My other lives
In another life I am the owner of a Bed and Breakfast on Esplanade Avenue and an Ambassador for this wonderful city of New Orleans. I’m making sure that my guests sleep on crisp clean linens and hear rich wonderful music and eat fabulous food and guide them to all sorts of places tailored for their own peculiar tastes.
However, on a completely different front I’m a nutritionist, helping people make the right choices, particularly lower income people who don’t have a lot of choice. I work with adults and children alike to choose fresh ingredients, cook more, and give up bad habits such as soft drinks, processed food, and fast food meals. To this end, I’ve been a huge huge fan of Michael Pollan. His open letter to the President, when Obama was elected to rethink the Food Industry was so dear to my heart, it brought tears to my eyes. And look what happen – how can Obama even think about the food industry when there are two wars going on, Health Care Reform, Financial Reform, and of course, the BP oil spill mess.
I picked up Pollan’s latest book, In Defense of Food, at the airport because I’ve been having trouble sticking with Isherwood’s Berlin Stories that I am only halfway through, and I love it. I also picked up his compendium, Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual, which has wonderful pearls of wisdom such as eat in this priority: one foot (mushroom), two feet (fowl), then four feet (pig, cow). Or this one – Eat White Bread End Up Dead.
More importantly, Pollan begins In Defense with a general explanation of why we/I am so obsessed with nutrition, I’m a cliche. Once more I’ve learned that what goes top of my mind is top of everyone’s mind because either a) we have been brainwashed, or b) we have shared experiences that bring us to the same conclusions.
Anyway, I haven’t given up on either of these alternative career goals – perhaps my B&B is also a nutrition retreat with some manifestos of my own pasted in every room. Right now, I’m just grooving on Pollan’s writings and thoughts of what I could do if I were doing something else.
June 22nd, 2010 at 12:00 pm
loved pollan’s the omnivore’s dilemma and in defense of food. food rules are next. i’m a lawyer but i often try to think of ways to combine nutrition and health into an alternative career. maybe one day.. that b&b sounds great, btw! i’d stay there!
June 22nd, 2010 at 7:28 pm
I need to read Omnivore’s – I love his writing and have been following him as he has flowered into this wonderful writer on a subject that is near and dear to me. Food rules is a quickie. Maybe our fantasy jobs should remain just there – in fantasy as that is where jobs always sound the best.