Varna’s Mind

STOCKHOLM—Mario Vargas Llosa, a giant of Latin American literature whose political ambitions saw him run for president of his native Peru, finally won the 2010 Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday at the age of 74.

Vargas Llosa, long tipped to win the award, is best known for works such as "Conversation in the Cathedral" and "The Feast of the Goat" but is also a prolific journalist, still writing for Spain's El Pais daily.

Vargas Llosa has won a string of major literary awards, including the most prestigious of all for a Spanish-language author, the Cervantes Prize, and had often been expected to win the Nobel prize but said he had no inkling that he would win this time round.

"I was wondering if it was true or a joke or pretend," he said in an interview posted on the Nobel Institute website after receiving the call shortly before 7:00 am in New York.

"It's been a great surprise. I don't know what to say. I'm overwhelmed, really," he said, adding "I never knew it was true that my name was among the potential candidates."

Vargas Llosa's win was met with thundering applause at the Swedish Academy, which attributes the prize.

Academy secretary Peter Englund described the Peruvian as one of Latin America's greatest authors, comparing him to masters like Victor Hugo.

He "is an author who is engaged in society... He feels that an author should not first and foremost entertain, (but) should show the way, tell the truth, question, be a moral conscience to society," he told reporters.

Announcing the award, the academy hailed "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat."

Born in Arequipa, Peru in 1936, Vargas Llosa spent his first years in the Bolivian city of Cochabama before moving back to Peru in 1946.

Early on he became a journalist, moving to France in 1959 where he worked as a language teacher and as a journalist for Agence France-Presse as well as for French television before establishing his reputation as an author.

His first major success came with the novel "The Green House" which appeared in English in 1966. He has since continued to produce a string of bestsellers, many of which deal with political themes and the troubled history of Latin America.

He ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990 on a center-right ticket, but was badly beaten by Alberto Fujimori, later to be disgraced after a string of political scandals.

Disappointed by his defeat and upset at the dictatorial turn of Fujimori's 1990-2000 regime, Vargas Llosa took on Spanish nationality in 1993 – a controversial move that angered many Peruvians.

Unlike other literary figures who seek to avoid the limelight, Vargas Llosa embraces contemporary affairs with gusto. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines, and travels frequently for research and to deliver lectures.

"A writer must never turn into a statue" he told AFP in an interview last year.

"I have never liked the idea of a writer stuck in his library, cut off from the world, like Proust was. I need to keep a foothold in reality, know what's going on. That's why I do journalism."

Fellow Latin American authors said the award was well deserved, even those critical of his politics.

"We have thought for some time that Mario Vargas Llosa was worthy of the Nobel prize... he deserves it perfectly," said fellow author Carlos Mueller, speaking at the ongoing Frankfurt Book Fair.

Another author, Leonardo Martinez Ugarte, said: "I have a love-hate relation with Llosa because I do not agree with his politics but as an author, I have to take my hat off to him."

Vargas Llosa's Swedish publisher Eva Gedin, also at the Frankfurt book fair, told the TT news agency she was "floating on clouds."

"We are clinking glasses, hugging and kissing each other," she said.

Carmen Caffarel, the director of Spain's Instituto Cervantes, a government agency that promotes the teaching of Spanish language and culture, described the award as the "fairest" in recent years.

"We have been expecting this for a long time and the joy is immense," she said in a statement.

"He is the perfect example of a complete author, a tireless worker who has offered us masterpieces in the form of novels, essays, plays and journalism."

Victor Garcia de la Concha, the president of the Royal Spanish Academy, the official guardians of the Spanish language, added: "Vargas Llosa is a reference of excellence in Spanish and a complete intellectual."

Nutrition and public policy expert Marion Nestle answers readers' questions in this monthly column written exclusively for The Chronicle. E-mail your questions to food@sfchronicle.com, with "Marion Nestle" in the subject line.

