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With apologies to Jeanette, Gut Check's resident Gordon Ramsay fan, I had to share this:

Slate has a review of Ramsay's new family-friendly cookbook, Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food. Writer Laura Shapiro eviscerates the book, calling b.s. on the notion that Ramsay cooks these meals for his own family and that while this isn't a cookbook you'd normally call "food porn", Americans, at least, will probably buy it without any intention of making its recipes. Shapiro then criticizes the entire genre of "quick" cookbooks -- 30-Minute Meals, 10-Minute Meals, etc.

After the jump, an excerpt and an additional thought on the matter.

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www.michaelpollan.com

It's rare for a book to change your entire outlook on a subject as broad and vital as food, so it should be downright impossible for one author to write two such books within just a few years. Yet Michael Pollan has done exactly that. His latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, might not be as beautifully written as his revelatory 2006 tome, The Omnivore's Dilemma, but its concise, forceful argument is just as important.

Pollan wrote this book to answer the question posed by The Omnivore's Dilemma: What do I eat? He answers this question in the opening sentences: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." It's a catchy answer, easily adopted as a mantra, and the designer of the book's jacket smartly includes it on the front cover.

Still, Pollan needs 200 pages to unpack those three, seemingly simple sentences. The first sentence requires the most explanation. What are we eating, if not food? As Pollan makes clear, our obsession with nutrients has spawned over a century of meddling with our diet to enhance foods with the latest miracle cure, from oat bran in the 1980s to omega-3 today, and remove those we believe to be harmful. This has led to supermarkets of overly processed food-like substances -- not, Pollan argues, foods.

Indeed, In Defense of Food could easily be titled Against Nutritionism. The first of the book's three parts reveals much of food science as reductive and poorly researched. The obvious example is the rise and fall of transfats. First promoted as a replacement for "dangerous" natural fats, transfats are now considered far more unhealthy than animal fat. The book's second half explores how the Western diet has led to unheard-of levels of heart disease, diabetes and other ailments.

The final section explores what -- and, crucially, how -- we should eat. The "what" isn't so difficult to comprehend, though Pollan offers a handy, if imperfect, rule-of-thumb: stick to the outside of the supermarket, where the fresh produce, meat and dairy are located, rather than the central aisles where the processed food is stacked. Better yet, go to farmers' markets rather than supermarkets.

More challenging is to change how we eat. Pollan points out that the so-called French paradox comes from how the French perceive food. It is a pleasure to be savored, not fuel. Serve smaller portions, eat slowly and don't go back for seconds. And -- what is both the most sensible and maybe the most difficult advice -- pay more for smaller quantities of better food.

Readers expecting the engrossing reportage that marked The Omnivore's Dilemma, in which (among other things) Pollan follows a single beef cow from pasture to feedlot and, later, hunts a wild pig, might be disappointed by his approach here. As its subtitle makes clear, this is an extended argument. But it's a sound argument and one applicable to all of us.

-Ian Froeb

www.michaelpollan.com

Michael Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, should be available in bookstores now. I haven't picked up a copy yet -- and I'm a little backed up in my food reading, besides -- but here are two reviews:

Janet Maslin of the New York Times offers a rave review.

Laura Shaprio has a mostly positive review at Slate, though she does a good job of pointing out the shortcomings of Pollan's general technique -- namely, a certain pie-in-the-sky idealism about how we can achieve the sort of diet he envisions.

-Ian Froeb

www.kwintessential.co.uk

It's only fitting that, during our year-end celebration, we have at least one more story on China and food safety. Good news, in this case: China claims to have hit its food-safety goals early. (Reuters)

Whole Foods returns, too! The company is phasing out plastic shopping bags at its stores nationwide. (Houston Business Journal)

New York Times wine writer Eric Asimov looks back at the best wine books of 2007.

