On Michael Pollan
Feb. 19th, 2009 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hkellickSo I'm
reading "In Defense of Food" and it's hitting more chords than I honestly
expected it to hit when I first picked up the book.
I'm not going to retype the book out for you, just hit on a few points that
resonated with me.
Let me first say that Michael Pollan reminds me alot of Michael Moore. Maybe
I'm wrong here. Michael Moore, as we all know, has the great capacity to
line up all the facts in an almost linear line, go through them all, explain
how they connect and relate and make his final conclusion almost inevitable.
Not only that, but Michael Moore also has the ability to tell the facts in
such a way that bits and pieces of it resonate with you until not only is
the conclusion inevitable, but you RELATE to it. It makes you want to go out
and DO SOMETHING! And, yeah.. maybe he tossed a few facts away that didn't
exactly coroborate his story.. and maybe he took a FEW things out of context
to help tell the story, but c'mon, man, the conclusion is INEVITABLE! He
must be RIGHT!
Michael Pollan reminds me of that. I don't even know what the other facts
ARE, but I know there are two sides (or more!) to every story and you're
just hearing his. And it makes you want to DO something! It makes you want
to burn your twinkies and tell those corporate farmers to stick their E.
Coli-laden Tomatoes RIGHT where the sun don't shine! .. or something...
That said... I can't help but agree with alot of his conclusions, even
suspecting that they're tainted by his own personal bias (that said... hey,
man, everyone's got a bias. You, me, everyone. So if what he says resonates
with you, go with it.)
Mr. Pollan rails against so-called nutritionism, which is not the same as
Nutritonal Science. Nutritionism is clearly to actual Nutritional Science
what Christianists are to Christians. He feels, and I can't disagree, that
by reducing a food or a group of foods eaten together (since, let's be
honest here. How many of us truly eat just ONE food, all by itself?) to only
the sum of it's (known) micronutrients, that we're missing the big picture
here, and that our view of food is flawed. Not only that, and point one
which resonated with me, but by dualizing micronutrients into good or bad,
we breed a culture that not only doesn't know what and how to eat, but tends
towards fad-ism.
30 years earlier.. saturated fat BAD! So let's take out all the saturated
fat and replace it with this awesome new fat we just created in the lab,
partially hydrogenated unsaturdated fat! That'll be good!
Oh, and we'll take all our previously fatty products like pudding and
cupcakes and we'll remove all the fat, but... now the consistency is all
wrong.. and so is the taste. So we'll add more sugar, and other chemical
bits for consistency.
Long story short... this.. strikes me as true, nothing but true, after two
years on CC. People don't know the first thing about how to eat, or what's
really good for them. A diet is ALL ABOUT eating! I mean, it's all about
exercising too, but when you diet, the first thing any dieter notices is..
I'm eating too much and what I'm eating is not good for me. But then they
look around and ask "So what's good for me?" and that's when people run into
problems.
"BUY ME!" says the box of Snackwell Cookies in the Cookie Aisle "I'm low-fat
and only 100 calories a cookie! Buy me!' "BUY ME TOO!" says the bottle of
low-calorie salad dressing "I'm low calorie! We replaced MY sugar with High
Fructose Corn Syrup!"
We get these Fad Diets.. some of them terrifying.. don't eat any carbs, says
the Atkins Diet? Huh? But your brain NEEDS carbs. That's it's preferred
fuel. Don't eat Fat! says Society. Fat bad! Despite the fact that, like
Carbs, our body needs Fat.
I've seen the children of Michael Pollan's nutritionism, and the fact is..
they DON'T know how to eat and whatever it is they are eating is making them
fat. Which is why they're on Calorie Count to begin with (Ignoring all those
who come in for other reason, such as mental disease (Anorexia, Bulimia..
you know.. Mental Disease.))
Mr. Pollan then goes on to suggest that no matter what these nutritionists
may say... a food is more than the sum of the (known) micronutrients inside
of it, or the complex interactions between micronutrients which, if we study
individual piece by individual piece, we can't begin to truly see. This also
strikes me as likely true. A perfect example of this is breakfast cereal. If
we take a bunch of oats, mill it down, remove everything but the white
flour, cook it into cereal, and add the micronutrients that would have been
in the oat had we not processed it, is it as healthy as the original oat?
Kelloggs and Post would like you to think that's true, but there's been a
number of studies and a number of professionals going "Nuh uh. No."
The box may be AHA certified, but it's still not as healthy as a bowl of
(ACTUAL, not the Quaker Processed and Sugared) oatmeal. The complex
interactions of WHATEVER inside the actual whole grain is still better for
you than trying to add these things back in after the fact.
