Real Food Is Ingredients

So much of the food that we eat, whether for convenience or out of habit, is not really food; it is food-like substances packed with ingredients. But, according to Jamie Oliver, real food is different:⁠

“Real food doesn’t have ingredients. Real food *is* ingredients.”

— Jamie Oliver

Processed food comes in packages with long lists of ingredients, many of which are difficult to pronounce. Real food doesn’t come with ingredients lists.

Processed food is made in a factory and typically has a branded story attached to it. Real food grows in the ground and looks like vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and grasses (grains).

Processed food tells a story. Real food *is* the story.

I was inspired by a TED Talk that I watched some time ago with Jamie Oliver, which featured a clip of him in a West Virginia school, asking if the first graders in the class recognized specific fruits and vegetables. The kids knew tomato ketchup but not tomatoes. Although parts of this episode were almost certainly staged and edited for the cameras, it nevertheless highlights a very real lack of education and knowledge in our culture, both in the kosher world and mainstream society, when it comes to fresh food. Whether out of convenience, lack of time or lack of education, this is a problem.

When kids identify most strongly with food that comes out of a branded package, they are going to make whatever the food companies tell them to eat. They will never cook for themselves.

The next time you take your kids to the local market, have them read the ingredients of their favorite packaged foods. It’s an excellent habit to establish at a young age. See how many ingredients they can recognize or pronounce. Start a conversation around how and where that product is made and how those ingredients function in the food. I’ve done this with my kids.

Then take them to the produce and fruit aisle. Have them describe how their favorite fruit or vegetable comes into being, what “ingredients” go into “making” it and the color, taste and texture it has when it is ready to eat. My kids will grab the nearest carrot, pepper or apple.

And then those fresh foods become the “raw material” ingredients for an infinite variety of delicious, freshly-cooked dishes.

It’s almost as if making your own food has now become an act of subversion!

The Seven Species: Grapes

Grapes on a grapevine in Tzfat, Israel (2004).

It often takes a visit to a foreign country to seek to understand the daily routines we inhabit, the choices we make and the outcomes that we take for granted.

In our daily hustle and bustle, in our quest to become efficient, organized and timely, we neglect aspects of our lives to which we have become habituated, desensitized and detached. The specific area to which I refer is meals, where detachment is a part daily life.

For instance, when you stand to recite that Friday night blessing over the wine –

“Blessed are You, L-rd our G‑d, King of the universe, Who creates the fruit of the vine.”

– are you mindful of what you are drinking? Have you thought about the farm where the grapes were planted, grown, nourished, harvested, prepared and bottled; the quality of the soil and the type of irrigation used; the identity of the sommeliers who have overseen the cultivars that we take for granted as brand-name wines? Have you thought about what the “fruit of the vine” actually looks like?

When you purchased that bottle from your local market, you probably had no idea where it came from. And, beyond checking that you recognized the brand name or the grape varietal, you probably never cared. Western culture is obsessed with turning everything into a brand name. Wine and grape juice are not immune from this game of convenience.

But behind every wine brand is a vineyard with juicy, ripe grapes.

I visited Israel in August for my best friend’s wedding. Afterward, while traveling in the northern region of the country, I visited two organic farms and a hydroponics greenhouse. One crop I saw a lot of was grapevines.

The Amphorae Winery in the Carmel Valley, Israel

At the base of the Carmel ridge in the Makura Farm is the Amphorae Winery, often cited as the most beautiful winery in Israel and visually reminiscent of Bordeaux or Tuscany.

The Amphorae Winery in the Carmel Valley, Israel

I experienced a sense of wonder in exploring these vineyards: the famous and familiar names of the grape varietals juxtaposed against the unfamiliar vines themselves. It’s rather remarkable to walk a vineyard and recognize the names – Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Shiraz and Petit Verdot – while seeing the actual grapes and the shapes of their leaves for the very first time. I got to place a visual on the plant-based origin of the wines that I’d been drinking for decades. I realized for the first time that these were more than just brand names or regions printed on a bottle. Unless you are knowledgeable about wines, it’s just not something that naturally springs to mind.

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Cabernet Sauvignon

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Sauvignon Blanc

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Chardonnet

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Merlot

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Cabernet Franc

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Shiraz

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Petit Verdot

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Michael with Cabernet Franc

And now, when saying the blessing over the wine, I can visualize those grapevines blowing in the warm coastal breeze, the shape, texture, color and flavor of the grapes, the gently rolling hillsides that channel Tuscany.

* For the purposes of this blog, Amphorae Winery is unfortunately not certified kosher; hence I was unable to taste the wine. However, the agricultural aspect of this organic farm was undeniably top-notch.

Cooking as a Form of Worship

Judith Jones is the publisher who championed Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. She was a tour de force of cooking literature and an advocate for home cooking.

