If we are what we eat, we’re in serious trouble

As a newlywed, I needed a job. Badly. My new hubby was still in school in hyperexpensive Santa Barbara and we were living on whatever I could make. Trouble was, employers weren’t exactly beating down doors with offers for fresh-out-of-school journalism majors like me.

I finally found work as an Orkin commercial pest control rep. Now, I was the chick who slept in the cook tent rather than risk a buggy sleeping bag at camp. But 800 bucks a month was enough to pay Santa Barbara rent and gas with $50 left over for groceries, so I plunged into the world of supersized cockroaches, rats and other creepy-crawlies in LA Chinatown.

In many ways that job was a first: First brush with sexual harassment (a 20-year old coed in high heels was not exactly the norm on the LA warehouse circuit), first encounter with ex-cons (most of the “pest technicians” I worked with were just-paroled felons who tended to regard me as a not-too-bright daughter), first awareness of rats bigger than my cat, first discovery of the delightful habits of the Oriental cockroach, etc., etc.

I also developed a unique skill, the ability to instantly identify cockroach hideouts. (Hint: Look for the moistest, darkest, warmest crevice in a refrigeration unit, generally next to the motor) It was a huge hit with supermarket managers and restaurant owners, although I don’t recommend it as a party trick. No matter how many times you explain to your host that it’s perfectly normal for cockroaches to live under his refrigerator, you can kiss subsequent party invitations goodbye, and there’s a high likelihood that the cleaning lady will be fired.

Anyway, after visiting a dozen Southern California restaurants and viewing the pest pantheon munching on, living in and leaving waste in the cuisine, I gave up restaurant eating for several years.

(And, BTW, these weren’t the archetypical filthy greasy spoons, either. The worst pest problem I encountered was in a VERY chi-chi French restaurant in Montecito, selling $200 dinners and thousand-buck bottles of wine. I was called in because the extremely expensive chef threatened to go back to France when he discovered he couldn’t tell the capers from the ….never mind).

The restaurants didn’t get cleaner, but I eventually resumed eating in them because it was either that or cook. And, I reasoned, if all that restaurant-eating prior to Orkin hadn’t killed me, how bad could it really be?

I’m bringing this up now because I’m reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History in Four Meals, and so far I’m deciding I’d rather eat cockroaches than some of the stuff the author says is part of my regular diet right now.

The book’s primarily about corn and its role in the US food chain. I’m only halfway through the book–so maybe it has a happier ending than I think–but at this point the cockroaches are looking mighty wholesome.

Here’s what I’m getting so far:

• The vast majority of food in US grocery stores has its origins in corn, petroleum and/or soybeans, not whatever the label says
• “Organic food” ain’t necessarily organic, at least not as you and I think of it, and free range essentially means that the chicken (or whoever) was given “access” to a lawn at some point in its life
• Corn-fed beef is an oxymoron; the only way that cows can eat corn without getting sick is if you stuff them full of antibiotics
• There are measurable differences in nutrients (and taste) between food grown on a modern commercial farm and food grown almost anywhere else
• The twin epidemics of obesity and type II diabetes track almost perfectly with the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup in place of sugar

Yuck. When you can’t trust your Big Mac, what can you trust?

Proof positive that you need to pay attention to EVERYthing, I guess. So here I go, into the wide world of old-fashioned food.

More on this later.

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