-Ian Froeb

Gut Check reviews new(ish) food- and drink-related books.

www.amazon.co.uk

A few years ago, I got a job as a Starbucks barista. As part of my training, I had to attend coffee school. The instructor was named Ernie. He was knowledgeable about all aspects of coffee production, from farming to brewing. He had trained his palate to distinguish between the Guatemala Antigua and the Kenya, though his favorite roast was the Italian, and had complete mastery of the coffee-taster’s slurp. His overall appearance was quirky, but not disarmingly so: he had slicked-back hair and a thin mustache and, instead of the standard khakis and polo, sported black pinstriped trousers and a matching vest. His brand of cigarette was Nat Sherman, which cost twice as much as plain old Marlboro, but which marked him as a connoisseur of the finer things in life. He was enthusiastic. He was highly-caffeinated. Occasionally, he would take a break from expounding on the difference between Arabica (good) and robusta (evil) beans to remind us, “We are taking over the world, one cup at a time.”

In short, Ernie was Starbucks, in human form.

The first half of Taylor Clark’s Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture explains how a creature like Ernie came to be. The original Starbucks was a small Seattle chain that specialized in fresh-roasted beans for home brewing. When Howard Schultz, a former housewares salesman, joined the company as its marketing manager, he envisioned a transformation of the small roastery into an Italian-style coffee bar, the kind where commuters stepped in only long enough to slam down a shot of expertly-brewed espresso before heading on their way.

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A new feature in which Gut Check reviews new(ish) food- and drink-related books.

www.gloucesterbooks.com

A book I should have mentioned in Monday's review of The Whale Warriors is Hooked: Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish by G. Bruce Knecht. I read this at the beginning of the year -- it was published in 2006; it's now available in paperback -- so I won't attempt to offer an in-depth review, just some thoughts.

As the title might suggest, Hooked makes a nice companion piece to The Whale Warriors. The narrative is quite similar, though in Hooked the legal issues are more or less clear cut: pirates violating maritime laws are pursued by Australian authorities.

www.environment.gov.au

The "perfect fish" in question is the Patagonian toothfish (a.k.a. Chilean sea bass, its unofficial but menu-friendly moniker). Knecht alternates the story of the Australian's pursuit of the pirates with a history of the Patagonian toothfish's rise from junk fish to sought-after food item -- and its even more rapid descent into near-extinction.

The chapters on the Patagonian toothfish will be of special interest to foodies. While the chase story is certainly interesting, Knecht (unlike Peter Heller) wasn't present for the chase, and his writing sometimes lags. The reconstructed dialogue, especially, is clumsy. Still, Hooked is a good read and, like The Whale Warriors and The End of the Line, a necessary look at the harm that the world's seemingly insatiable appetite for seafood is doing to ecosystems.

-Ian Froeb

Bookplate reviews new(ish) food- and drink-related books.

The Whale Warriors by Peter Heller isn't, technically, a book about food, but it's a book anyone concerned about the sustainability of what we eat should read. Its subject is the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an organization founded and led by Paul Watson, one of the original members of Greenpeace. (Legend has it Watson was kicked out of Greenpeace for being too aggressive, but Watson himself claims that he left because of a political dispute.)

www.amazon.com

Heller paints Watson as Captain Ahab in reverse, a conservationist determined to end whaling -- by himself, if necessary. Each year Heller and his crew of volunteers travel to the Antarctic Ocean on one of Sea Shepherd's vessels (the Farley Mowat, in this narrative) and attempt to find and then confront the Japanese whaling fleet.

The Japanese believe they have a legal mandate to conduct "lethal research" on various whale species. Watson argues that no research actually occurs. (In this, he isn't alone.) Although he receives no state sponsorship -- indeed, most nations and Greenpeace, to boot, view him as a nuisance, at best, and a pirate, at worst -- he believes that he is empowered by United Nations maritime law to stop illegal whaling. And by "stop," he doesn't mean drape banners across the whaling ships, as Greenpeace does. He means stop the whaling by physical means, such as dropping "prop foulers" in the water to render the ships essentially immobile.

www.seashepherd.org

What sounds like a Quixotic quest is anything but. Watson (pictured right) is notorious precisely because he has been successful in the past, confronting Japanese and Norwegian whalers as well as the slaughter of baby seals in Canada. During the expedition that Heller details (December 2005 through January 2006), Sea Shepherd, the Japanese and Greenpeace, which is also seeking the whaling fleet in the Antarctic, engage in a public-relations battle over the Internet and in the international press.

