Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Review of Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan



Michael Pollan is the John McPhee of the food chain. I've read the first of his books, Omnivore's Dilemma, and Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation looked like interesting airplane reading. Some notes:

  • His main idea is that the best predictor of healthy diet is whether people cook their meals at home. Two reasons - control over the ingredients used, and the time/difficulty of cooking as a price that leads to a lower quantity demanded. Also, the most unhealthful items tend to be the most difficult to prepare. Amazingly, a huge proportion of Americans are spending more time watching other people cook on TV than cooking for themselves.
  • He surveys what he describes as the four types of cooking: over an open flame, in water, making bread, and fermentation. Another idea (which he has picked up elsewhere) is that these methods of transformation are like an auxilliary stomach; outsourcing digestion. Cooking is technology that gave humans time to spend on pursuits other than chewing and digesting.
  • Harold McGee says that onion plant cells contain "a very effective molecular bomb"; the sulfur compounds that are released are a defense against being eaten.
  • Michael Pollan probably uses the word synecdoche as much as every other writer I've ever read combined.
  • Development of roller milling in the mid 19th century led to closure of millstone grinding flour mills. This sounds like it was probably a disruptive innovation where the roller mills started out inferior - grinding grain with something other than stone would have been perceived at first as low quality. 
  • Roller mills were capital intensive, and the flour they produced had a longer shelf life than whole wheat flour, which was a one-two punch that knocked out local flour mills and led to consolidation of the milling industry.
  • Roller mills for making white flour work best with hard wheat, but that makes whole wheat flour taste worse.
  • An idea I hadn't heard - the microbiome (of bacteria) in the human gut extends the human genome. See from this presentation [pdf]: "Bacteria express glycoside hydrolase which converts glycans into useable sugars. No enzyme encoded in human genome is capable of digesting glycans—only bacterial enzymes." The Japanese tend to have bacteria that produce an enzyme that aids in seaweed digestion!
3.5/5

12 comments:

John said...

Can the youtube vid replace the book?

Unknown said...

His main idea is that the best predictor of healthy diet is whether people cook their meals at home. Two reasons - control over the ingredients used, and the time/difficulty of cooking as a price that leads to a lower quantity demanded.

I stopped buying packaged/prepared food six months ago and began cooking all my own meals, and I've found this to be true. I've lost ~5 pounds even though I was thin to begin with, and subjectively I feel a lot healthier. Packaged food is often cheaper per calorie than home-cooked food, but it's a false economy because the ease of cooking makes one eat more.

CP said...

Rating below 4: just read the review.

http://www.creditbubblestocks.com/search/label/books

CP said...

James:

"When the stock market becomes overvalued, many VIC members respond by lowering their standards. Sometimes they buy junkier stocks than they normally would: instead of buying stocks that trade at 6x earnings, they'll buy stocks that trade at 6x earnings pro forma for a turnaround that probably won't happen."
http://y0ungmoney.blogspot.com/2014/04/value-investors-club.html

I've noticed the same thing:
http://www.creditbubblestocks.com/2013/08/what-time-is-it.html

As I said then, " I looked at a number of 2007 research reports of dogs on the VIC, and what I notice is the breathless enthusiasm combined with a casual dismissal of potential problems."

Unknown said...

I've noticed the same thing:
http://www.creditbubblestocks.com/2013/08/what-time-is-it.html


Yeah, I saw your post and I agree 100%.

Low-quality stocks have had an incredible 14-year run, and I think that's trained people to underestimate the risks inherent to emerging markets, low-P/E cyclicals, turnarounds, etc. A lot of VICers mistakenly think they're buying value when they're really betting on low-quality outperformance.

CP said...

I saw VIC had a writeup of FEYE a few months ago. I wonder if it was long or short??

CP said...

Glenn Chan:

http://glennchan.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/be-careful-of-vic-writeups/

AllanF said...

Microbiome is today where Paleo was 5 years ago.

Paleo has a lot of hype and so forth, but at its root is 1) rejection of the lipid hypothesis of heart disease: sat fat bad, veg oils good, and healthy whole grains/complex carbs best of all, and 2) embracing naturally made food from whole ingredients over industrially manufactured crap in a (cardboard) box.

Paleo has a long way to go to become ubiquitous, but it's definitely moved beyond the stages of esoteric cultists and cutting edge life-hackers, and is being exposed to mainstream media consumers.

Paleo, like Atkins before it, ran into some hard problems of long-term health sustainability, but none of its adherents could really figure out why... in theory the approach sound. I think the microbiome considerations complete the picture that those two missed, and why.

If your curious for a quick primer on it, I'd start here and follow it deeper as your interest moves you.

CP said...

Thanks - bullish on paleo and microbiome!

CP said...

In NYT Magazine!:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-shampoo-bacteria-rich-hygiene-experiment.html?from=magazine

AllanF said...

Wow, hadn't heard of the AO product. Pretty cool.

CP said...

Further thoughts on the VIC:
http://www.creditbubblestocks.com/2014/11/under-pressure-from-uber-taxi-medallion.html