Convenience Food is Convenient

I've been a long-time enthusiast of food writer Michael Pollan. However, I got annoyed with him the other day. He was on NPR talking about avoiding "convenience foods" and insinuating that people who say they don't have time to cook, probably do, but just don't want to.

I know Pollan means well, but let's not forget that convenience foods are a technology which, along with the birth-control pill, made possible the mass migration of American women to higher education and the workplace. Sure, it's better to eat fresh food not laden with preservatives, sugar and hydrogenated fats, and cooking from scratch can be fun and meditative. But cooking could also be a thankless, time-consuming drugery for women before the Fifties, when many household conveniences were introduced, or became more accessible.

Yes, gourmet cooking at home has become trendy (or, as Pollen points out, watching shows about gourmet cooking at home has become trendy). And more men are into cooking. But there's still some historical baggage attached to cooking, at least for me, and I expect for others. Heck, let's not even say historical: women now outnumber men in attending college, but they generally still do most of the housework.

Sure, we all need to eat better, fresher food, and cook at home more often. But we should also enjoy the ease and extra time that food technology affords us, especially if the occasional frozen pizza helps crank the stress level down a notch.

All things in moderation, even virtuous cooking and eating. To celebrate this notion today, I bought a box of Bisquick, looking forward to some easy biscuits that always taste better than my scratch ones anyway. And then I had a sandwich: local, co-op grown tomatoes for Michael Pollan, and pre-packaged, pre-sliced Oscar Meyer bologna for Betty Friedan.