The Whale Warriors follows this expedition from its beginning in an Australian harbor to its end in stormy Antarctic waters. (How's that for a tease?) Heller was aboard the Farley Mowat the entire time, and he does a masterful job of balancing the journalistic details of this voyage with background -- sympathetic, but not fawning -- on Watson and his crewmembers and the larger issues that Watson's crusade raises.

Of course, you might be asking: Why the hell are the Japanese still whaling, after all? As Heller notes, very, very few Japanese eat whale meat anymore. (Where does the meat -- much of it loaded with dangerous heavy metals -- go? I won't ruin the surprise, but the answer is utterly shocking.) At any rate, Heller argues that it's politics that keeps the Japanese whaling fleet afloat: If Japan gave into the international community on whaling, its ability to resist controls on the fishing of other species will be weakened.

It's this larger issue that makes The Whale Warriors a necessary read. Whether or not you agree with Watson's methods -- concluding that he is a misguided lunatic isn't entirely out of the question, even if you support his larger aims -- you can't deny that he exposes the folly of international conservation laws. These laws mean nothing if no one enforces them, yet no one in a position of traditional authority seems very interested in enforcing them. Apply this to the more general problem of overfishing of the ocean species we eat, and the cause for concern is evident.

Frankly, if you eat seafood regularly, you must read this and a book I wrote about months ago, The End of the Line by Charles Clover. You'll never look at a menu or the fish counter in a supermarket the same way again.

-Ian Froeb

So my colleagues over at Night & Day received a new book from Magellan Press, Where the Locals Eat: The 100 Best Restaurants in the Top 50 Cities.

www.wherethelocalseat.com

Each city has a list of a dozen or so best-of-the-best restaurants, with brief descriptions. After that, there's a longer list of restaurant names and phone numbers to round out the total of 100. The book's Web site has more information for all 100 restaurants for each city.

At any rate, here are the guide's bonafides, from the introduction:

At Where the Locals Eat, we've assembled a hardy band of certified foodies -- passionate gourmands to near-omnivores -- who eat out a lot and know the difference between a restaurant special and a special restaurant. They're adventuresome in their grazing, and they don't mind trekking across town in search of the new and the different.

OK, so I grant the overall list of 100 St. Louis restaurants includes many of the restaurants that I'd single out as among our best: An American Place, Atlas, Harvest, Niche, Terrene. (Restaurants that have opened since late 2006 seem to be excluded, so no Acero or Franco; and a few closed spots, like Red Moon -- but, oddly, not King Louie's -- are included.) It also includes some stinkers, albeit expected stinkers: Imo's Pizza being the obvious example.

But I take serious issue with the whole "adventuresome in their grazing" spiel. The King & I, Pho Grand and Arcelia's -- their individual merits notwithstanding -- are "adventuresome"? Hell, you can walk from King & I to Pho Grand.

What about La Vallesana? Simply Thai? Pho Long? Señor Pique? Do most St. Louisans know about these places? Well, no, but that's your freakin' job, isn't it? To research the best restaurants in a city, not confirm the conventional wisdom.

End of rant.

-Ian Froeb

"Fat is good."

Michael Ruhlman wanted us to repeat after him.

"Fat is good."

Such simple lessons were at the heart of Ruhlman's demonstration last night at the Viking Cooking School in Brentwood: fat is good; salt is essential; listen to and touch food as you cook; above all, have fun while you cook.

As regular Gut Check readers know, Ruhlman came to St. Louis to promote his new book, The Elements of Cooking, a slim guide to important cooking terminology framed by the opinions Ruhlman has formed since attending the Culinary Institute of America for his book, The Making of a Chef.

The book begins with eight short essays on the most fundamental aspects of cooking: stock, sauces, salt, the egg, heat, cooking tools, essential reference texts and "finesse." The essay on salt is indicative of these essays -- and the book -- as a whole, descriptive and instructive, forceful but not at all condescending.

