I have searched all over Boston for sim­ple blue jeans that meet two seem­ingly sim­ple cri­te­ria: they must have no holes or other ridicu­lous “pre-worn” fea­tures and they must be made with­out third-world labor. I found my only source in an unlikely place, J. Crew, which sells jeans sewn in Canada with Amer­i­can denim. They are on sale this week­end for a sur­pris­ing $20.

I don’t under­stand why peo­ple buy worn-out jeans. I don’t like to dis­card pants, but when I do, they usu­ally have holes, irrepara­ble tears, adhe­sive and paint stains, and grease marks. Maybe I’m harder on my cloth­ing than most people.

While I was at the shop­ping mall, I saw the photo of the year unfold before my eyes. A tall, lanky dog was strain­ing against its leash to get closer to a small child. The child had a cute look of amaze­ment and won­der on his face as he tried to approach the dog, but what was remark­able was the sym­me­try: the child was also wear­ing a leash, held tight by a par­ent. The two leash-holders’ eyes met. Of course I didn’t have a camera.

Since when has it been accept­able to lit­er­ally put leashes on children?

I saw an arti­cle in the New York Times today about the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of last-minute Botox injec­tions for movie stars pre­sent­ing at some award cer­e­mony. Evi­dently these peo­ple are con­cerned about increased scrutiny of their com­plex­ions brought about by new glossy tabloids, blogs, and the unfor­giv­ing fidelity of high-definition tele­vi­sion. I always assumed that celebri­ties didn’t give a damn what super­mar­ket tabloid read­ers thought of them, but appar­ently I’ve been wrong. I just don’t under­stand why.

Last month, the New York Times Mag­a­zine ran a fas­ci­nat­ing piece by Michael Pol­lan (“Unhappy Meals,” Jan­u­ary 28, 2007, p. 38). Every­one who eats should read this arti­cle. I have con­sid­ered myself unusu­ally well-versed on the his­tory of indus­trial food pro­duc­tion and the way that today’s foods are made, but even so I learned a lot from Pollan’s thoroughly-researched writ­ing. Some inter­est­ing points:

• Almost any food that makes health claims on the box is highly processed and prob­a­bly not very good for you.
• We are now real­iz­ing that while cer­tain naturally-ocurring nutri­ents are respon­si­ble for spe­cific health ben­e­fits, they don’t nec­es­sar­ily work that way once they’ve been iso­lated and put into processed foods and multivitamins.
• Sim­i­larly, stud­ies show that peo­ple who take mul­ti­vi­t­a­mins live longer, but appar­ently not because they take multivitamins.
• Humans were orig­i­nally lactose-intolerant. The human abil­ity to digest cow milk and actu­ally extract nutri­ents from it evolved after a long period of liv­ing with cows.
• Polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions have weighed heav­ily on the cre­ation and main­te­nance of offi­cial U.S. dietary recommendations.
• Whole foods are dra­mat­i­cally bet­ter for you than processed foods. Pos­si­bly obvi­ous, but very important.

I am mak­ing a renewed effort to eat bet­ter. At the fore­front of this effort, I am going to stop eat­ing at Sub­way. While “fresh” may be the taste over there, the meat is not. A long time ago I noticed a green/orange iri­des­cent sheen on the roast beef which the man­ager explained was a byprod­uct of the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. But only recently did I real­ize that most of their meats are not actu­ally whole cuts, but restruc­tured meat prod­ucts in which meat pro­teins are mechan­i­cally extracted, chem­i­cally bonded together, mixed with chem­i­cal preser­v­a­tives, and molded into con­ve­nient shapes for effi­cient stor­age and slic­ing. Gross.

I would also like to find a source for uncured bacon. With mod­ern pack­ag­ing tech­niques it is not really nec­es­sary to cure bacon, but most man­u­fac­tur­ers do it any­way. Maybe because it improves color, adds weight (in the form of water), and increases shelf life. But the chem­i­cals in cur­ing solu­tions are bad for you.

Some peo­ple think eat­ing healty, real, and organically-grown foods is an expen­sive lux­ury. But as Pol­lan dis­putes that in his most salient point: While Amer­i­cans spent an aver­age of 24% of their income on food in 1947, today they spend less than 10%—less than the cit­i­zens of any other nation.