Preview

in defense of food

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1844 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
in defense of food
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto Book Critique McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Chipotle, Subway, Jimmy Johns, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Popeye’s and countless other food places are visited by thousands of Americans each day. Sadly, because of the convenience and price I am one of these people who give in to the endless fast food options we have in America today. Grocery shopping for most Americans is buying food that is the “best bargain,” or something you can get your moneys worth for. Quantity over quality is the mindset that a lot of people have in today’s society and how can you blame them? With rising costs in every aspect of living, a lot of people cannot afford to purchase organic, better quality food.
Reading Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto has surprisingly helped me in becoming a better consumer and to make healthier choices in what I eat on a regular basis. As the title suggests, throughout the book the author tries to get the reader to take common sense approaches in improving the way they eat. The main argument he points out is that having science incorporated into the way we eat (especially the additives and chemicals put into foods) has vastly decreased the quality of our food and increased diseases and health complications in America. The “Western diet” compared to other regions of the world is obviously not the best diet and it would be in the best interest of everyone to go back to a more traditional diet. Pollan also wants us to remember to “Eat food, not too much. Mostly plants.”
Interestingly enough while I was writing this paper I was drinking Mango Passion Fruit Juice from Welch’s and I thought I would read the ingredients because there is a section in Pollan’s book that says to not eat or drink things with ingredients you don not know or cannot even pronounce. My juice contained high fructose corn syrup, filtered water, apple juice concentrate, mango puree concentrate, citric acid, natural and artificial

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    “A number seven, no pickles, with a large sprite please. Oh, can we have some extra ketchup with that as well?” This answer may resemble something near how most people would respond to Pollans question, “What should we have for dinner?” posed at the beginning of his book, The Omnivores Dilemma. Pollan breaks his book down into three major components, the preface, the process, and the person. By clearly identifying what he is examining, and through firsthand experience, Pollan was able to discuss American diet, and all that goes along with it.…

    • 1624 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Chapter 1 of “In Defense of Food” the author, Michael Pollan, refers to what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. First, Liebig the father of modern nutritional sciencea German chemist that proposes a theory of metabolism, explained life strictly in terms of chemical nutrients such as vitalism. Consequently, Pollan concocted the first baby formula based in vitamins, essential fats and amino acids; as a result, in January 1977, the committee and the Senator George McGovern, established a set of dietary guidelines pretending to reduce all kind of diseases like, cancer, heart disease, obesity and diabetes, just cutting down the consumption of red meat and dairy products, but at the same time they was sending warnings to…

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The author of this essay proved many useful points in regards to the Western Diet. In order for people to change their nutrition many things have to change as well, but is it too late? Almost every food we buy and put in our mouths is full extra additives and hormones. How whole is our food really? Comparing Americans diet to other countries proves that a healthy lifestyle with better nutrition is possible. Are the people that benefit from the consequences like doctors who treat patients with heart disease, high blood pressure or diabetes or pharmaceutical companies willing to give up everything that bring in revenue? I think we know what the…

    • 287 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    How might we plot our escape from the nutritionist and, in turn, from the most harmful effects of the Western diet? To Denis Burkitt, the English doctor stationed in Africa during World War II who gave the Western diseases their name, the answer seemed straightforward, if daunting. “The only way we’re going to reduce disease,” he said, “is to go backwards on diet and lifestyle of our ancestors.”” (423) Which sums up fairly well that this point is that the problem is more about our current social structure when it comes to food. “For most people for most of history, gathering and preparing food has been an occupation at the very heart of daily life.”…

    • 413 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    This is clearly demonstrated in the scene where the China study took place by Dr. Campbell. It took part in 367 diet and health related variables making it one of the most ambitious nutritional studies ever undertaken. Sixty five counties across china were carefully surveyed their diet and lifestyle of 6500 people. Urine and blood samples were also taken. After nearly a decade of intense study, the study identified no less than 94,000 correlations between diet and diseases. One of Dr. Campbell’s colleague’s clearly states that, “the main message we got from thee correlations analysis is one of the message: the plant-based diet mainly cereal, vegetables and fruit was always associated with lower mortality rate and that whole-foods are beneficial to human health while animal foods were not.” The purpose of this study was to show the relationship between diet and risk or developing…

    • 785 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Health problems are flooding America. Why? It is the unhealthy, toxic food that we are consuming every day, everywhere. To change America's path on health and food, we have to fix how we eat and know where our food come from. In the novel, The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, the reality of our food is dived into. Pollan takes us on a journey where he explores the four food chains. Those four food chains that control America’s food consist of, Industrial, Industrial organic, Local sustainable and Hunter-gatherer. Industrial is what you find in most supermarkets the “cheap”, and full of additives, preservatives, and antibiotic food. Additionally, there is Industrial organic. This food chain is a bit healthier than it's partner Industrial,…

    • 1609 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The problem with nutritionism is that we look at it from a micro perspective rather than looking at the food as a whole. For example, if we just look at Omega 3 and boost the amount of Omega 3 a food contains, we don’t consider how it will react with other nutrients and how a combination and balance of nutrients affect the overall impact the food has on our body. For this reason, Pollan highly advises taking nutrition admonitions with a grain of salt. He also advises that we steer away from process foods that make nutritional claims that talk about including extra nutrients. Pollan refers to such foods as “edible food-like substances.”…

