The Reality of Grandma's Cooking : Nutrition in Mid - Twentieth Century Aotearoa New Zealand
Figure 1: Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, New York: Penguin Books, 2009. In the ‘noughties’, Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food helped to popularise an approach to eating framed around a central tenet – ‘Just eat what your great-grandma ate’, suggesting those in pursuit of perfect health should avoid consuming anything from a packet or a production line. As journalist and author, Pollan sought to disrupt understandings of nutrition and consulted a variety of different nutrition specialists to put together the book, as Pollan saw fit. As such, Pollan consulted Jewish and Italian grandmothers as expert diet authorities, alongside those with professional training in nutrition and dietetics, as well as doctors, nurses, and anthropologists. In an interview with the New York Times, Pollan recounted his favourite quote from the grandmothers he interviewed to research his book: “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead”, these women reportedly advised Polla