And don't kid yourself, the food industry DOES know. That's why Whole Wheat
Bread's becoming more readily available, as well as other whole-wheat grain
products (Duram Wheat Pasta, Quick-Cook Oatmeal (real oats, broken down so
they cook faster), etc.), but so long as there's a demand for Honey Nut
Cheerios, the Food Industry is MORE than happy to provide.
So when he got one of the main cruxes of his book, something he clearly
wants to state (over, and over, and over, and over, and over) that Saturated
Fat isn't the enemy WHEN EATEN AS PART OF REAL FOOD, I wanted to snort and
ignore the whole thing, and I couldn't. It's clear he's desperate to prove
his point. He makes it about fifty times and looks for other (potentially
true, I'll grant) answers to why eating too much meat may be detrimental to
our health. But... I also grant that to try to avoid saturated fat
altogether is a poor idea, and to damn all meat and animal products
altogether because they may contain saturated fat is also a poor idea. Not
to say "Hey, let's go get the Lard! I want to have some out of the Jar!
Mmm.. Lard!", but I don't think Meat and Milk are enemies.
Believe it or not, we have evolved to be omnivores. That means our body is
actually DESIGNED to handle both the consumption and digestion of both
actual meat and actual plant products. If we weren't supposed to eat meat,
nature wouldn't have evolved incisors for us, nor would it have granted us
the ability to actual digest a food product. And for those of us who can
drink milk, it was a BIG DEAL when those of us of North and Western European
Descent evolved the ability to create lactase, the enzyme in our body that
can actually handle milk. Just as importantly, our body is well equipped to
handle a wide variety of plant matter, and in fact, much like most other
animals, we NEED what plant matter provides to us, in terms of the
micronutrients and phytochemicals most plants include. Just as we NEED some
of the fats and proteins that we're going to get by occasionally eating
animals (and animal products)
What our body was NOT designed to eat is the massive doses of processed
carbs (read: Sugars. They're basically sugar once they've been processed
after a point.) and other chemical junk many of us do eat. Nor were we
designed to spend as much time idle, sitting around, as most of us do.
Which, I guess, at the end, is why I DO agree with Michael Pollan's final
conclusion: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.
And those are my thoughts/rants which you may feel free to ignore if you are
not the least bit interested.
reading "In Defense of Food" and it's hitting more chords than I honestly
expected it to hit when I first picked up the book.
I'm not going to retype the book out for you, just hit on a few points that
resonated with me.
Let me first say that Michael Pollan reminds me alot of Michael Moore. Maybe
I'm wrong here. Michael Moore, as we all know, has the great capacity to
line up all the facts in an almost linear line, go through them all, explain
how they connect and relate and make his final conclusion almost inevitable.
Not only that, but Michael Moore also has the ability to tell the facts in
such a way that bits and pieces of it resonate with you until not only is
the conclusion inevitable, but you RELATE to it. It makes you want to go out
and DO SOMETHING! And, yeah.. maybe he tossed a few facts away that didn't
exactly coroborate his story.. and maybe he took a FEW things out of context
to help tell the story, but c'mon, man, the conclusion is INEVITABLE! He
must be RIGHT!
Michael Pollan reminds me of that. I don't even know what the other facts
ARE, but I know there are two sides (or more!) to every story and you're
just hearing his. And it makes you want to DO something! It makes you want
to burn your twinkies and tell those corporate farmers to stick their E.
Coli-laden Tomatoes RIGHT where the sun don't shine! .. or something...
That said... I can't help but agree with alot of his conclusions, even
suspecting that they're tainted by his own personal bias (that said... hey,
man, everyone's got a bias. You, me, everyone. So if what he says resonates
with you, go with it.)
Mr. Pollan rails against so-called nutritionism, which is not the same as
Nutritonal Science. Nutritionism is clearly to actual Nutritional Science
what Christianists are to Christians. He feels, and I can't disagree, that
by reducing a food or a group of foods eaten together (since, let's be
honest here. How many of us truly eat just ONE food, all by itself?) to only
the sum of it's (known) micronutrients, that we're missing the big picture
here, and that our view of food is flawed. Not only that, and point one
which resonated with me, but by dualizing micronutrients into good or bad,
we breed a culture that not only doesn't know what and how to eat, but tends
towards fad-ism.
30 years earlier.. saturated fat BAD! So let's take out all the saturated
fat and replace it with this awesome new fat we just created in the lab,
partially hydrogenated unsaturdated fat! That'll be good!
Oh, and we'll take all our previously fatty products like pudding and
cupcakes and we'll remove all the fat, but... now the consistency is all
wrong.. and so is the taste. So we'll add more sugar, and other chemical
bits for consistency.
Long story short... this.. strikes me as true, nothing but true, after two
years on CC. People don't know the first thing about how to eat, or what's
really good for them. A diet is ALL ABOUT eating! I mean, it's all about
exercising too, but when you diet, the first thing any dieter notices is..
