Pollan: Nutrition "Science" Has Hijacked Our Meals -- and Our Health

[marmar]

from AlterNet:



Pollan: Nutrition "Science" Has Hijacked Our Meals -- and Our Health

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet. Posted April 3, 2008.

Much of what lines supermarket aisles is not food. It's merely foodlike, and it's making us sick.



Why would anyone need to write a book called In Defense of Food? If we can afford it and can get our hands on it, we eat food several times a day. Or do we?

According to Michael Pollan, most of what Americans consume isn't food. He calls it "edible foodlike substances." He also says that the way we consume it is not really eating. It's something we do pretty unconsciously as we work or drive or watch TV.

We all know about the US epidemic of obesity and diabetes over the past 25 years, top of the steady rise of chronic diseases over the past 100. Paradoxically, this happens just as Americans and the food industry are ever more aware of nutrition. What's going on here?

Pollan claims that in the Western Diet, good old food has been replaced by nutrients, mom's good advice by nutritional experts, common sense by confusion, and for most, a relatively good diet by a bad and dangerous one. The book in which he makes all these claims and advises us simply to "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants," has topped the New York Times best-seller list.

Michael Pollan's previous books include >THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA: A Natural History of Four Meals, named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post, and THE BOTANY OF DESIRE. Pollan is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and a Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

Terrence McNally: How did you grow to focus on plants and then food?

Michael Pollan: Well all my work really begins in the garden. I was a very passionate gardener beginning at age eight, although I fell away from it for a few years. In the 1980's I was living in New York and took up gardening at a weekend house in northwestern Connecticut. I got very absorbed in the garden as a place to look at our relationship to nature.

Like a lot of Americans, my understanding of nature and our relationship to it was shaped by Emerson and Thoreau and Melville and Whitman. When I actually started to garden, I realized all those ideas about the romance of nature were distinctly unhelpful. Thoreau's love of wilderness and worship of the wild really doesn't equip you when the pests come and destroy your crops, when the woodchuck attacks your broccoli.

I got into trouble following their philosophy. I didn't have a fence, for example. I thought a fence was too alienating from the natural world. I got into a war with a woodchuck -- just like Bill Murray in Caddyshack -- until I was defoliating my property and pouring gasoline down a woodchuck burrow. I was like William Westmoreland in Vietnam, willing to destroy the village to save it.

I realized then that the garden was a very interesting place to examine our relationship to the natural world. Traditionally when Americans want to think about nature, we picture the wilderness, we go camping, we go to Yosemite. But nature is happening in our homes, in our gardens, in our lawns, and on our plates. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/80868/

[riverdeep]

1. I saw a presentation by this guy not too long ago.

He's actually pretty entertaining. Not dry and stuffy at all. Raised some interesting points.

The more you process the food, the more profitable it is. If I go to the supermarket, I can buy a pound of organic oats for 79 cents. Now that's a lot of oats, and nobody's making much money. But if you turn it into Cheerios, suddenly you have a brand. You've got your little doughnut shape, you've got an ad campaign, and suddenly you're charging four bucks for a few ounces of oats.

That says a lot right there. Kids, in particular are heavily marketed to. I read an ad executive say something to the effect of 'if we can get to them by age eight, we've got 'em for life'.

[mainegreen]

2. If it doesn't look like it was once alive, don't eat it.

Except for cheese. Eat cheese. It's yummy.

[marmar]

3. But cheese has living cultures in it, right?

:)

[Lorien]

19. I've found that when I DO follow Pollan's advice I feel much healthier

and much more energetic. I stay away from cheese (lactose intolerant-plus it's fattening) dairy of all sorts, meats, salt...but I still eat eggs. I only eat whole grains, no white flour. No sugar, artificial ingredients or processed anything. Yeah, it's not an exciting diet, but when I stick to it my fibromyalgia symptoms disappear, I lose weight and I can sleep through the night. When I go back to the standard America diet I feel terrible and can pack on ten pounds in less than a month. Eating Pollan's way isn't easy; the fresh fruits and veggies (mostly organic) are expensive and preparation takes time, but the payoff is huge.

[BlooInBloo]

4. I'm 6'2", 180lbs, have literally not been sick a day in my life, played college football...

... and basketball. Never had a cavity. 20/10 vision. I'm about as healthy as they come, I figure. What will it fucking take for people to stop telling me what to fucking eat? Sheesh.

EDIT: Fixed typo.

[mondo joe]

6. If your health description were the nation's you'd have a point.

But it's not.

[BlooInBloo]

7. My health profile suggests that "it ain't necessarily the food" that's makes one unhealthy....

... I'm the biggest quarter-pounder-kentucky-fried-chicken-whole-pound-of-bacon-with-eggs-and-sausage-gravy person the country has.

It's not the food that makes people sickly. One can be perfectly (literally) healthy eating precisely what the food nazis rail against.

[mondo joe]

8. Everyone is telling everyone what to eat. There is no single set of "food Nazis".

Whether it's the nutritionists, the whole fooders, the vegans or the food industrialists you're being told.

Your anecdotal self aside, food matters.

[BlooInBloo]

9. (shrug) I'm not telling anyone what to eat at any rate...

... And yes, if you simply ignore any evidence to the contrary, then clearly one would conclude that what you eat is of overriding importance.

[RadiationTherapy]

14. I am a counter to your example.

Now that our anecdotes cancel each other out, the conversation can move on.

[El Pinko]

18. There's some truth to this...

Since I changed my eating habits, I still have an occasional burger, or bacon or gravy.

The difference is that I portion control so that I don't eat to many calories per day and I balance that stuff out with plenty of fruits and veggies.

