In Defence Of Food Pollan Summary

In Defence of Food 1. The one idea in the introduction that was intriguing to me was Pollan’s recommendation to “eat food”. At the very beginning of the introduction when Pollan said that we should “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants” (pg. 1) I was surprised to know that he considers meat as a side dish, than as a main. He is encouraging America to eat MOSTLY plants is a lot more realistic than encouraging America to eat ONLY plants. 2. Nutritionism is the idea that the nutritional value of a food is the sum of all its individual nutrients, vitamins and other components. This is also known as scientific reductionism, when nutritionists and food scientists began to isolate the health components of food rather than the whole food product. Therefore, the food is divided into invisible nutrients and each nutrient within the food is divided into the healthy and unhealthy ones. Since nutrients are invisible, it is now necessary to rely on nutrition experts to make food choices for us and tell us which nutrients are healthy or unhealthy. Moreover, it also means that the only point of eating is to promote bodily health, which nutrients are “good” for health and which ones are “bad”. 3. Lipid hypothesis claimed that dietary (saturated fat) in
Studies are beginning to point to this shortage as potentially the cause for some of the increased “societal burdens of aggression, depression, and cardiovascular mortality” that we are witnessing. Leaves provide us with critical nutrients that are lacking in seeds. We as a society eat too much seeds which are high in starch and relatively high in calories, but we should be eating the leaves for their