Day Four, ouch, I'm sore

Jeremiah mentions Michael Pollan, and yesterday I read an interesting article by him in the NYT. One section in particular shocked me.

"I spent an enlightening if somewhat depressing hour on the phone with a veteran food-marketing researcher, Harry Balzer, who explained that “people call things ‘cooking’ today that would roll their grandmother in her grave — heating up a can of soup or microwaving a frozen pizza.” Balzer has been studying American eating habits since 1978; the NPD Group, the firm he works for, collects data from a pool of 2,000 food diaries to track American eating habits. Years ago Balzer noticed that the definition of cooking held by his respondents had grown so broad as to be meaningless, so the firm tightened up the meaning of “to cook” at least slightly to capture what was really going on in American kitchens. To cook from scratch, they decreed, means to prepare a main dish that requires some degree of “assembly of elements.” So microwaving a pizza doesn’t count as cooking, though washing a head of lettuce and pouring bottled dressing over it does. Under this dispensation, you’re also cooking when you spread mayonnaise on a slice of bread and pile on some cold cuts or a hamburger patty. (Currently the most popular meal in America, at both lunch and dinner, is a sandwich; the No. 1 accompanying beverage is a soda.) At least by Balzer’s none-too-exacting standard, Americans are still cooking up a storm — 58 percent of our evening meals qualify, though even that figure has been falling steadily since the 1980s."

What is shocking here is that 42%, FORTY TWO PERCENT AND DROPPING!, of America's evening meals require no "assembly of elements". Easy Mac counts as cooking and three nights a week we're not doing that.

The article ends with this great quote by Balzer: "You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short, and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.”

Okay, enough being uppity, the workouts were a little tough today if I'm being honest, had to struggle to get done with that extra set of push-ups Patrick snuck in there. I took longer than the prescribed between-set rest time, that is for sure. Need to get to bed earlier, that's also for sure.