Julie & Julia, Foodie & Cook

Via Rick Bayless on Twitter, is a thoughtful look at Michael Pollan's July 29 piece in the NYT Magazine by Michael Ruhlman, Julie & Julia, Foodie & Cook. Here's an excerpt (emphasis added):

"It was the cooking of food that allowed our bodies to absorb more nutrients and our brains to get big. It allowed culture to form and even social arrangements such as dinnertime where we all ate what one of us spent time cooking; it probably even resulted in marriage (a kind of primitive protection racket, in Wrangham’s words). We’re really the only animal that does it, that cooks. That alone says a lot."

The rest of Ruhlman's blog, Notes From the Food World, is also quite good.

Here's a sampling of pundits Pollan & Schlosser, Vandana Shiva, and Paul Roberts on the future of food: