Next up on our book review wagon is “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto“ by Michael Pollan. Pollan has written this book as a follow-up to his previous book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma“, as a guide to what you should eat based on the issues he raised in his that book.
In this book, Pollan breaks out his defense of food into three sections. First focusing on the rise of “Nutritionism”, then the Western Diet (we’ll get to what that is later) and finally, his recommendations on how one should change their diet. In the spirit of this book, I’ll break up the reviews into three sections.
Nutritionism
First, in order to understand the focal point of this book, one must understand the meaning of nutritionism, which loosely interpreted is a mindset that believes that the key to all foods is the nutrients that make up food. Because science on nutrition always changes, this minimalist thinking which focuses only on specific nutrients leads to confusion amongst nutrionists, the general public, etc. Pollan says that this confusion leads to anxiety, which in turn leads to a society of orthorexics (people who are overly concerned with healthy eating; I could be one of those).
Pollan argues that nutritionism has also led to a reliance on eating processed foods that are low fat, high in Omega-3 nutrients or overloaded with our friend high fructose corn syrup in order to fill our nutrition requirements as dictated by science and by eating these foods that manufacturers are engineering, you are robbing yourself of the necessary natural nutrients of foods found in nature (you do need fat, etc. in your diet to survive). So, in its most simplistic form, you are depriving yourself by eating manufactured food-like substances and are not really eating food at all.
Speaking of science, that is the last focus of this section and without going into details (I’ll admit, I got a little confused at this stuff and it became very tedious), he shows how science has a repeated history of coming out with one study saying one thing and then later comes out with another study saying that the previous study was wrong and we have a new template for what food should be and what we need. For example, margarine has been re-engineered on countless occasions in order to fit the nutrition science of the times and that continuously changing nature is the only constant in food science.
The Western Diet
Pollan’s description of the Western diet is “lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added sugar, lots of everything–except vegetables, fruits and whole grains.” To put it simply, the Western diet is a diet based on foods that are heavily reliant on seeds (corn products, soy products, etc.) and not necessarily on leaves (fresh fruits, vegetables, etc.).
The point of this section of the book is to show that the aforementioned diet causes increases in diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. If you’ve ever watched TV or read a magazine article on health and/or diets, you already know this stuff but just to hammer his point home, Pollan discusses a study done using a group of unhealthy, Type 2 diabetic Australian Aborigines. What this study did was take a group of Aborigines who had been living in civilization for several years and return them to their secluded roots and have them live for seven weeks in the wild eating only foods they would hunt or gather in the wild. Health levels from before and after their stay in the wild were compared and it showed that this test group not only improved their health levels but also rid themselves of any diabetes signatures, thereby proving the point that our current diet of processed foods is what is making us unhealthy.
Also, despite evidence that is showing that this Western diet is what is killing us, no one is really doing anything changing dietary patterns. The only thing that is being done is creating newer and better medicines to combat these health issues, when in reality, the diet is where we should be the focus. Because of this pattern of using medicine and not diet changes, it may get to the point where Type 2 diabetes is just something that happens to you regardless, kind of like gray hair or wrinkles.
Getting Over Nutritionism
The final section of this book is Pollan’s recommendations on what we should do to reverse this trend of nutritionism and over reliance on what is in food instead of what we are eating. He does not give us a specific eating plan, but he does say that we should pattern our eating habits more like the French. The French eat smaller portions, eat more slowly, eat with others and their entire population is generally healthier than those populations that exist on the Western diet. For the French, it is more important to enjoy food than it is to simply deliver energy to yourself through food.
Also, he says that we should be prepared to spend a little more to get higher quality, fresh food instead of processed food. For example, the average American spends less than 10% of their income each year on food while the Italians and the French (generally healthier populations) spend close to 15% of their yearly income on food. This is because they are going for fresh and wholly nutritious items. Basically, this all falls under his eat less seeds and more leaves mantra.
Without going into more detail, the basic point is to spend more time shopping on the outside edges of the supermarket (or at a farmer’s market or CSA) where all the fresh products are instead of the inside of the supermarket where all the processed foods are. The general rule of thumb should be, if you great-grandparents didn’t eat that food, then you shouldn’t eat that food. If the box (you shouldn’t be buying food out of boxes anyway) advertises the fact that it is low-fat or low calorie, then don’t eat it because you are shorting yourself of essential nutrients.
Conclusion
Wow, I just realized how long this review was and this was my best effort at summarizing. For a book that was only about 200 pages and a quick read, it sure said a lot and I left out a lot for this review. The problem with this book is that it took the long route to describe a lot of things that are general knowledge (don’t eat processed foods, eat fresh foods) and read more like a college term paper than a book. Although, judging by the fact that this book was based on an essay in New York magazine, that was probably the intent.
For all recreational readers out there, I would not recommend tackling this book. It is very science heavy for the first two-thirds of the book and it is easy to get lost (I got lost many times). The only saving grace about this book was the final section where Pollan laid out a battle plan of how we should change our diets. If only he had spent the majority of the book writing about that instead of focusing on the science of nutrition, I would recommend it to others. But, if you are heavy into science or this topic in general, give it a shot. It definitely is interesting.
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