Food Read: In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan is at it again. Or maybe I should say that I'm at it again - buying into his latest food-centric hypothesis with exceptional fervor. Pollan has been in the media again recently, on a small (or perhaps large, as I personally have seen several interviews with him) junket for the release of the paperback version of his most recent book, In Defense of Food. I used the availability of the less pricey paperback as my excuse to finally pick up my own copy, and have been plowing through the slim read at a steady pace. In Defense of Food is somewhat of a follow-up to the much-heralded The Omnivore's Dilemma, and I am glad that I had the discipline to force myself to read Omnivore before picking up Defense. While In Defense of Food does stand on its own, it is really made so much richer by the context that The Omnivore's Dilemma provides. It is easier, for instance, to comprehend why modern "industrialized" fruits and vegetables may contain fewer nutrients if you have read the more full and detailed description of how exactly those fruits and vegetables are produced.

In Defense of Food addresses modern American nutrition (or rather, "nutritionism") in the same way The Omnivore's Dilemma addressed modern American food production - by breaking it open and providing a solid basis for questioning the very basic premises that Americans generally take for granted. Where exactly did the U.S. government's nutritional guidelines come from? How have those guidelines been influenced by industry versus by science? And when they are influenced by science, how much do those scientists really know about how food works in our bodies? According to Pollan's research, the answer to the last question seems to be surprisingly little.

Which leads to the main premise of Pollan's argument - that the current approach to nutrition in the United States, generally centered around individual macro- and now micro-nutrients, ignores the likely very important larger picture surrounding nutrition. Pollan suggests, rather convincingly, that what makes many traditional diets successful (think of the French or Mediterranean diets, for example) is not so much a matter of a particular food or nutrient, but rather the combination of foods and nutrients eaten together. Further, he argues that how those foods are eaten, the cultural norms that have grown up around them, plays an integral part in the healthfulness of the diet as well. It's not a surprise that the French tend to be thinner than their U.S. counterparts when you take into account a culture of smaller portions and a tendency against second helpings. In the meantime, the so-called scientific approach to eating in the U.S. has resulted not in a healthier population, but rather has coincided with an increased prevelance of obesity and "diseases of civilization", such as diabetes and heart disease.

Though Pollan does, as he admits, sometimes fall back on "nutritionism" to prove his point, his overall argument makes sense, and is hard to refute based on the plethora of evidence he provides. After poking holes in almost every nutritional guideline presented in the past fifty years, Pollan does not leave us with nothing, though. The final section of the book contains some very straightforward, if general, guidelines for eating. These guidelines fall under Pollan's general rules of "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.", and are the most straightforward, common sense set of nutritional guidelines I've encountered to date. As Pollan has effectively changed my thinking about food shopping, so now he has similarly affected my thinking about food eating. I will surely keep his guidelines in mind when making food choices in the future. For that reason, I definitely consider In Defense of Food a worthy read.

Food Read: The Omnivore's Dilemma

There's so much fantastic "foodie lit." out there! This past summer I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. I was a little behind in reading it (Dilemma came out in 2006 and Pollan's next book In Defense of Food was published in 2008), but I'm so glad that I didn't give in to my desire to skip right to Defense. I'm a city girl at heart, but this book made me want to farm. While I found it in the Sociology section of my local book store, Pollan is actually a professor of journalism by trade. His writing can be very convincing, despite the slight feeling of sensationalism that peers through here and there, undoubtedly due to Pollan's passion for his subject, as well as the surreal realities of the subject itself. In the book, Pollan follows the three primary food chains, starting with industrial farming, then organic farming, and, finally, hunting and gathering. The book was an eye-opener for me not only in its portrayal of modern food production (I will never, ever look at factory farm chicken the same way again), but also in its exploration of alternative methods of food production. Pollan's discussion of the effects of a surplus of cheap, subsidized corn on our diet (thanks to high fructose corn syrup and corn-based additives, corn has made its way into almost every processed food we eat), our environment (a fertilizer-induced "dead zone" the size of New Jersey now exists in the Gulf of Mexico), and even our cattle (cows are built to eat grass, not corn, remember?) is chilling. But equally adrenaline-inducing is his discussion of an alternative to industrial agriculture, Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm, a place where the natural systems, instead of machinery and chemicals, create efficiencies that can only be described as symphonic. This book not only got me thinking about where my food comes from, but also moved me to make changes in the way that I eat. For that reason, I highly recommend The Omnivore's Dilemma, and look forward to reading In Defense of Food within the next couple of months.