Cooked is a book by a well-known food critic and cook, Michael Pollan. The book was written in 2013 and was published by The Penguin Press. In Cooked, Michael Pollan talks about the evolution of cooking when looking into how we prepare food. He mentions repeatedly throughout the book that cooking sets humans apart from any other animal on the planet and it makes us both unique and evolutionary. The evolution of food has defined the human race and has shown to be the source of human expansion and culture in his research.
Food has made humans who they are and has even set apart different cultures and regions based on the potential foods available to those people and the way they choose to prepare them. Humans have chosen several different ways to prepare foods based on the ingredients and resources available. Many cultures used preserving methods to keep their produce and meats for longer than the original season would allow which opened the door for hundreds of cultures to find their own ways of preserving their food. Cultures have smoked, salted, roasted, and fermented their foods to keep them for longer periods of time. These methods have ultimately produced many of the foods that we know and love today including beef jerky, cheese, and pickled meats and vegetables.
Those flavors associated with the preservation methods eventually began to be what people’s pallets were accustomed to and they began to use those methods on all of their foods. These traditions eventually transitioned to becoming the base of an entire culture or group of people and it has become what the culture is ultimately known for when discussing food. Some methods have been used for thousands of years and are still enjoyed today by a wide variety of people because of the flavors produced and the potential benefits of eating those foods. Whether the methods were invented because of necessity or out of choice really did not matter, the result was a global food culture that shaped the lives of communities around the world. How we decide to cook things is not just our personal decision, it is rooted in deep cultural backgrounds that we may not even be aware of.
One thing that Pollan talks about is the changing of foods based on the scientific advancements around the world as well as the stress media puts on the world of food. In today’s modern culture, people are told that bacteria is bad and can have some devastating effects on us when in reality a lot of bacteria is actually vital to our health and wellbeing. Not having any bacteria can lead to a laundry list of problems for our body’s especially in the intestinal tract. One area that Pollan talks about is the subject of fermentation. Fermentation is the result of bacteria breaking down foods but this does not necessarily mean the foods are bad for consumption or dangerous to our health. Cultures have been fermenting foods for thousands of years without any sort of regard for bacteria. The foods that are fermented actually contain a great deal of good bacteria that is good for our bodies and helps keep our systems strong and functioning. Take the area of making cheese for example. In the book he talks with a woman who has been making cheese for years in an old wooden barrel that is home to countless bacteria. Pollan paid a scientist to run bacterial tests on her wooden barrel as well as a stainless steel container that had been completely disinfected and they asked the woman to make cheese in both. With that being said, not all bacteria is good bacteria and the one they were monitoring closely was E. Coli which is very dangerous for humans to consume. The woman proceeded to make cheese in both containers and the tests were performed to test the levels of dangerous bacteria to see if the cheeses were acceptable for human consumption. The results showed that the E. Coli levels of the cheese in the stainless steel tub were at levels that were not safe for human consumption but the levels found in the wooden barrel were minimal from the good bacteria found in the wood making the old fashioned cheese safe to eat. The author stressed the importance of good bacteria in our diets and in the way we make food and that the disinfect everything mentality isn’t the best approach to safe eating. The results of the simple experiment clearly proved his beliefs.
Cooked by Michael Pollan is not just about the wide range of foods found around the world and the different ways people have preserved and made food for centuries, it is about how cooking defines us as humans. The ways we prepare our foods are different from any other animal or lifeform on the planet and it makes us stand out among the vast population of life. He finally stresses the importance of balance in our cooking and how imbalances can lead to a wide range of problems for millions of people especially when looking into bacteria. The book was a great read and I would highly recommend it to a friend.