Tommy, I was thinking in terms of meat. I come from three generations of people in the meat business. It's the "grass finished" thing that I can't make sense of.

Yeah. I was thinking dairy because sometimes dairy cattle get sold for meat. But now that I think of it, this must be a small percentage of meat out there, huh?

What kind of chicken and eggs should I buy then? I try to be good hard responsible-consumer-man!

Farmer's market/CSA. They're hella expensive, but I have to admit, they do taste a LOT better.

What kind of chicken and eggs should I buy then? I try to be good hard responsible-consumer-man!

The kind that came first.

Growing up, video games were very strongly gender-segregated in my family; my father and brother played them, and females didn't. Instead, we sat around and watched the males play video games, because clearly the video games were very important. Also, my father seemed to like video games more than his children. This may, in fact, still be the case. (Did I mention, issues?)

I have already made excited plans to play Rock Band in Vegas this summer. I am lo-end.

I had Chun King chop suey (or maybe chow mein?) in a can for many, many a childhood dinner. Really two cans, because you got the exciting extra can of crunchy noodles to sprinkle on top.

I think of it as camping food, cause that's the only time we had it. Then came ramen and it became our main camping meal (ramen+froz or dehydrated veggies and tuna.) Mmmm, the taste/smell of bluet. I've made the ramen concotion since, but it isn't the same without the bluet cylinder stink.

Many of the "back to basics" food movements have a certain worthwhile logic, while also being riddled with rules that make no sense and are not scalable. Why is that?

Heh. This.

I support his philosophies in a general kind of way, but when he gets specific, Michael Pollan annoys the living shit out of me. I can't read more than a few sentences into any of his columns before I want to roll up the magazine and start beating him with it. He's like the Michael Moore of foodie-ism.

And mostly this. Because I can get behind "Eat Food, Not too much, mostly plants" (or whatever it is), but when you introduce Rules, I got 2 words for you: nuh and uh.

--Avoid food products containing ingredients that 
a) are unfamiliar

Does this mean foreign food? Even if it's plant-based?

b) are unpronounceable

Whole lotta shit I can't pronounce. Like foreign food. Which Pollan espouses below.

c) are more than 5 in number

Dude. Arbitrary much?

--Avoid foods that make health claims

No problem. Twinkies definitely don't make health claims.

--Eat meals, don’t snack


That doesn't work with a lot of people's (1) lifestyles and/or (2) metabolisms. If I couldn't snack, I'd keel over before dinner.

--Eat mostly plants, especially leaves (not seeds)

What's the problem with seeds? Seeds (punkin, et al.) and nuts are a great source of protein and healthy fat.

--Eat more like people with traditional food cultures (the French, Italians, the Japanese, Indians, Greeks)

Okay, but I'm supposed to avoid food I can't pronounce, and that my great-grandmother wouldn't recognize, which eliminates a LOT of French, Italian, Indian, Greek, and especially Japanese food. I *still* don't know how to pronounce "omakase," and my great-grandma McCarthy would have put it on the end of a fishing pole as bait.

Some of my great grandparents lived on biscuits, cornbread and cured pork products, plus a couple of kinds of vegetables cooked to mush with more pork products.

Whole lotta shit I can't pronounce. Like foreign food. Which Pollan espouses below.

I was visiting a friend in the 'burbs a couple of weekends ago and her local Jewel had a section of British food in their "ethnic" foods section. I bet you could pronounce that. . . although some of it probably wouldn't fit in with his other categories.

In his defense, he is going to be 32. And also I myself don't understand game systems, and think they're for kids, but apparently I'm wrong and all 30-year-olds play video games.

I spent part of the weekend playing Assassin's Creed and I'm 37. LOVE IT, too.

Some of my great grandparents lived on biscuits, cornbread and cured pork products, plus a couple of kinds of vegetables cooked to mush with more pork products.

My grandfather lived to be 88 on this diet. Including smoking non-filtered cigarettes at age 12, working in coal mines his entire life and being a raging alcoholic who made his own moonshine.