In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan
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Book Reviews of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Book Review: The Perils of Eating Badly
Summary: 4 Stars
Pollan claims that the Western diet is making us sicker and fatter and is literally killing many of us--that it is responsible for much of the mortality from the "Western diseases" including heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. He blames much of the problem on food scientists who, in the name of nutrition, carry out limited studies that give questionable results; and on the food industry, which uses the results of such studies to develop overly processed food products and promote them with (often spurious) health claims. In fact he recommends that consumers avoid food products that make health claims and buy "real food;" food products that are ordinarily sold around the perimeter of food stores, such as fresh produce--for which no health claims are made by the food industry despite their superior nutritional value. He describes overly processed foods as "edible food-like substances" and provides several definitions for real food, such as "anything your [great] grandmother would recognize as food."
Pollan thinks this situation arose from the tendency of nutritional science to (1) consider a food item in terms of its nutrients, an approach he calls nutritionism, and to (2) tell people what foods to eat and what not to eat on the basis of scientific results involving only one or a few of their nutrients. This "professionalization of eating" has made people uncertain about what to eat, which has led them to take up the latest food fads based on health claims made by nutritionists and the food industry. The food industry, which knows that the big money is in processing food and not simply harvesting it, is probably the main villain of his book. But he also criticizes health care professionals who seem more interested in treating diet-related diseases than in preventing them, and government for supporting production of the "big three" agricultural products, corn, wheat and soy, which are processed into such products as high-fructose corn syrup and textured vegetable protein--which are then incorporated in a multitude of processed foods. Government also gets skewered for being in the pocket of the food industry and for making dietary recommendations based on the food-as-nutrients approach. After all, the govt. can hardly antagonize cattle ranchers by advising Americans to reduce consumption of red meat, so instead it has advised Americans to "choose meats, poultry, and fish that will reduce saturated fat intake," converting these diverse and complex foods into mere delivery systems for a single nutrient.
This is a very useful book that should, if taken seriously, change many consumer's eating habits. For example, he recommends against buying low-fat products because he asserts that the missing fat is usually replaced by something that restores the food's creamy texture and other qualities; and that "something" (such as powdered milk) is usually bad for you. His recommendations to the general public are incorporated in the mantra "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Most of the guidelines here are contained in more detail in his more recent book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual.
As a science professional myself, I think Pollan comes down a bit too hard on the food scientists, especially when he advises the reader to "reject the advice of science" and take his own advice. Certainly a knowledge of the nutrients in foods should be a factor in our food choices. For example, recent scientific studies of antioxidants and other micronutrients tells up that colorful foods tend to be rich in healthful micronutrients, which encourages us to consume more blueberries and other healthful foods. And it can't be a bad thing if people who are aware of scientific studies regarding the relative healthfulness of different kinds of fats and carbohydrates start eating more fish and olive oil or cut down on their intake of refined flour products, sugar, and other high-glycemic carbs. It is true, as Pollan says, that reductionist science--studying foods in terms of their nutrients, for example--is deficient. But performing meaningful studies of whole foods is extremely difficult, if not impossible, because of the huge number of variables involved, so reductionist science is about all that food scientists can do. Because of the difficulty of getting reliable data, many of these studies are faulty and their findings are often superseded by contradictory findings; thus "oleo good, butter bad" eventually becomes "oleo bad, butter OK" as we learn more about the different kinds of fats.
To his credit, Pollan does grant that science "has much of value to teach us about food," and he admits that many of his conclusions are based on the results of scientific studies, including reductionist studies, but the tone of his remarks about science is predominantly negative. Yes, there is a lot of bad science done in the name of nutrition, but many of the things Pollan blames on science, such as the lipid hypothesis, were based on a small number of very limited studies that were not supported by the bulk of the scientific evidence. It was not science's fault that the media played up the bad science and convinced the public that fats were unhealthy, triggering a cascade of events that Pollan feels has led to the situation we're in today.
Despite my reservations, I think many of Pollan's conclusions are valid and that most people would be thinner and healthier if they followed his advice. This is an important book that I would recommend highly to anyone with an interest in food (which should include everyone!).
Book Review: borrow from the library and skip read.
Summary: 2 Stars
I would not recommend buying this book. I would recommend reading it at a library... if you are interested in improving your health or diet and are already antagonistic towards processed foods and can afford to be part of the eat organic/grown local camp.
If you eat mainly processed foods, you're likely to be surprised by some of the factoids in this book regarding nutrition and the lack of health-iness of your diet.
