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Not long ago I was offered some Triscuits, which are now apparently baked rather than fried and are free of trans-fats. I used to love Triscuits (a long time ago, before I knew what was in them). So I ate a Triscuit, just for old times' sake.
I wanted to gag. These Triscuits were labeled "roasted garlic flavour," and they tasted of very stale, strong, artificial garlic flavor. I know what roasted garlic tastes like: nutty and delicious and faintly garlicky. This Triscuit tasted like a collection of artificially manufactured chemicals. Not a real flavour in the bunch.
I began to reflect on the decline of the real. If a child grows up with these artificially flavoured snacks, then she never learns what a real flavour is. And it's no wonder that people overeat. Once you trick your mouth into thinking that these Triscuits taste good, you eat a lot of them—and you keep eating because you keep waiting for the moment when you feel satisfied. But you never will feel satisfied because they have no real taste.
This is the situation for those North Americans who regularly eat industrialized foods with no nutritional value and no taste. It breaks my heart.
I started this piece many months ago (just after having tasted that Triscuit). Since then, Michael Pollan has written his book-length, beautifully argued piece on the same subject, which I urge everyone to read: In Defense of Food. Among many other suggestions, he urges us to eat only food that our great-grandmothers would have recognized as food. (That pretty much lets out Triscuits.) And when you've finished Michael Pollan, you might want to read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's year of eating locally.
Bear with me. I don't proselytize very often. But this is important!
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