finally had to admit that if you want to eat healthy, you have to cook everything yourself from scratch. There is no other way, because as Bittman points out in his new book, "The whole food system is kind of a wreck. It's encouraging us to eat badly. Cooking gives you control over what you eat." He later adds that "If you refuse to cook, don't want to cook, there's nothing I can do about it."

Image courtesy Flickr/buck82

This is the sad truth, as I think anyone who has made a serious effort to clean up their diet has finally had to admit. With few exceptions (plain raw almonds spring to mind, as well as "hand fruit" like apples and bananas), if you want to eat healthy, you have to cook it yourself.

Want to eat something healthy at McDonald's? You can't, despite their marketing efforts to convince you otherwise. But what surprises many people - what has surprised me - is that the same is true for every other restaurant, as well as just about everything you can buy at the grocery store.

There's a reason why they call them "convenience foods." Not having to cook is a huge convenience. And being able to cook every meal from scratch is a luxury that many people simply cannot afford.

Image courtesy Flickr/cafemama

There is an ongoing debate about whether organic food is worth the extra cost. Many people are quick to point out that a lot of Americans simply cannot afford to eat organic food. (Having recently priced out some organic ground beef at 3x the cost of conventional beef, I guess I am one of them.) But the problem goes far deeper than that.

It's not just about money. You can always find more money somewhere, even if you have to cut back somewhere else to do it. The real problem is time. Time is the luxury that many people cannot afford. And this means that most Americans do not have a prayer at being able to eat a healthy diet.

Foodie guru Michael Pollan famously advises us to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." But for the most part, those plants don't come pre-prepared. (In fact, that's kind of the whole point of Pollan's worldview.)

Beans have to be soaked, onions have to be minced, potatoes have to be grated, celery has to be rinsed and chopped. It all takes a lot of time, even if you pre-cook a giant meal and portion it out for the week, you're still devoting an entire Sunday afternoon to cooking stuff. All you're doing is shifting the time, you're not actually saving any.

Image courtesy Flickr/mroach

There is a lot of hand waving given to the topic of "food deserts" and making sure that poor neighborhoods have access to fresh produce and farmer's markets. People seem a lot less concerned about how the poor will find the time and energy to cook all of this farmer's market produce before it goes bad.

Frankly I have to go with basic economic theory here: If people in poor neighborhoods wanted to buy a lot of fresh produce, they would, and their local stores would stock more of it. But when you're poor, you don't want to buy fresh mushrooms so that you can make risotto. You want to make store brand macaroni and cheese by tearing open a cardboard box and a foil packet, because you've been on your feet at a minimum wage job all day, and your kids are starving, and you just want to get off your feet for a few hours before bedtime.

Our food system is broken so badly that it is literally impossible to eat a healthy meal unless you make it from scratch. And not everyone can. Which means that there are entire swaths of the population who are doomed. We need to face these difficult facts and demand change. It's the only way to save ourselves.

Main image courtesy Flickr/J-P F