Sorry to say, we can’t resist playing with our food — and playing the ideas that boil around food. So here in our third annual Food Issue we get started with Michael Jackman’s exploration of how the last half century of changes in the way we eat — and what we eat — has dangerous consequences to our health and welfare. And what we might do to save ourselves and our palates. Below you’ll find meditations food and the immigrant experience, quirky gormandizing, the sensual tease and sleaze in the prose of epicures, poems on eating, a tour of coffee shops off the Starbucks-beaten path, a guide to thriftily equipping your kitchen, a look at folks who snap shutters before they bite and, for a final course, our regular restaurant reviewer Mel Small takes us to Positive Vibration Wine Bar in Orion Township, one more dining destination in metro Detroit well worth knowing. So, dig in. —W. Kim Heron, editor
Lost in the supermarket
by Michael Jackman
Forget everything you’ve heard about food in the last 30 years — including what it is.
Assimilated tastes
by Jane Slaughter
For immigrant writer, American food was part of the package.
Bite your tongue
by Todd Abrams
A far-out foodie shows unusual fare is fair game.
Displacing desire
by Michael Jackman
Is it time our national food obsession got a room?
Coffee and Cigarettes
by Brad Duncan
Classic java joints and what makes them.
Fillet of soul
by Adore Bell, Lolita Hernandez, Peter Markus, Heather McMacken and Richard Winston
Poetic musings good enough to eat.
Feast your eyes
by Rebecca Mazzei
Picturing your favorite plate.
Fruit of the vine
review by Mell Small