I'm eating too much and what I'm eating is not good for me. But then they
look around and ask "So what's good for me?" and that's when people run into
problems.
"BUY ME!" says the box of Snackwell Cookies in the Cookie Aisle "I'm low-fat
and only 100 calories a cookie! Buy me!' "BUY ME TOO!" says the bottle of
low-calorie salad dressing "I'm low calorie! We replaced MY sugar with High
Fructose Corn Syrup!"
We get these Fad Diets.. some of them terrifying.. don't eat any carbs, says
the Atkins Diet? Huh? But your brain NEEDS carbs. That's it's preferred
fuel. Don't eat Fat! says Society. Fat bad! Despite the fact that, like
Carbs, our body needs Fat.
I've seen the children of Michael Pollan's nutritionism, and the fact is..
they DON'T know how to eat and whatever it is they are eating is making them
fat. Which is why they're on Calorie Count to begin with (Ignoring all those
who come in for other reason, such as mental disease (Anorexia, Bulimia..
you know.. Mental Disease.))
Mr. Pollan then goes on to suggest that no matter what these nutritionists
may say... a food is more than the sum of the (known) micronutrients inside
of it, or the complex interactions between micronutrients which, if we study
individual piece by individual piece, we can't begin to truly see. This also
strikes me as likely true. A perfect example of this is breakfast cereal. If
we take a bunch of oats, mill it down, remove everything but the white
flour, cook it into cereal, and add the micronutrients that would have been
in the oat had we not processed it, is it as healthy as the original oat?
Kelloggs and Post would like you to think that's true, but there's been a
number of studies and a number of professionals going "Nuh uh. No."
The box may be AHA certified, but it's still not as healthy as a bowl of
(ACTUAL, not the Quaker Processed and Sugared) oatmeal. The complex
interactions of WHATEVER inside the actual whole grain is still better for
you than trying to add these things back in after the fact.
And don't kid yourself, the food industry DOES know. That's why Whole Wheat
Bread's becoming more readily available, as well as other whole-wheat grain
products (Duram Wheat Pasta, Quick-Cook Oatmeal (real oats, broken down so
they cook faster), etc.), but so long as there's a demand for Honey Nut
Cheerios, the Food Industry is MORE than happy to provide.
So when he got one of the main cruxes of his book, something he clearly
wants to state (over, and over, and over, and over, and over) that Saturated
Fat isn't the enemy WHEN EATEN AS PART OF REAL FOOD, I wanted to snort and
ignore the whole thing, and I couldn't. It's clear he's desperate to prove
his point. He makes it about fifty times and looks for other (potentially
true, I'll grant) answers to why eating too much meat may be detrimental to
our health. But... I also grant that to try to avoid saturated fat
altogether is a poor idea, and to damn all meat and animal products
altogether because they may contain saturated fat is also a poor idea. Not
to say "Hey, let's go get the Lard! I want to have some out of the Jar!
Mmm.. Lard!", but I don't think Meat and Milk are enemies.
Believe it or not, we have evolved to be omnivores. That means our body is
actually DESIGNED to handle both the consumption and digestion of both
actual meat and actual plant products. If we weren't supposed to eat meat,
nature wouldn't have evolved incisors for us, nor would it have granted us
the ability to actual digest a food product. And for those of us who can
drink milk, it was a BIG DEAL when those of us of North and Western European
Descent evolved the ability to create lactase, the enzyme in our body that
can actually handle milk. Just as importantly, our body is well equipped to
handle a wide variety of plant matter, and in fact, much like most other
animals, we NEED what plant matter provides to us, in terms of the
micronutrients and phytochemicals most plants include. Just as we NEED some
of the fats and proteins that we're going to get by occasionally eating
animals (and animal products)
What our body was NOT designed to eat is the massive doses of processed
carbs (read: Sugars. They're basically sugar once they've been processed
after a point.) and other chemical junk many of us do eat. Nor were we
designed to spend as much time idle, sitting around, as most of us do.
Which, I guess, at the end, is why I DO agree with Michael Pollan's final
conclusion: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.
And those are my thoughts/rants which you may feel free to ignore if you are
not the least bit interested.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-19 07:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-19 08:13 pm (UTC)I have this interesting thing to say (and I'm probably going to post about it soon). I'm pretty darned pregnant now and getting physically bigger. But 3-4 weeks ago I pretty much cut out processed foods in an effort to cut out High Fructose Corn Syrup. And so as I'm getting bigger I have actually lost weight (not a lot, just a pound, but when you're pg every pound counts). All I can say is I cannot imagine how much I would be losing if I were giving up processed foods while NOT pregnant.
It's pretty amazing.