You don't want to taste salt in the food -- that means it's been oversalted. You want it to taste seasoned -- meaning that it has an appropriate depth of flavor and balance, is not pale or insipid.

...We learned [at the CIA] to "season as you go" -- that is, salt your food throughout the cooking process because food salted at the beginning of or during the cooking tasted different from food salted just before it was served. The former tasted seasoned; the latter tasted salted.

...Ulitmately you have to pay attention. Taste. Remember. Taste, salt, remember. Learn your own salt levels in cooking.

A theme to which Ruhlman often returned during last night's demonstration was the neuroses we Ameicans have given ourselves about such vital elements as salt: We've become so afraid of the negative conotations that processed food has given salt, fat, etc., and forgotten just how important -- and necessary -- they are in a more natural diet.

What makes The Elements of Cooking particularly useful is the balance Ruhlman strikes between what you must do (learn how to cook an egg, damn it) and what you, the busy person who might not have time to make veal stock, can do. From the essay on sauces:

Don't ignore water as the fundamental stock and sauce base. No, it doesn't have any flavor or body of its own, but it picks up flavor very quickly and so last minute pan sauces can be fast and easy even if you don't have stock on hand. Water is certainly superior to canned broths.

Whether you'll find The Elements of Cooking useful depends on your comfort level in the kitchen. If you've taught yourself to cook as you go -- following recipes, reading cookbooks, watching cooking shows -- it would serve as an excellent primer on why your favorite recipes work, how you can improve them, and how you can improvise on your own. Those of you who have the basics mastered might not find Ruhlman's lessons revelatory, but at the very least his book will provide a welcome refresher course and quick reference.

-Ian Froeb

I hope to send off questions for Michael Ruhlman later this afternoon. As of now, yesterday's request has prompted exactly one question. (Thanks, Dan!) Don't be shy. Shoot me an email or leave a comment.

-Ian Froeb

Oprah might have another James Frey-esque scandal on her hands. (USA Today)

www.mitoledo.com

Study finds that people who try to ignore food cravings for chocolate or other oh-so-delicious items just eat more. (BBC News)

In the UK, it could get a bit more difficult to certify food as organic. (The Guardian)

Tired of eating soggy cereal for breakfast? Here's a solution. (Gizmodo)

-Jeanette Kozlowski

Taking food seriously can be a pain in the ass. I'm still trying to process Michael Pollan's remarkable The Omnivore's Dilemma. Should I think twice about shopping at Whole Foods Market? Is it possible for your average, thoughtful consumer to know with any real certainty that he or she is purchasing food raised ethically, sustainably and — the real kicker — locally? And, the question that nags me still, even if it is possible, is it practical?

Now I have to contend with an equally remarkable and maybe even more troubling book: The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and What We Eat by Charles Clover, the environment editor of London's Daily Telegraph. This passage, from the introduction, makes clear the gravity of Clover's argument:

As a method of mass destruction, fishing with modern technology is the most destructive activity on Earth. It is no exaggeration to say that overfishing is changing the world. Overfishing, as a direct result of the demand by consumers in the world's wealthier countries, threatens to deprive developing countries of food in order to provide delicacies for the tables of rich countries, and looks set to rob tomorrow's generations of healthy food supplies so that companies can maintain profitability today.

Clover indicts nearly every single aspect of the fishing industry, from the giant trawlers that strip-mine the ocean and skirt local and international maritime laws by flying under "flags of convenience," to big-name chefs who unwittingly or cynically serve such threatened species as Patagonian toothfish (a.k.a. "Chilean sea bass") and bluefin tuna, to fishermen who harp on public sympathy to maintain what Clover believes are wholly unnecessary government subsidies.

The writing is crisp but impassioned, and Clover is a dogged journalist, exploding the received wisdom about, for example, fish farming and "dolphin-safe" tuna and reaching the surprising (to him and to this reader) conclusion that one of the most responsible purchasers of seafood is, of all corporations, McDonald's.

The End of the Line is a must-read if you're concerned about the provenance and sustainability of what you eat. And if you eat seafood regularly — most of us, these days — you should be required by law to read The End of the Line before your next trip to the supermarket or sushi bar.

-Ian Froeb