Erin's Book #33: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

I've wanted to read this book since seeing (and being very impressed with) Michael Pollan in Food, Inc. He's written several books on nutrition and the food industry, but this one seemed like a great one to start with. I plan on reading them all eventually.

There are so many conflicting reports on healthy eating that it's very difficult to know what's right. I can't be certain that Pollan's approach is right, but it makes a lot of sense to me. His basic assumption is that we shouldn't be trusting scientists and nutritionists to create our food. They take something natural that people have been eating for hundreds or thousands of years and take stuff out of it that they think is bad and add stuff back in that they think is good. Why should we trust them over nature? Especially when one of the first processed foods of this sort, margarine, initially was loaded with trans fat. And we all know how that turned out.

In Defense of Food launches a pretty scathing attack on the food industry. It's full of terrifying and disturbing statistics, such as:

• A child born in the year 2000 has a 1 in 3 chance of developing diabetes.
  
• Bread, which can be made using flour, yeast, water, and a pinch of salt often contains 40+ ingredients.
• There are 17,000 new food products introduced each year

Much like our healthcare system, which treats illness instead of preventing it, the food industry does the same. Diabetes is becoming such a prevalant problem that instead of trying to prevent it, which would fundamentally change the Western diet as we know it, we create ways to make patients live longer. The slew of diet-related health problems we face in this country means a heap of new products to treat them.

Yes, Pollan's a bit cynical. But it seems hard not to be. It's completely outrageous the lack of control we have over our food. The typical Midwestern farm used to grow over a dozen species of crops and animals. Now it grows two - corn and soybeans. If you hadn't heard, they are in EVERYTHING.

Where Pollan differs from other stuff I've read is on the subject of "health" foods and low-fat foods. This goes back to his basic supposition. Scientists are removing fat, and often with it nutritious benefits, and then adding in a bunch of crap to account for it. And since the study of nutrition reduces foods to the nutrients they contain rather than the foods as a whole, we really don't know much. It may seem like this vitamin or that antioxidant are the key to healthy living, but it could be the other nutrients they interact with.

And while organic food contains more nutrients than industrialized food (not to mention the obvious benefit of the lack of pesticides), much of our organic food is now coming from China, thus traveling farther than our industrialized food!

But there is hope. Pollan suggests utilizing farmer's markets and CSA (community-supported agriculture) for as much food as you can. Beyond that, he's created a set of rules:

• Eat Food. In other words, avoid the food-like products that populate the grocery shelves. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup. Avoid food products that make health claims. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and avoid the middle.
  
• Eat mostly plants. Especially leaves. You are what you eat eats too (the diet of the animals we eat has a bearing on the nutritional quality of the food itself, from meat to milk to eggs. Most animals now live on grain, instead of the grass they're born to eat. Buy pastured eggs and grass fed beef). Eat well-grown food from healthy soils (this means organic but don't overlook the small farms that are organic but not certified so). Eat wild foods when you can. Be the kind of person who takes supplements (There's a lot of research that suggests supplements don't do much unless you're old, but people that take them tend to be healthier). Eat more like the French. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or the Indians. Or the Greeks. Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism. Don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet (We don't know what specific ingredient or combination of nutrients make traditional, non-Western diets work. They just do). Have a glass of wine with dinner (Hooray!).
  
• Pay more, eat less (We spend less money on food than most cultures and eat more of it). Eat meals (Don't snack all day. Eat real meals. With your family). Do all your eating at a table. Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does. Try not to eat alone. Consult your gut (Americans rely on external cues to stop eating - e.g. the plate is empty. The French stop eating when they're full. How novel! Use smaller plates). Eat slowly. Cook and, if you can, plant a garden (Change your relationship to food. Understand it better).

This may be a massive post, but I've only skimmed the surface. This is a fantastic book and I highly recommend you read it.