In his hot new book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” (The Penguin Press, $26.95), Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan traces the roots of four meals – from fast food to forest-foraged – to shed light on the mind- numbingly complicated, environmentally exploitative nature of our industrial food culture.
Pollan, drawing on his bottomless pool of brainpower, points out that we’re not only compromising our physical health with most of the food choices we make, but we’re also taxing the planet so profoundly that agricultural Armageddon is imminent and, without some radical changes, nearly unavoidable.
It’s an important book and an engaging read. If a little scary.
But he cites one fact that shocked me more than any other: In America, we eat one out of every five meals in the car.
That’s 20 percent of our meals.
In the car.
Warning: Soapbox ahead.
One thing we already know: Healthwise, car-eaten meals generally fall short. The drive-through is no place to get the recommended daily allowance of anything good for you.
Another thing we already know: Thanks to the vast amount of land and fossil fuel required to produce them, most car-based meals contribute disproportionately to our collective plundering of the planet.
I know, I know. Blah blah blah. Being reminded of all this stuff exhausts my brain.
But two things about car-eating cut even deeper to exhaust my soul.
One, when we eat in the car, we’re not doing justice to our food, which took a whole string of hardworking, mostly underpaid people to produce, distribute and prepare.
Two, and worse, when we eat in the car, we’re not doing justice to our families. Especially our kids. They deserve better than a nutritionally challenged sack of empty calories served up in the back seat.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for portable food. I’m up for a picnic any day of the week, even when the ground is cold and wet.
But eating in the car? It’s an inherently thoughtless act, not only in terms of our health, but in terms of our relationships.
It involves speed, not care. It involves being more concerned with avoiding spills than appreciating what we’re eating and with whom. It involves listening to the radio and watching out for traffic, not spending quality time with people we care about and love.
(This just in: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, multitasking in the car – dialing a phone or eating a burrito – triples the risk of a crash. Triples.)
Every time we eat in the car, we put ourselves at physical and emotional risk. We shortchange our bodies and minds. We spend too much money.
Worst of all, we rob ourselves of our relationships.
I admit, I’m guilty. More than one Egg McMuffin and Burrito Supreme has slid down my throat behind the wheel. It serves a purpose; it staves off my hunger. And if I had rugrats in the back, it’d keep them quiet too.
But now that I’ve given it some real thought, prompted by Pollan and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” I’ll think twice before eating behind the wheel again.
Mealtime is far too important – personally, environmentally and, most important, socially – to try to fit it in while we’re doing something else like driving. We can choose not to.
Eating more consciously, using our minds as well as our mouths, makes for more satisfying meals and more satisfying relationships. Cliché, but true.
Step one? Take it out of the car and put it on a table. Wait until batting practice and debate club are over: Dole out handfuls of nuts to keep ’em happy.
Let’s set the table; it only takes a moment. Let’s look at each other over dinner. Let’s listen to each other. So what if we don’t sit down exactly at 6:30?
There’s no question that this is the best shot all day at quality time. It’s essential to take it.
Gas is getting pricier by the day, so now’s the time to take dinner out of the car. Don’t our meals, and our families, matter enough for that?
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-820-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