    • 471 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser both offer us information that assists in answering the questions at hand. Each journalist offers us their views on how food modification affect our lives. As each discusses issues that pertain to the food we eat they both connect on their overall concern as to what American’s are consuming. Michael Pollan’s article focuses on the food we see on our shelves and the food-like substitutes that are taking their…

    • 337 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Understanding basic principles of nutrition is essential for the food industry because it gives them the required knowledge to alter the processing of foods without actually making a significant change to the overall healthiness of the food. Pollan states, “For the industry, it’s obviously preferable to have a scientific rationale for further processing foods – whether by lowering the fat or carbs or by boosting omega-3s or fortifying them with antioxidants and probiotics – than to entertain seriously the proposition that processed foods of any kind are a big part of the problem.” Pollan is showing that the food industry will do whatever it takes to promote their products, rather than actually fixing the problem and creating a healthier menu. In other words, fast food companies can attempt to alter their products by lowering amounts of fat or carbohydrates rather than actually introducing new products that are better for the consumers. They simply make minor alterations to existing products expecting the consumer to assume the new product is better for them. Therefore, these food processing industries do not actually attempt to fix the real problem. This issue is becoming more and more prevalent all around us, and we as Americans need to be more cognitive of the foods we are consuming on a regular…

    • 935 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In Defense of Food

    • 1328 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In the book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, author Michael Pollan commences his tale with a few straightforward words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”. In his introduction, An Eater’s Manifesto, Pollan discusses how the dietetic wisdom that was passed down from older generations has been heavily tainted by “nutritional science and food industry marketing” (Pollan, 2008). The first volume of the book entitled, The Age of Nutritionism”, delves into this problem and helps uncover the cause of today’s “nutritional confusion and anxiety” (Pollan, 2008). Nowadays, it is not uncommon to have “edible foodlike substances” displayed in every aisle of the grocery store with all products promoting some kind of nutritional benefit from their consumption. These dietary facts are often modified to showcase dietary benefits that are barely present in the food product, if present at all. With such prevalent misinformation, today’s society has become so overly concerned with nutrient enriched food that people have either forgotten or are unaware of the importance of the fundamentals. Pollan further explains that humanity has become “a nation of orthorexics” meaning that people have developed “an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating” centred on the theory of nutritionism (Pollan, 2008). Chronic diseases that have the highest death rate such as obesity, coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer, can be attributed to the “Western diet” which consists of “highly processed foods and refined grains; the use of chemicals to raise plants and animals in huge monocultures; the superabundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat produced by modern agriculture; and the narrowing of the biological diversity of the human diet to a tiny handful of staple crops, notably wheat, corn, and soy” (Pollan, 2008). In the second volume entitled “The Western Diet and the diseases of Civilization”, Pollan analyzes the…

    • 1328 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Pollan explains that the Western Diet comprises of meat, white flour, vegetable oil, sugar, and less fruits and whole grains. I must admit, I don’t eat many whole grains; I mean, why would I when I’m surrounded by fluffy Canadian White bread? However, I do try to eat a lot of fruit. Other than that, I too live by the Western Diet. I eat processed foods, and practically forty pounds of meat a day, but I know how to control myself. Some americans find their…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Michael Pollan’s essay “Escape from the Western Diet,” he informs Americans about the western diet and believes they need to escape from it. The reason Americans should escape the western diet is to avoid the harmful effects associated with it such as “western diseases” (Pollan, 434). To support his view on the issue, Pollan describes factors of the western diet that dictate what Americans believe they should eat. These factors include scientists with their theories of nutritionism, the food industry supporting the theories by making products, and the health industry making medication to support those same theories. Overall, Pollan feels that in order to escape this diet, people need to get the idea of it out of their heads. In turn he provides his own rules for escaping the western diet as well as the idea of nutritionism set forth by scientists.…

    • 743 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In defense of food

    • 361 Words
    • 2 Pages

    I stumbled upon Michael Pollan's book in a supermarket. You will get the irony if you read the book.…

    • 361 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How important is the food that the averages person puts into their bodies every day? Eating is a way of making peace, passing the time, sharing friendships, and having a communion. The narrator of Food Inc points out that, “The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than in the previous 10,000” (2008). How has it changed? Americans have gone from eating hunter-gatherer style organic greens and fruits, to severely processed sugars, carbohydrates, and high protein meats. Most Americans eat something similar to a “chicken and pasta” diet nowadays. This may not be bad, but is this “new” food really better for us than what people ate 50 and 100 years ago? Organic foods are substances that are produced using ways that do not involve modern unneeded synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Organic foods are also not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives (dictionary). Convenience food, or tertiary processed food, is commercially prepared food designed for ease of buying and consuming. Products designated as “convenience or processed foods” are often prepared so they can be sold as hot, ready-to-serve plates; as room-temperature, long lasting shelf life products; or as refrigerated or frozen products that require minimal preparation (usually just microwaving). There are studies that show that the food people consume on a daily basis…

    • 945 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Western Diet

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The foods we buy and consume impact our everyday lives in a variety of ways from our health to the economy. The articles, “Escape from the Western Diet,” written by Michael Pollan, and “How Junk Food Can End Obesity,” written by David H. Freedman, both describe the supposed lifelong effects of changing your diet. Particularly, the effects that certain foods may have on the public’s health and issues with obesity. Pollan describes what a western diet lacks in its relation to vitamins, nutrients, and micronutrients, using this as an explanation for several illnesses, stating that a plant based diet is the key to better health. In contrast, Freedman argues that the lack of actual evidence that links the typical Western diet…

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays