Having more access to local food - at the growing number of seasonal farmer's markets, or at a new creamery on Long Green Road - provides an opportunity for us to eat in a healthier way.
Michael Pollan, the best-selling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, was in Baltimore recently with his new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Mr. Pollan has distilled all that he's learned from food scientists and nutritionists into a few common-sense rules to live by, one of which states, "Get out of the supermarket whenever possible."
You won't find products from the industrial food chain at the farmer's market, Mr. Pollan says.
Of course, the farmer's market - or the farm stand, or local dairy - doesn't provide the full answer for Americans looking to break from what Mr. Pollan calls the "elephant in the room," the Western diet: cheap calories from sugar and fat, highly processed foods, refined grains, and plants, meats and milk produced with chemicals. But certainly locally grown "real food" helps us all pull back from the unhealthful, industrialized stuff we eat routinely, and in abundance, in this nation.
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants," is Mr. Pollan's simple conclusion for eating for pleasure and for health.
I don't see Bobby Prigel's ice cream listed there, specifically. But Mr. Prigel promises it will be organic - from cows raised without chemicals, their milk processed across the road, in a certified-organic way. That constitutes what Michael Pollan would call "real food."
So have at it. Even Mr. Prigel's unhappy neighbors should approve, eventually.
Dan Rodricks' column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. He is host of the Midday talk show on WYPR-FM.
