Lit: In Defense of Food
By Drift on Mar 9, 2008 in Lit
In Defense of Food
Michael Pollan
By Travis Hill
It’s so terribly simple: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
That’s what Michael Pollan recommends to the hundreds of millions of Americans who are literally dying to find the next big diet craze. And unfortunately for all of us lazy people out there, it appears he is right.
Pollan exploded onto the food/journalism scene in 2006 with another informative-but-terrifying book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In Omnivore (named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post), Pollan takes us on a frightening ride up and down the food chain, exposing many things we never wanted to know about the value meal we just bought at McDonald’s.
In Defense of Food is his follow-up, and it tackles the obvious question: OK, smart-ass, what SHOULD we eat?
Pollan begins by dismantling what he calls “Nutritionism,” which is basically today’s American diet. He lays out the history of how a lax government and multi-million dollar marketing efforts have combined to replace food that your grandmother would recognize with synthetic products trumpeting the latest dietary fad (No trans fats! Low cholesterol! Omega-3s!).
In a calm, patient style that lets his facts do most of the talking, Pollan makes an important connection: Since corporations and scientists have been breaking food down and selling them by their elements, Americans have become much less healthy.
He argues that when you walk through Publix and see products trumpeting how they have been crammed full of Healthy Additive X … keep walking.
The scary thing about this book is that the facts are difficult to dispute. It’s up to you whether or not you want to live by them. Instead of a 16-ounce steak and a baked potato with sour cream, bacon and chives, you should probably have 3 ounces of fresh-caught salmon and a salad with vegetables bought from a farmer’s market (and lay off the ranch dressing, fatty).
You should make more of your own meals. You should buy locally-produced meats and vegetables. You shouldn’t buy processed, synthetic pseudo-food. You should plant a garden. You shouldn’t eat six double-chocolate brownies at 3 in the afternoon.
See, it’s easy: Eat food. Not so much. Mostly plants. So why does it seem so hard?
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