This is not a book I would wish to revisit or to re-read for the pleasure of reading. I finally managed to read the hard back version - it took me about 2 days to get through about 200 pages. I skipped the source references and the index at the back.
I found the introduction quite interesting but I had to make an "I've started so I'll finish" effort to get to the end... I kept flipping ahead to see how much more was left. Perhaps this is an indictment of my ability to pay attention as much as it is of the book.
The criticism that the book is too long is fair. The author took over 200 pages and there was substantial repetition. I think the message really only needed about 40 pages given the level of detail provided and I felt he was preaching to the choir.
My biggest criticism is that book ignores the importance of exercise.
The author cites a study of aboriginies returning to their old ways of living for 7 weeks. They lost an average of about 18lb. Their cholesterol and insulin-glucose responses improved dramatically. He attributes this to the food they foraged/hunted for. I think anyone wandering around in the Outback is going to lose a couple of pounds a week just for getting of their duff and foraging - and that's about what happened. Could the weight loss have helped blood chemistry? We don't know.
Lifestyle is alluded to as important but the idea of doing adequate physical exercise or the reduction in exercise normal for a modern lifestyle seems very much down played. He wonders about the french and food - a slim people who eat slowly, have small portions, don't take seconds and who climb several flights of stairs to get to their Parisian flats, after walking through cold wet rainy streets. How can they eat high fat food and drink wine yet we who go everywhere in our cars cannot without getting fat? Maybe they eat garlic and we don't. Could it be that they have a better balance of exercise and calorie intake than we do? Eating a number of calories commensurate with your lifestyle seems to be an important factor in avoiding obesity or being underfed. I didn't really get any hint of this from the book.
The author tells us we buy vast amounts of cheap corn, soy, wheat and rice; how it came to be so highly processed and heavily subsidized and why it is of low nutritional value - mainly empty calories. I found the discussion of stone grinding wheat and of the wheat germ in flour going rancid informative. Ditto the labeling of food substances as imitation and why more imitation substances aren't labeled as such. I was also shocked to learn that even produce is less nutritious now than in Granny's day.
It was interesting to read about baby formula and how limits in nutrition knowledge have caused it to remain an inferior imitation product. He cites problems of the industrialization of food leading to a breakdown in food safety and integrity - although without discussing baby formula as an example of what a disaster this can and has recently been.
The heart of the book seems to be
- the matter of why so much food science is bunkum (the systems are complex);
and why it is so attractive to discuss nutrients one at a time (reductionism, poor
experiment design, poor controls, little scientific rigor)
- high yield crops are bad (monocultures, lower nutrient density)
- the contradictory messages about good and bad nutrients (demonization & commerce);
- how marketers and big business sold processed food as nutritionally good substances when in fact they are often inferior to 'real food' but keep well in the larder.
Food is complex - but it is easiest to investigate one variable at a time - hence the reductionism. He discusses how US policy became based on junk and pseudo science... how simple messages on food, on dietary recommendations, get couched in such terms politically as to give the wrong message to shoppers due to the power & influence of food lobbyists. He gives the example of how the message against eating too much meat and fatty dairy foods got mangled and became political suicide for those who crossed paths with these power blocs.
As ever, there is much to be learned by following the money. Food companies are able to buy 'independent' research -always favorable conclusions about whatever the product being studied.
I like and eat quite a bit of junk food so I'm not so happy about seeing the Western Diet attacked as being the source of all evil. There is much to be said for having a loaf of bread not go moldy 3 days later ... and there are good reasons why people buy twinkies or sliced white bread ... I think my diet would be healthier but much more limited if I tried to reject all processed foods and just buy only the super-expensive yuppy foods he recommends as really nutritious food.
So the manifesto was interesting, probably worth reading once if you haven't read about the mass production of food before. It was a bit rambling. It wasn't worth the 2 days of my reading time and will not be a keeper.
Book Review: As much fun as a food fight, you'll learn a lot too
Summary: 5 Stars
Food fight! Peas and carrots, in a manner of speaking, are flying all over the lunchroom in Michael Pollan's "An Eater's Manifesto."
These peas and carrots are chemical-free and grown locally; Pollan is throwing the figurative vegetables by the handful at the food scientists and marketers who have bullied us into thinking the way to approach food and the activity of eating is to break down what we put into our mouths into the unseen nutrients that make up our foods. "You are what you eat" becomes "You are the nutrients you ingest."
He labels this way of thinking "nutritionism;" its adherents "nutritionists." For Pollan, what nutritionism is an ideology that's transformed the way we view food in our culture. And transformed our outlook in a way that's not any too good for us.
