Oh, and I need to figure out how to live to age 113 or so.

I think the point should be to raise others’ consciousness, to help others become more aware of what they’re putting in their bodies. But there has to be a balancing point, somewhere between sending us all back to the eighteenth century in terms of hard labor in the kitchen versus willingly consuming all sorts of unnecessary additives, food colorings and preservatives along with unhealthy doses of corn syrup, sodium and sat fats.

Sometimes, pushing the limits of doability can be helpful because it makes more moderate efforts seem downright reasonable. Not everyone is prepared to become a Greenpeace activist to challenge Japanese whaling ships, but after learning of their courage in pushing the envelope, the more rational among us might be more inclined to buy dolphin-safe canned tuna.

I think that the degree of effort and time one wants to put into food choices is a very individual thing. For one person, growing brocco-spouts is a breeze, while someone else can’t be bothered. To each his own.

In short, I think there are a lot more distressing things to get excited about than a well-meaning effort to engage people in their food choices.

It is unrealistic, sweeping pronouncements like her challenge that cause people to throw in the towel, and just go to the nearest drive-thru! A better approach in my opinion, would be to educate people on how to make smaller, meaningful changes. But that wouldn’t get the same “internet ink” as the big challenge, I fear.

My unhappiness is not with the challenge’s guidance in making these foods, and certainly not with the mutual support, it’s with the “challenge” framework itself and with the self-important, schoolmarmy tone of its organizer. You are right that taking exception to these things was easier than “actually slog(ing) through the ‘data’ produced by the participants,” but to the extent that I did slog – the right word for it, btw – I found a wide disparity between them, from sensible people like yourself to fanatics who made Ms. McGruther sound like the voice of sweet reason.

I do take exception to your equating my calling out of the challenge’s tone and some of the idiocy it evoked with “grab(bing) a Stouffer’s frozen dinner,” because it’s not myself I’m trying to feed. If I’m guilty of a bit of hyperbole, it’s because after many years of writing about food and food gardening, teaching cooking classes, editing magazine food sections and other forms of outreach and outreach facilitation, I’m distressed by sweeping pronouncements, rigid prescriptions and short term contests that have an uncomfortable similarity to fad diets. One way and another they’re everywhere, but as far as I can see they raise more “consciousness” than confidence or competence, and they do it for people who are already quite strongly committed to reevaluating their relationship to food.

To each his own and all of that, but when the pronouncements, prescriptions etc. get a lot of publicity there’s a non-trivial downside. The literally millions of people who are just at the edge of change and might be helped forward by a gentle, user-friendly approach have all of their industry-fanned fears about “elitism” ” too hard” “too expensive” abundantly confirmed.

All that said, I remain very happy you wrote, delighted the challenge was a positive for you and hopeful that others will also join in the discussion.

I am glad I did the challenge. I learned a lot, although I am not convinced about some of Jennifer’s ideas and not inclined to worry about some others. But then, I’m a middle of the road kind of gal. Still, I appreciate, tremendously, the things I came away with that I do intend to continue to incorporate into my life. I grew up without any instruction in the kitchen and without any desire to spend time there. By the time I realized what I didn’t know, my life was where I am now: single mom of two teens, responsible for supporting my household, shuttling non-drivers to and from activities, helping with school work, and taking fifteen credits a semester to finish my degree so, hopefully, I can make enough money to pay for them to go to college too. Having someone send me one assignment per day toward improving my family’s diet seemed manageable. I had no idea, going in, what those assignments would be. I did lose my perspective and get kind of stressed about the whole thing part of the way through. But other participants straightened me out and I finished the challenge in a better frame of mind.

I believe that this challenge, like Pollan’s work, should not be taken uber-literally. When Pollan says “if it came from a plant, eat it” I am confident he is not really telling people to go eat digitalis. When Jennifer told us to toss all the processed foods in our kitchen, it got me to take a hard look at what was actually in my kitchen. I did toss a bunch of stuff. I also set aside a bag of things that the Boy Scouts picked up this morning for their food drive. And I continued to use some things that, by Jennifer’s rules, should have been tossed. If you had read the weekly recap blog postings of the participants, you would have found that pretty much everybody else adapted the challenge to their individual situations too.

I realize that it is far easier to bash the picture of the challenge Park lay out than to actually slog through the “data” produced by the participants in order to develop a balanced perspective. It’s also far easier to grab a Stouffer’s frozen dinner than to prepare a meal yourself. But neither of those easy choices is the healthy one.

Please also keep in mind that Jennifer McGruther told people how to do things. She encouraged people to try making cheese. She didn’t say not to purchase cheese from your local dairy. But you know, not everybody has a local dairy! Telling someone how to render lard is not the same as telling someone not to buy pre-rendered lard from a butcher. And again, not everyone has a local, old-school butcher. I don’t! Used to, but not for many years now. I really don’t see anything wrong with encouraging people to try methods of food prep they’ve likely never tried before, and that get them to think about their food from the ground up, especially in this culture where so many are so disconnected from food origins. Whether people continue to use those methods or not is really irrelevant if their consciousness about their food has been raised even a little.