Cooking is a very grounding process, an opportunity to connect to the source of your nourishment. There is a certain sanctity in being able to trace the origin of your food through the cooking process and onto your plate. It is a very different experience from popping open a package of factory-prepared and -processed food made from 20 ingredients and to which you have no emotional connection. Cooking is also the one act of food that is beyond nature, the process of transforming a food into something else.

I recently took my family on a camping trip to Sequoia National Park. My two young boys learned how to catch, clean and cook a fish. It was a powerful learning moment for them and a reminder to pause and reflect on what the earth had given us.

As an observant Jew who eats only kosher food, I have been taught that raw ingredients and the ability to consume are both provided by God. Having food, and being able to eat it, are not a given. Therefore, we say blessings both before consuming specific foods as well as after the meal, to acknowledge from where our food comes. It is our way of giving thanks.

The one area of food preparation in which we do exert control is the cooking process. By cooking our food, we act as partners with the Creator in molding something new – like bread, soup, quiche or crackers. There is ample reason to give thanks.

With these thoughts in mind, we should savor our food rather than devour it. We should commit to eating purposefully rather than instinctually. And we should approach cooking with intention, to elevate our food from the earthly to the sublime.

Cooking in an Open Fire

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver wrote that “I'm probably a bit romantic about it, but I think we humans miss having contact with fire. We need it.”

And indeed we do. My wife and I cook at home on a gas stove and oven every day. But I had forgotten the amazing sensation of cooking in an open fire – and of sitting around it afterward.

We went on a family camping trip to Sequoia National Park in July and got to do just that.

• Sending my kids to collect branches of firewood to feed the fire…

• Watching my brother-in-law kindling the 🔥…

• Wrapping the 🥔 🍠🍆 before placing them in the 🔥…

• Listening to the snap-crackle-pop of as they roasted on the open fire…

• Marveling as the flames licked the cool nighttime air…

• Holding still as the embers briefly pierced the space between us…

And after the fire had gone to sleep, there was quiet under the stars by our 🏕.

Those moments were very surreal.

Reconnecting To Our Sources

“One of the most important things we can do around our food culture is to reconnect to its sources.”

— Michael Pollan

In the documentary “Cooked”, Michael Pollan truly hits upon the reasons why I love shopping farmer’s markets, visiting farms as often as possible and posting photos of fruits and vegetables:

“One of the most important things we can do around our food culture is reconnect to its sources…. Outsourcing has its values, and it certainly makes life easier, but it renders us all into passive consumers.”

I’ve never been entirely comfortable in the Western mindset of passively consuming products. As a consumer, I feel like I’ve ceded choices and decision making to supermarkets, clothing manufacturers and advertising agencies. On the surface, it appears to make life easier: they satisfy with convenience, taste or speed; and they free us from doing a lot of manual work ourselves. But this mindset actually strips us of *real choice* and desensitizes us to what the earth actually provides us.

At heart, I’m passionate about sources in all aspects of my life: I love exploring plants in the forest, examining rocks along the coast, wanting to know the story behind each thrilling discovery. As a kid, I learned how to tend to the myriad fruits and vegetables that my dad grew in our backyard. While eating our harvests, we often talked about the uniqueness of each pick: the enormous zucchinis; the scrawny grapes; the fat blackberries; the hefty collards that gave my dad a kidney stone.

There’s a certain sanctity in reconnecting to food sources, in recognizing the panoply of shapes, textures, flavors, aromas, colors and sounds in which nature packages its bounties. No plastic wrap; no cardboard boxes; no refined, processed & unrecognizable ingredients that are generations removed from their primary sources.

Pure, unadulterated joy.

Variety's the Spice of Life

“Variety’s the spice of life” has become one of the most hackneyed phrases in the English language. But taken literally, with food in mind, it takes on a very contemporary urgency.

Over 90% of American seed varieties available a century ago have gone extinct, according to @NatGeo. Both the number of varieties and the nutritional values of our foods are rapidly dwindling. At the same time, according to celiac.com, nearly 70% of the calories in every meal, snack and beverage that we consume come from wheat, dairy, soy & corn. Americans are eating fewer varieties of foods and over-indexing on a literal handful of common ones.

Why Is Variety Important?

Eating a wide range of diverse foods contributes to maintaining a healthy diet, which supplies the body with a host of essential nutrients and protects against chronic disease. Plus, it makes eating more fun!

Eat Good Food from Fresh Ingredients

Recently, I rewatched the 2009 film “Julie and Julia” and was inspired by the elegant simplicity of Julia Child’s approach to food: Eat good food from fresh ingredients.

Every adult should have a food philosophy. Along with sleep and movement, food is one of the most important determinants of health and wellness. What you put in your body is a leading indicator of how well you feel, how sharp your mind is and how efficiently you ward off disease and sickness.

My food philosophy is very simple: Eat whole, unprocessed foods whenever possible. Avoid additives and food-like substances created in a lab.

While I do not agree with the decadence of some of Julia Child’s dishes, I love that she emphasized using fresh, seasonal and locally-sourced ingredients.

What’s your food philosophy?