Let's Talk: Is Real Raw?
12 Comments
I suppose the short answer is clearly "yes." I mean, a raw zucchini is real food, no doubt about it. Right?
Of course, the reverse gets more complicated. Is raw real? (Stick with me here.) After all, "real" has many meanings, many shadings. Would you consider a raw, genetically-modified, pesticide-sprayed zucchini real food? Now THAT's a big question.
But let's table it for now and just say, for the sake of argument, that all zucchinis are the same. One is as good as another. No questions asked.
Is real food by definition raw food?
Or put another way--and I suspect the way we often mean the question--is raw food somehow "realer" than other food?
To be sure, the raw food movement has been around for a while. I thought it would be a flash-fire in the U. S. skillet (as it were) in about 2002, a sort of eat-it-raw answer to that Y2K nonsense and then the 9/11 horror. You know: assuage our fears by eating asparagus raw.
I jest--but not much. I do think something like that was going on--a back-to-basics things. But today, the movement shows little signs of abating. There continue to be raw-food gurus, newly minted; raw food restaurants aplenty in big cities; and even raw-food cookbooks, more planned in the years ahead
Bruce and I were in Vancouver a few weeks ago and the waiter at one restaurant pointed out several dishes on the menu that were "raw"--as if this designation were a huge plus. And perhaps it was. She certainly thought so.
As Bruce and I wrote our new, seven-step plan to get off processed food, REAL FOOD HAS CURVES, available here, we struggled with this raw/real question. Repeatedly. And often. So much so that we insisted the cover have things like wine and cheese and bread on it--lest someone mistake ours for a raw-food plan.
And yet. . . .
In the book, we divide our choices into four categories: real food, almost real food, barely real food, and not real food. We offer explanations of each--as well as ways to figure out how to make sense of the categories. We made these four categories because the world is not simply "real" vs. "not real." And also to give some give to the whole plan: a little grace and forgiveness.
But watch this progression, one of many in the book:
- Real food--a ripe tomato
- Almost real food--natural, salt-free canned tomatoes or sun-dried tomatoes
- Barely real food--preflavored, salted, stewed, canned tomatoes or sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil with flavorings added
- Not real food--condensed tomato soup and most bottled ketchup
We're back to that crucial question, aren't we?
Yesterday, while I was being interviewed on a Martha Stewart radio program, the host sort of chastised me for thinking canned beans were real food. "I'd would have thought you were a dried beans kind of guy," she said.
Well, I am. Except I think canned beans can be real food, too. Or maybe "almost real food." They're certainly not raw food. But they're certainly within the realm of the "real," right? Or not?
So I ask you: is raw food real food? Or stated more clearly: is real food only raw? And raw food the only real food? And if so, is everything else some sort of falling off from that high, crunchy point?
Reader Comments (12)
Is "raw food cookbook" an oxymoron? Ha, ha.
All raw food is real food. But not all real food is raw food. Maybe there was a reason why our caveman ancestors created fire - it made the food taste better! But whatever they were eating, it was real. I guess I don't quite understand why cooking something is inherently bad, or "unreal". The Y2K theory makes some sense, because there was a sort of backlash to our reliance on technology, but a raw food diet is a little over the top in my mind.
Raw food is real food, but it's not always food we can eat. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'm not a huge fan of completely raw pork or chicken. We still use canned beans, but not without some BPA angst. The food in the cans might be "real", but it might also be contaminated with plasticisers. As always, I think we need to draw distinctions that we're comfortable with, and on a case by case basis (some tomato sauces are barely processed, and bottled passata is often a better option than canned tomatoes, which run into the same BPA problem).
sure raw food is real. but it's definetely not the only real food. the bread i bake, the jam i make, everything i cook from fresh ingredients is real. my goal is to cook exclusively from fresh, whenever possible, but i wouldn't want to eat raw. to me it's completely unappetizing. i take so much comfort in a braise, i can't imagine going without. i take comfort in cooking itself, it's soothing to be in the kitchen after a horrid work day, and have something simmering on the stove and filling the place with warmth. i once had a salad that had raw button mushrooms - i still can't get over it, and it was years ago.
I don't think that cooked food is any less real than raw food. Raw food may have been the initial "real food diet" -- but only until man (or woman) discovered how to use fire to cook food. If one is being very nitpicky, cooked food IS processed food.
Personally, I don't think canned products are less "real" than fresh products. While I don't like canned tomatoes (or other products) with seasonings added, I don't think adding herbs makes them barely real. But maybe there's something in the processing of them that I'm not aware of that makes them "barely real."
When I think of real food versus unreal food, I don't think of canned products being less real than fresh. I'll admit that fresh is best, but canned and frozen are still real food in my estimation. To me the unreal products are those that are heavy with chemicals and/or have very little real food in them.
So here's how I see it: if cooking or processing (as in canning) makes food less real to any degree, then yes, raw food is the only "real" food. I don't happen to believe that to be true.
Kori: Yep, raw food cookbooks. Go out to amazon and you'll see some. It's not just biting into a zucchini. There are ways to make sauces and such without cooking. It's actually quite complicated--but the food used stays in a raw state--or somewhat raw, because vinegar is used and some minimal heat is allowed. I'm honestly not sure of the whole parameters, but there you have it. And I think the Y2K/9-11 thing was more about "clean"--getting ourselves cleaned up, as it were, after a fall. It's ever been an American weakness, this thing with purity.
