Sometimes when I read about the processing of food in America I find myself overwhelmed. Michael Pollan’s exposure of the cornification of our country in The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Eric Schlosser’s descriptions of the perverse manipulation of food flavors in Fast Food Nation make me look at food with an anxious, uncertain eye. What am I eating? And does it bear any resemblance to what I really think it is?
As a farmer’s daughter, I grew up knowing where my food came from. We had our own cattle slaughtered and stored the packaged meat in our freezer. My mother laboriously prepared green beans straight from the field, which we packaged and froze for the coming months. I never had a jar of jam that didn’t come from our own produce. But now? I live in the city, and my father, though he still produces multiple crops, doesn’t grow the diversity necessary for a well-balanced diet. Both of us are patrons of supermarkets and all the brightly packaged products there.
Like many others, I yearn for a clearer, more transparent vision of one of the most basic aspects of life–eating. I guess I’ve reached the point where I don’t care if there’s a pound of butter in the recipe. I just want to know what the ingredients are. And if I don’t know what half the ingredients in a processed food are– then why am I eating it? It might as well be Soylent Green.
Which brings me to the topic of fresh-squeezed orange juice. I’ve never been a big juice drinker, but I love fresh-squeezed orange juice. The taste is unmatched. And I’m lucky, as the daughter of a citrus-producer, to have access to as many organic mandarin oranges as I want. My father hooked me. He drinks fresh-squeezed mandarin juice every day in season, squeezing it with a simple old electric juicer ($20.99 at Target!).
The beauty of fresh-squeezed juice is that not only does it taste so outrageously good, but you also know exactly what it is. The processing is simple and done by you. Not only that, the nutrition is outstanding. An 8-oz glass provides 100% of the RDA for Vitamin C, as well quality amounts of thiamine, folate, and potassium. It’s good for you, it tastes great, and it’s pure. What’s not to like about that?
If you contrast that with some of the reconstituted orange juices in the store… well, I won’t go into that beyond to say there’s nothing local about that juice (think Brazil) and some of the ingredients aren’t listed on the container. So again, as mantra for 2010, I keep coming back to Keep It Simple. There’s something really lovely about going slow, knowing where you’re going, and savoring the steps along the way.