It may be that you eat some bad stuff, but your overall calorie intake isn't that high, or your'e active and burn it off.


But even thouse foods you mentioned don't really touch on the way some peopple eat.

Some people eat NOTHING BUT prepackaged crap (including prepackaged crap that says "diet" on the label" ALL DAY LONG.

Never a fresh veggie or one they sauteed themselves, it's a frozen TV dinner, or canned. They have Pop-tarts with a HUGE glass of OJ for breakfast, plus a sausage, then for lunch they have some fast food crap with supersized fries EVERY DAY, then for dinner it's some Stouffer's Lasagna PLUS garlic bread PLUS a Coke.

That amount of empty calories of fat and sugar and empty carbs all day long is murder on the body and on the liver and leads to obesity in so many people.


If you're 180, then you're either quite active, quite young, or you eat a bit better than you're letting on.


It's not that you can never eat the rich or junky food. Problem is that millions of people who know longer even understand basic food preparation eat it as a staple.


When people realize that prepackaged foods = junk food, half the battle is won.

[lukasahero]

26. How old are you and when was the last time anyone checked your arteries?

Heart disease is the number 1 killer in America and many people die from it without any prior warning.

Not sure why you insist it's simply not ever the food based on your single example - do you not believe in shades of gray?

[Cairycat]

10. Check back in in 30 years

eating like that catches up with you eventually, especially if your activity level slows.

[mondo joe]

11. Pollan's issue isn't just individual health either - but the food production complex

takes a huge toll on the environment, and on non human animal life as well.

Moreover, it has made it extremely difficult to eat decent whole foods if that's what you WANT to do - by saturating markets, subsidizing crap "food", and even adjusting labeling requirements to make it easier to sell artificial food products identified as actual food.

[BlooInBloo]

12. In 30 years I'll be nearing 70. I'm not sure if "you told me so" really applies at that point.

[Locrian]

13. sounds like

Sounds like you eat a lot of meat, eggs, cheese, fat, etc? That is actually healthy. Eating carbs, sugar etc is what will kill you.


http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Gary-Taubes/dp/1400040787/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207238084&sr=8-1

[BlooInBloo]

15. I eat it all. Love candy, ice cream cookies, potatoes, pasta....

... Don't care for bread or soup much I suppose - a waste of perfectly good stomach space if you ask me.

[Lorien]

21. My father said the same thing when he was 40

he has always been a "beef, bacon, bread and butter" man, never really liked fruits and veggies. He NEVER got sick until his late 40's. Now he's in his sixties and he's very overweight, wears a pacemaker, and takes about seven medications to stay alive. It's very upsetting to me; my once "invincible" father, who would climb mountains, kayak in the ocean, and cross country ski can now barely walk down the driveway to pick up the morning paper. All in just 15 short years. He may not be changing his eating habits because of it, but I sure did.

:cry:

[BlooInBloo]

22. I love fruits and veggies. I'll pass on the bread tho, unless it's not really practical to avoid it

... Like on sandwiches and pizza, for example.

[Warpy]

5. The best way to deal with woodchucks

is to find somebody with a baby in the house and get a really rotten, used disposable diaper. Stuff it down the woodchuck's hole.

That woodchuck family will soon move.

I had a fence buried six inches into the soil and the little bastards still dug under it. I sprayed everything with dish soap and cayenne and they'd just wait until it rained to come out and eat my garden down to the dirt.

The used diaper did it. I don't know where they moved but it was too far to raid the garden.

[davsand]

16. Carnivore urine.

Most herbivores are really unhappy being anyplace near the scent of carnivores' urine because it is frequently used to mark hunting turf. When you clean the catbox scatter some of the litter around the periphery of your garden and you probably will not see the little raiders any more.

You DO have to keep that fairly updated, however, because stale spoor indicates the hunter hasn't been back lately. As an alternative, you men can go eat a big old steak dinner and drink a bunch of beer with it and YOU can mark your turf.



Laura

[El Pinko]

17. Totally. I've lost almost 100 lbs (275 to 178) by staying out of "the aisles"

I buy fruits, veggies, meat, fish, milk, and maybe a few sauces and seasonings, but stay clear of any prepackaged prepared foods, including crapola that says "diet" on the package.

We basically make all of our meals from scratch, and I never go hungry at all. We just don't eat stuff that we don't make.

I'm not well-off enough to buy much organic stuff, but just switching to REAL foods made all the difference in the world.


I have friends that tell me that they ate nothing but "a Slim-fast, then a Weight Watchers Chicken al'Orange meal, then a Lowfat fruit on the bottm yogurt, then another "diet" frozen meal for dinner and Weight Watchers cake for dinner", and they wonder why they are so hungry and don't lose weight. It's because everything is FAKE. Loaded with real or artificial sweeteners, weird binders and preservative, prepared ages ago and devoid of nutrition, unsatisfying but addictive.

Unless its a basic sauce, ingredient or condiment (dry pasta, worcestershire sauce, etc) used for MAKING your meals, I would suggest getting rid of ANY food that comes in a box or a pack or a can.


Oh, and did I mention that I spend a lot LESS on groceries than I did before, even with coupon clipping?

It's sad how many Americans have these fancy kitchens in their McMansions, and yet they hardly ever cook a real meal.

[alfredo]

20. I highly recommend his "In Defense of Food." His other

book, "The botany of Desire" is a very good read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Botany_of_Desire

Another excellent book by him

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1594200823/interactiveda481-20

[alfredo]

23. Good cartoon on our diet

[marmar]

24. That's funny!

:spray:

[alfredo]

25. And true.