Celia: I think the question of "comfort" is important. I stated it as "grace and forgiveness," but we're talking the same thing. It's a very gray world. The perfect is the enemy of the good every time. Back to that purity thing, I guess.
Dana: What is it with raw mushrooms? So many people hate them. I personally don't have a problem with them, but they turn Bruce green. He refers to them as "styrofoam."
Sally: Fire is crucial. According to some of the research I did for the book--found in the footnotes, of course, where all the best bits always are--our palates have changed dramatically over eons because of the way we now cook over fire. We actually don't taste long-chain proteins very well. Which is why a piece of tuna sashimi tastes so "clean" and "bright." But put that tuna over the fire and we taste many more complex flavors because we now do better with short-chain proteins, those that have been snapped apart by heat. That's after many long years of developmental change, for sure. Which is also why my dog relishes raw meat. Because he doesn't know how to cook over fire. Yet.
M.
I'm not crazy about raw mushrooms, either (I think they taste like dirt), but boy, when you cook them, are they delicious (a little wine in there doesn't hurt, either).
Interesting also that I'm not a fan of cooked tuna steaks, but I love it raw. And I find myself eating my meat rarer and rarer (except chicken). I guess I'm a throwback. Me and Dreydl.
Well, Kori, rare is not raw! Seared tuna definitely has more taste than sashimi, both of which I love for different reasons. And a rare burger is still seared on the outside.
I used to eat ground beef well-done, but I'm more and more on the rare end of things. (No jokes, please.) But even steak tartare has to be gussied up with Worcestershire sauce and chopped onions and capers and eggs and what have you to give it lots of flavor--because a big pile of raw ground beef just doesn't have the flavor profile for us humans that a seared, rare burger does. On that, Dreydl would disagree. (Although I, too, have been known to slip bits of the raw tenderloin in when I'm trimming the thing up!)
M.
Like most commenters, I say that raw food is real food, but not all real food is raw food. Raw is a subset of real. The raw food fad makes its appearance periodically--Nathanaeal West wrote his brilliant novel The Day of the Locust back in 1939. I quote some text from this:
Her next question surprised them both.
"Who do you follow?"
"What?" said Tod.
"I mean--in the Search for Health, along the Road of Life?" *
They both gaped at her.
"I'm a raw-foodist myself," she said. "Dr. Pierce is our leader. You must have seen his ads--'Know All Pierce-All.'"
"Oh, yes," Tod said, "you're vegetarians."
She laughed at his ignorance.
"Far from it. We're much stricter. Vegetarians eat cooked vegetables. We eat only raw ones. Death comes from eating dead things."
*Capital letters are West's.
You know, I think some of this has to do with people, Americans especially, needing to see things as black or white, either/or, with no shades of gray. That there has to be this defined, cast-in-stone line. I don't really think raw vs. cooked (and by extension, is raw "real" or "more real" than cooked) really warrants much debate (though I admit to considering the raw-food only movement more akin to a religion than a scientifically based formula for eating).
Perhaps we should adopt a variation of Justice Potter Stewart's remarks (though he referred to pornography": I know real food when I see it.
Unrelated note: The Day of the Locust is one of the best books I have ever read and frankly, it deserves a wider audience.
Petra: You have won my heart quoting West. Same can be said for Dos Passos. Although I don't know that there's anything about raw food in there!
M.
I think I remember reading somewhere that 80-somthing degrees is the limit for whether food remains raw for raw foodists' purposes or not. I know one person who follows a raw food diet and he will often eat 'bread' which is mostly nut or seed based, very thin, cracker-like stuff which has been prepared in a dehydrator. So it doesn't get hot enough to count as cooking.
Without putting too much thought into it (because then I might find I'm able to argue myself out of this viewpoint) I think I'm inclined to consider that real food is anything that I could make at home. Not that I necessarily will but I potentially could. So, for example, I could can tomatoes so buying a tin of tomatoes, which is nothing more than tomatoes i.e. nothing more than what I could do at home myself is fine. Same goes for ketchup. I can make tomato ketchup myself so if I find a bottle of ketchup that has nothing more on the ingredients list that what I would be able to put into it myself at home, then it's real. But if the ketchup has a list of ingredients that aren't exactly your everyday storecupboard items then the chances of 'real' applying are slim. That doesn't mean that I have to absolutely make everything from scratch, including canning and processing all of my own, but just that, if absolutely necessary, I could potentially produce that item in my own kitchen, using the ingredients listed on the label.
Hope that makes sense. I'm just home after a lovely evening of eating lovely real food at a friend's house while drinking some very lovely real wine so my level of coherence may not be quite as high as I think it is at the moment!
Seriously, taking flack for using canned beans? I see so much posturing in that kind of thing, as if the object is to win, to be real-er, or the real-est cook out there, to be some sort of purist to a set of rules. That's the kind of thing that is such a turn off to people who are on the fence with regard to eating real foods.
I'm with the "raw as a subset of real" crowd. I understand that much of the raw-food movement is motivated by health considerations, but my response to that is 1) I haven't seen any evidence that convinces me of its overwhelming nutritional superiority; and 2) what's the point? I don't want to live to be 112 if that's all I'm going to eat.
I pretty much subscribe to Moonwaves' theory of categorizing "real" food as any food I *could* make myself, given the time, inclination, and (basic) tools. In fact, that's the rule I use for *not* buying most sweet stuff: that if I really want some, I should make it myself. And if I can't be bothered to make it myself, I probably shouldn't be eating it anyway.