“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.…
In the introduction, Pollan brings up a very good point about Americans and their views on dieting and eating “healthier”. Pollan explains the way that Americans went through a so-called “carbophobia” period in 2002, and how, unfortunately, this seems to remain true even today. The foods that American’s tend stay away from because of scientists and nutritionists devaluing…
Michael Pollan, the author of “Escape from the Western Diet” has a very strong believes about…
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”.…
In today’s world we witness horrible epidemics and tragedies on a seemingly daily basis. There are groups of people out there, groups that Jayson Lusk refers to as the “food police” in his book so aptly titled, “The Food Police,” who choose to focus their energies on creating pseudo-controversies by using false or flawed research and drawing conclusions based on emotion rather than on logic. The food police have managed to influence the thinking of our media, schools, and even our government. By constantly spewing propaganda supporting their questionable claims, the food elite have made it clear that they seek a sort of totalitarianism when it comes to the food that you and I are buying and consuming.…
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…
The book I chose to read for my summer homework was In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. Pollan has written many books regarding what to eat and how the foods we consume affect us. In this book, he opens with simple advice, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants” (Pollan 1). As straightforward as it sounds, Pollan quickly demonstrates how complicated this can be. Food is all around us. However, there are whole foods, stuff you’d find at a farmer’s market, and then there are the foods that line up the walls of our supermarkets, highly processed snacks and “foods” that contain a mirade of unpronounceable ingredients. Many of these foods processed foods, especially those that make health claims such as “low-fat”, “lowers…
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.”…
Today, many Americans constantly worry about the effect of their eating habits on their weight and health. However, for much of the nineteenth century, most Americans were rarely concerned with the nutritional quality of their meals, and instead focused on eating as much as possible. According to Harvey Levenstein, author of Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet, the inception of present-day eating habits has its roots in the “eating revolution,” which occurred between the 1880s and 1930s. At the turn of the twentieth century, the American middle class began to eat much more “economically and healthily,” than they had in the past. Levenstein attributes this change in food habits to both economic and social factors,…
“In Defense of Food” is a book written by Michael Pollan which was released in 2008. Pollan writes about the “Western Diet” and the dangers associated with it. He proposes a new answer to what we should and should not eat. He states that it comes down to seven simple words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Those are the words that he opens the book with, this is his basic recommendation. He states that the rest of the book is just a detailed elaboration of those words. The first half of the book is all about criticizing and deconstructing the “health disaster”, as Pollan calls it, of the “western diet”, as well as the philosophy of nurtitionism that surrounds it. The second half of the book focuses on solutions to this disaster and Pollan’s thoughts on the matter.…
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.”…
The main topic of interest in “Our National Eating Disorder” by Michael Pollan's, is that the question “What are we having for dinner?”, has evolved with the world. The quality of food and the intake of food has changed immensely from many years ago. Back in the day, you could not go to get a pre-cooked chicken at your local supermarket, you would have to do the hunting on your own. Now we have evolved so drastically to have organic meat, now the new fad in right now is everything organic or gluten free. The topic of crazy diets was very true, as I see it all around me at school and home. He uses specific examples such as the atkins diet, that my mother tried because my cousin Phil lost 60 pounds while doing it. I do like his point on other…
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.…
Diet has always played a vital role in supporting health. Today, over consumption of foods -- especially those high in fat -- is a major concern for people in the United States. When we look at the ten leading causes of illness and death in the United States, the top categories are heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. Diet influences the development of the chronic diseases. Taken together, these four diseases account for about two-thirds of the nation’s 2 million deaths each year (FamilyHaven: Food choices pp.15).…
There must be a relationship between food and the health of the individual, which tends to influence the health of the society in which he lives in. It has been said that nutrition is a science concerned with the movements of atoms in man to the movements of man in society. Because of the tremendous population explosion the supply of food for all people of the world is indeed becoming more critical every year. As a nutrition educator, we have that moral obligation to help the nutrition of every individual; for improved nutrition is one factor involved in paving the way towards peace among men.…