Q: I pay $4 for multigrain or whole wheat breads because I've heard white bread isn't as healthy. But when I compare nutrition labels, $2 white breads look much the same. Are they?

A: My Talmudic answer: yes and no. You are asking about commercial sliced breads. Bread may be the staff of life, but you would never know it from reading the ingredient lists of most commercial products.

Commercial breads are indeed much the same, with only a few differences that matter.

To decide whether these have anything in them worth eating beyond their calories, you must inspect labels to make sure the first ingredient is whole grain, the total number of ingredients is small and devoid of unpronounceable chemicals, the fiber content is at least 2 grams per 1-ounce serving and the label says 100 percent whole wheat. Anything less is reconstituted white bread with occasional pieces of the original grain added back.

And then there is taste. Artisanal breads begin with just four ingredients - flour, water, salt and yeast - and turn them into loaves so crusty, chewy and fragrant that you cannot stop eating them. If they have some whole grain in them, even better.

But handmade breads take forever to make and quickly go stale. Commercial bakeries deal with these problems by rushing the bread-making process and compensate for the loss of flavor by adding stabilizers, dough softeners and preservatives, and covering up the chemical tastes with sweeteners. Breads with 30 or more ingredients are not unusual and violate my rule: Never buy processed foods with more than five ingredients.

To compare breads, you must read labels. Bread companies do not make this easy. Some list the serving size as one slice, some two, and their weights can vary by twofold. When you convert everything to ounces, the nutrient content of supermarket breads looks much alike.

An ounce provides 70 to 80 calories, a trivial difference. The grain is what counts.

Wheat grains have three components - the nutrient-rich bran and germ ("chaff"), and the endosperm, which is mostly starch and protein. One hundred percent whole wheat flour contains all three in the same proportion as in the original grains.

White flour contains about 80 percent of the original components. It is mostly endosperm.

Nutrients in the chaff are lost, so bakers are required to replace the five nutrients least likely to be available from other foods: niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, folic acid and iron. The others are not replaced.

Neither is fiber. White flour contains only trace amounts of fiber.

Because high-fiber diets promote healthy bowel function and appear to reduce risks of heart disease and bowel cancers, dietary advice is to eat at least three daily servings of whole grains - 3 ounces of 100 percent whole wheat bread, for example.

Food labeling rules do not make it easy to figure out fiber content. Some white breads list 1 gram of fiber, but watch out for serving size. It takes two slices to reach half a gram, which can be rounded up to 1.

Whole wheat bread with 2 grams of fiber per 1-ounce slice may have four times as much fiber as white breads. But watch out for breads listing 3 grams fiber; their slices may weigh nearly 2 ounces.

In response to dietary advice, commercial bakeries have introduced whole grain breads acceptable to white bread eaters. These grind the wheat bran super fine, add extra dough conditioners to keep the bread soft, and toss in some bran or cracked wheat to make the bread look like whole wheat. Check for fiber grams and the position of chaff ingredients on the list. The further down the list, the smaller their contribution.

And where is the Food and Drug Administration to help with whole grains? Alas, the FDA has not set rules for grain content. It permits manufacturers to make statements such as "100 percent whole grain" as long as the statement is true and does not imply that the food is an "excellent source."

The FDA's nonbinding guidance says anything labeled "100 percent whole grain" must contain all three components of the original wheat seed, in proportion.

This regulatory gap permitted creation of the industry-sponsored Whole Grain Council. The council issues a certifying stamp in two forms: 100 percent and Basic. One hundred percent means all grains are whole. But the more prevalent Basic stamp allows refined grains and disproportionate additions of bran or germ.

Marion Nestle is the author of "Food Politics," "Safe Food," "What to Eat" and "Pet Food Politics," and is a professor in the nutrition, food studies and public health department at New York University. E-mail her at food@sfchronicle.com, and read her previous columns at sfgate.com/food.

This article appeared on page K - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle