Comments (4)

By jamie, April 13, 2010 7:17 am

Uh oh, Michael Pollan, you might lose me here – I have been with you all along. Section 3 is about what to do now that we have learned about the industrialization of food, and how the Western diet is bad for our health. In the first chapter of this section, he admits that it will be difficult, and hints that we must put more money into our food budgets. I get a little bit twitchy when I hear about solutions that are restricted by social class – if not everyone can participate, I don’t want to attend your party. He says that we should stop eating the Western diet, and that “the hallmark of the Western diet is food that is fast, cheap, and easy.” Oh dear. Some people can only eat food that is “fast, cheap, and easy” otherwise they would not be able to eat. I’m all for lobbying the schools to feed our kids healthier, and I will vote with my dollars when I can, but I am going to be very disappointed if there are no suggestions for those who do not have extra monetary resources at their disposal. You still have me captivated, Mr. Pollan, but I’m now holding my breath for the last few chapters.

He isn’t going to tell us what to eat, but he is going to give us a series of “policies” to follow when we purchase our food and prepare our meals. I can hardly wait to read them. One thing he mentions, which is something my husband also said – if we buy meat from animals that are fed the Western diet, according to Pollan’s logic, they do not really qualify as whole foods. That said, he is clear that he is not advocating a strictly vegetarian diet, though I am concerned that meat is going to be off the table for those who cannot afford organic choices (although, as Jillian Michaels mentioned, cheaper options are increasingly becoming available).

My favorite quote: “I have been specifically warned by scientist allied with the carbohydrate camp not to ‘fall under the spell of the omega-3 cult.’ Cult? There is a lot more religion in science than you might expect.”

Scroll down for other posts about In Defense of Food:

Other posts about In Defense of Food:
Review
Post 1: In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Breakfast Cereal is not a Food?
Post 3: Chocolate Science
Post 4: “Hourly Yogurt Enemas?!”
Post 5: Hunting and Gathering
Post 6: Look Mom – No Cavities!
Post 7: Mainlining Glucose or “I’m Not an Addict!”
Post 8: Food is Religious and Political
Post 9: Whole Milk Sounds Almost Sinful
Post 10: I Don’t Like the Salad, Mommy
Post 11: Let’s Plant a Garden

Comments (7)

By jamie, April 10, 2010 7:28 pm

What have I eaten today? This morning I had hard boiled eggs, but mixed them with a little bit of mustard and light mayonnaise and spread them on white bread (we’re out of the whole wheat variety). My daughter and I shared an apple for a snack. Then for lunch I had a lot of strawberries, which I sweetened with real sugar (I used less than a tablespoon in total). I drank a glass of milk earlier, and since then have only had water to drink (not very much though). Tonight we had dinner from a Mexican restaurant (we brought it home) – there was a lot of chicken in my enchiladas, a green salad with real guacamole instead of dressing, and not too much cheese. The salsa tasted fresh. Today wasn’t too bad.

Here is how Pollan defines the “Western diet”: “lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything except fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.” As I said, today wasn’t TOO bad – for me. My daughter had Cheerios and milk, processed yogurt puffs, Ritz crackers, string cheese, and a chocolate cupcake left over from her school party (mine is waiting for me for later) in addition to her apple. She tasted the strawberries (without sugar), but didn’t like them today (sometimes she loves them). She ate chicken and rice at dinner, and drank milk and water – no juice today. Not great.

Chapter 2 of section 2 is titled “The Elephant in the Room” and is about the Western diet, and how it seems to accompany “Western diseases,” including “heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, hypertension, stroke, appendicitis, diverticulits, malformed dental arches, tooth decay, varicose veins, ulcers, [and] hemorrhoids.” It’s worse than I thought it was – evidently, these ailments only seem to happen once a population adopts our way of eating.

I can understand diabetes and hypertension, but tooth decay? Really? A Canadian-born dentist, Weston A. Price, studied this back in the 1930s, and found that people who did not follow the Western diet had “no need of dentists whatsoever” – they had almost no tooth decay, regardless of whether they ate mostly seafood, mostly meat, or mainly fruits, vegetables and grains. In fact, what they ate did not seem to matter at all, even if they left out entire food groups, as long as they did not eat like we do. I was surprised to read that.

Just this week my daughter had her well-child visit, and the pediatrician said it’s time to schedule her first dental appointment. We are also supposed to brush her teeth with fluoride toothpaste after each meal and before bedtime. When he told us that, I felt a little bit of worry that we won’t do a satisfactory job of helping her keep her teeth cleaned (sometimes she cooperates, and sometimes she doesn’t) and she will get a cavities on her baby teeth. Maybe if I keep her away from too much processed food I can worry about this less.

Scroll down for other posts about In Defense of Food:

Other posts about In Defense of Food:
Review
Post 1: In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Breakfast Cereal is not a Food?
Post 3: Chocolate Science
Post 4: “Hourly Yogurt Enemas?!”
Post 5: Hunting and Gathering
Post 6: Look Mom – No Cavities!
Post 7: Mainlining Glucose or “I’m Not an Addict!”
Post 8: Food is Religious and Political
Post 9: Whole Milk Sounds Almost Sinful
Post 10: I Don’t Like the Salad, Mommy
Post 11: Let’s Plant a Garden

Comments (5)

By jamie, April 8, 2010 3:21 pm

People used to pay “a small fortune” for, among other things, “hourly yogurt enemas” at the Kelloggs Battle Creek sanitarium, in order to improve their health. And here I used to be embarrassed about the week I only drank orange rind tea, or the time I did the cabbage soup diet, or the time when… well, that might still be embarrassing – I think I’ll keep that one to myself. Reading chapters 7-10 really brought it home for me that we really do not know which foods are better than others – should we have more protein, carbs, or fats? What kinds? Is the U.S. food pyramid the result of extensive, accurate scientific research, or partly a nod to manufacturers of carbohydrates? Yikes.

To illustrate just how much we don’t know, Pollan quotes a study from psychologist, Paul Rosin, at the University of Pennsylvania – he asked people to “Assume you are alone on a desert island for one year and you can have water and one other food. Pick the food that you think would be best for your health.” Choices: “corn, alfalfa sprouts, hot dogs, spinach, peaches, bananas, milk chocolate.” So which food did you choose? (The correct answer is at the end of this post.)

I had a little debate with my husband about this book because he doesn’t like the implication that processed foods are not “food” when, as he correctly explained, they provide calories and nutrition just like “natural” food (he thinks it is “stunty”, and I see his point). He says that processing foods, even things like milk, makes them less likely to make us sick, and that we should support food science because it has benefited us, over all. I like it when my reading sparks discussion!

I’m excited to have hubby read this section, and you should read it too, since I will not be able to do it justice. Basically, it is impossible to accurately study nutrition. If we isolate each particle from a food, we can theoretically determine whether that particle has an effect on health, but we would have to control for all other factors (what else is eaten, what is not being eaten, etc.) Also, each component of a particular food may act differently when isolated, and have a completely different effect on the body if left in the food (I can’t help but think of infant formula here, and how it has so far been impossible to perfectly duplicate human milk – I have always said that breast is not necessarily best, and I stand by that, but I guess some part of me is unsure, because I nursed my daughter for 14 months). It is also necessary to compare effects when the food is cooked, or when anything else is eaten with the food, so we can’t just give people nutrient capsules and monitor the health differences of those who partake of the nutrient and those who do not.

Also, we have to rely on self reporting when we study diet, because we can’t have people move into a lab for several years, or have a lab tech accurately measure and log everything that goes into the mouth of each study participant. I know we all say that we are honest, but how many of us have at least stretched the truth a bit when asked about what we ate? Or, if we haven’t lied, how many of us know the exact amount of each thing we have eaten, including the precise amount of cooking oil or seasoning? Impossible, even if we cook and measure everything we eat!

So, there is a lot we don’t know, and a lot we can’t really find out. Yet we jump on bandwagons, such as low-fat, low-carb, etc., seemingly because they are built on solid research. Tricky. Pollan stands with some food scientists when he says it would probably be better to study the effects of whole foods instead of particular nutrients, and I see their point.

Oh, Rosin’s food quiz: If you chose either hot dogs or milk chocolate, good for you! They would sustain you better than the other options. Less than 10% of Rosin’s subjects chose one of these answers, so don’t feel bad if you were wrong. Most people chose bananas.

Scroll down for other posts about In Defense of Food:

Other posts about In Defense of Food:
Review
Post 1: In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Breakfast Cereal is not a Food?
Post 3: Chocolate Science
Post 4: “Hourly Yogurt Enemas?!”
Post 5: Hunting and Gathering
Post 6: Look Mom – No Cavities!
Post 7: Mainlining Glucose or “I’m Not an Addict!”
Post 8: Food is Religious and Political
Post 9: Whole Milk Sounds Almost Sinful
Post 10: I Don’t Like the Salad, Mommy
Post 11: Let’s Plant a Garden

Comments (6)

By jamie,

Last night at dinner, my little girl (who recently turned two years old!), decided she would rather have a little “snack” from her Easter basket instead of eating dinner (yeah, I bought her candy for Easter – don’t judge). She started yelling “I NEED YOU CANDY!!” over and over again. I thought about this as I read chapters 4-6 today, since they mentioned a candy company paying for a university position to study the health properties of chocolate. Do you think that the university will soon release a study finding lots of terrific health properties in chocolate? It seems as though the answer might be yes. Evidently, a lot of studies funded by a various sections of the food industry have found health benefits for the product peddled by their funding source (I guess it’s fairly easy to find a link when specifically looking for it).

This section mostly discusses the “lipid hypothesis”, which basically states that chronic disease is often caused by eating a high fat diet. Doctors put their patients on low-fat diets, people switch to low-fat versions of their favorite products (including cookies, ice cream, etc. – dieting without deprivation!) in order to lose weight, and consumers, thinking these products are healthier for them, eat larger quantities of foods labeled “low-fat”. This way of eating has not made us healthier, and has made some of us fatter.

