A colleague of mine told me about the Michael Pollan Cooked TV series on Netflix, so I started watching the episodes and loved them immediately. I’ve read a number of Pollen’s books, including his bestsellers Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, and I completely agree with his opinions on food and the importance of knowing where your food comes from and being able to prepare healthy, simple meals. He really delves into the science behind food and talks a lot about how eating has evolved over time, and that’s what makes his writing and documentary-style TV series so interesting and educational.

In one of his episodes, he shows a clip of an Indian woman preparing a dosa lunch with all the fixings for her husband. She explains that dosa takes a lot of time and energy to make, but in the end, it is worth it. He notes that in the past, people spent a lot of time preparing their foods that they ate, and they valued that time. Today, people do not value the time spent cooking and want to minimize it as much as possible, but in the process of doing that, the nutritional value of the foods we eat today have diminished — this includes meats (animals eating grain as opposed to grass, which reduces the nutritional value of the meat) and breads (heavily processed with vitamins and minerals added back in… as opposed to being made the traditional way where these nutrients were naturally occurring, and is also very likely the reason so many people have celiac and gluten-related diseases. So time spent cooking has decreased while nutritional value of food has decreased.

The funny thing is that while re-watching this episode, I’m in the process of soaking lentils and fenugreek seeds for dosa this weekend. I’m like that older Indian lady preparing lunch for her husband, just not Indian. 🙂