How much scientific evidence is there for the lipid hypothesis? As it turns out, not much. Trans fats, on the other hand, are the devil, and always were, even when we were being led to believe that eating them in place of saturated fats could save our lives. Fascinating.

This section also talks about how food engineers tinker with ingredients to make foods appear healthier (according to various standards), and how the processed food industry is particularly happy about this because it helps justify the consumption of more processed foods.

I always wondered about those commercials for “pork, the other white meat”- how can the same animal that we get bacon from be just as healthy for us as fish or chicken? There is even a website dedicated to this campaign. You may have guessed that pigs have been genetically and otherwise engineered to produce leaner meat in order for this label to make any sense. So even though processed foods seem to be the best potential money-maker (you can’t easily add omega 3 to a carrot, but you can add it to pancake mix) “natural” food sources are tinkered with as well.

One natural whole food that has earned an enthusiastic marketing campaign is the pomegranate, which Pollan refers to as “a fruit formerly more trouble to eat than it was worth.” I mention this here to say that I have been a fan of these tasty treats since I was a kid – my dad brought them home from someone who had a tree when we were kids. They stain your fingernails (and everything else), but they are definitely worth the trouble. So, I’m bragging a bit to say that I ate them before the food industry told me to.

Scroll down for other posts about In Defense of Food:

Other posts about In Defense of Food:
Review
Post 1: In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Breakfast Cereal is not a Food?
Post 3: Chocolate Science
Post 4: “Hourly Yogurt Enemas?!”
Post 5: Hunting and Gathering
Post 6: Look Mom – No Cavities!
Post 7: Mainlining Glucose or “I’m Not an Addict!”
Post 8: Food is Religious and Political
Post 9: Whole Milk Sounds Almost Sinful
Post 10: I Don’t Like the Salad, Mommy
Post 11: Let’s Plant a Garden

Comments (9)

By jamie, April 7, 2010 12:30 am

My sister is not crazy about processed breakfast cereal, which is something we eat just about every day. She stayed with me this week and I asked her why she rarely lets her four year old eat it (he has oatmeal instead, the kind that needs to be cooked) – she informed me that, in her opinion, it’s not real food. I was thinking about this while I read the first three chapters of this book, and it seems that she is right.

Of course I knew this and had forgotten it, or maybe repressed it: Do any of you watch the show “How It’s Made” on the Discovery Channel? They film various things being manufactured, everything from musical instruments to bicycle helmets. (Warning – it’s a very addictive program!) Anyway, one episode showed what happens in a cereal factory. You know how cereal boxes provide a huge list of vitamins and minerals? As it turns out, those “ingredients” are SPRAYED ON to the flakes during processing. When I saw this, I was shocked and appalled, because I had thought that the nutrition was actually “in” the grains naturally. I guess, put in perspective, I am eating vitamin spray, which is not really food.

So far this book is fascinating. This section teaches us some of the history of food politics. Some foods have been vilified in the past while others have been lauded as the best and healthiest, then everything got twisted around by lobbyists from the various food industries and now we only talk about nutrients, instead of actual food products. (It’s not the meat itself, it’s the protein or the saturated fat content, depending on which side of the fence you are standing). Now we have a war between carbs, fats, and protein, which are not actual foods, but only food components. Unfortunately, as it turns out, scientific studies have historically focused more on types of food (like green vegetables) – NOT specific food components. So what we think we know, we probably do not know.

All we care about now is the nutrition, and because food can be engineered way beyond spraying vitamins on pressed grain flakes, manufacturers can make products that can claim to be more nutritious than their natural counterparts (beverage mixes containing fiber or protein come to mind – they can improve upon water)!

If you are using infant formula at the moment, this book might be uncomfortable to read, as it provides an unflattering history of the product. In a nutshell: infant formula was invented arrogant men trying to improve upon nature and leaving lots of malnourished babies in their wake as they added one nutrient after another to keep selling more product. Yikes! Infant formula and breastfeeding are important topics for me, so I am sure to discuss them later – all I will say for now is that I guess, technically, baby formula is not food, but I am very glad that manufacturers have continued adding nutrients to it so that babies can actually thrive on the stuff, because breastfeeding is not always best for every family, for a host of reasons.

Oh, how many of you eat margarine? First it was marketed as being better than butter, then we learned that it can cause more health problems than butter may cause. Luckily, because margarine is manufactured, and not real food, it was just re-engineered and so now it is better than butter again. Maybe. (Note: dipping bread in herb infused olive oil tastes better than either one.)

Scroll down for other posts about In Defense of Food:

Other posts about In Defense of Food:
Review
Post 1: In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
Post 2: Breakfast Cereal is not a Food?
Post 3: Chocolate Science
Post 4: “Hourly Yogurt Enemas?!”
Post 5: Hunting and Gathering
Post 6: Look Mom – No Cavities!
Post 7: Mainlining Glucose or “I’m Not an Addict!”
Post 8: Food is Religious and Political
Post 9: Whole Milk Sounds Almost Sinful
Post 10: I Don’t Like the Salad, Mommy
Post 11: Let’s Plant a Garden