There are macronutrients such as protein and carbohydrates. There are micronutrients, vitamins and amino acids. There are good and bad nutrients, beta carotene (maybe good) and trans fats (very bad). According to nutritionism, fish isn't fish but a way to deliver a grocery list of nutrients including protein, omega-3 fatty acids and a variety of other substances, again some good and some bad, such as calcium (good, maybe) and mercury (not so good).
The big problem is, Pollan says, we don't really have any kind of a grip on how all these nutrients, good and bad, interact and affect our heath and well being, for good or ill. Saturated fat, bad. Polyunsaturated fat, good. Maybe or maybe not. It's those nutrients and more in isolation or in combination with something else that has a bearing on our morbidity and mortality.
So what's a person to eat? The message used to be, get out to the grocery store and buy margarine rather than butter. Oops. Turns out blasting vegetable oil with hydrogen, which is what made the difference between margarine and butter, produces trans fats, which we all know can really clog things up.
Instead of adding beta carotene to a cookie and calling it a health food, how about getting out, buying and eating a carrot; preferably a carrot grown in a garden near you or by a farmer down the country road. Now, that's good and no question about it, good for you. Just eat the carrot and forget about what's in it that makes the carrot good to eat.
Too bad, Pollan says, that nutritional scientists can only study one nutrient at a time and not the whole carrot. That approach takes the "nutrient out of the context of the food, the food out of the context of the diet, and the diet out of the context of the lifestyle." And that doesn't work because even the simplest food is a hopelessly complex thing, "a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds." A pox on these reductionist scientists, Pollan argues.
So let's just eat right. And that may be as simple as "don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize." Here's his manifesto: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. In countries that adhere to a diet Pollan proscribes, which entails eating more than a pound or more of fruit and vegetables a day, the rate of cancer is half of what it is in the United States.
There you have it. So, what's for dinner? More than half of this slim book deals with diet and where food comes from and choosing those foods that are likely to make you feel good and be good for your health. That's a food-eater's topic he's touched on before in "The Botany of Desire" and especially in "The Omnivore's Dilemma."
Eat ordinary. In this discussion of foods that are good for us, Pollan develops a series of personal eating policies, food rules of thumb or eating algorithms that will improve our diet. "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket" is one of them. Stay out of the central isles because that's where the processed foods are. "Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does," for the same reason you should be cruising the produce aisle. "Cook and, if you can, plant a garden." Do that and your food will be a product of nature; not industry.
Pollan has already told us to eat mostly plants. He narrows the menu even more when he urges us to eat wild things. Two of the most nutritious plants in the world are weeds: lamb's quarter and purslane. They and their wild food cousins are in the plant pantheon because they contain higher doses of the compounds they need to defend themselves against pests and disease, those same compounds that turn out to be really good for us. Wild is better. That goes for fish, too. If you need to eat real meat, look for meat that comes from animals that are free-range and a result grass-fed. That's still the way they raise beef in Argentina and buffalo in parts of the Midwest and Canada. Stay away from animal protein that's been penned in a feedlot and fattened up for slaughter on corn.
Pollan writes convincingly. His argument is simple and straightforward. Ultimately he would like us to simplify or diet and make eating food a communal experience. That may take more time and may hike the grocery bill. But look at the extra time and money as an investment in feeling better and living healthier. We can all agree that's a good thing.
Book Review: Not Real Science. Almost Crackpot Science, Be Careful...
Summary: 1 Stars
Whew, did I write that title? I read this book several times, and I have watched several of his interviews, and yes, he is knowledgeable and charming. In fact, I wanted him to be right and to be widely read. But, after many hard hours -- I have to say, no. He's on the Berkeley campus but he has pseudo-intellectual roots from Stanford, which is the worst elitist school in human history. Pollan in reality is just a very, very silly guy. He's a journalist by choice, which means he's not a real scientist, he does not understand real science, or the history of science. But his great sin is that he does not understand social history or class history or cultural history -- and the struggles and battles fought therein. What Pollan really is frightens me. He's a 19th century thinker. Which means his major fault is to be over-ingenious. He draws conclusions too hastily. He over intellectualizes because he thinks he's being cute or lovable. Yes, he salt and peppers his books with fascinating facts that we all need to know, but his books are not the best source for these necessary food facts, especially when those facts are accompanied by gross misunderstandings about human history, evolution and physiology. He makes grand statements but gets there on tenuous foundations. Example, he says corn has no consciousness then rants about its evolutionary intentions to take over. He's winking at us, but he doesn't understand that evolution means that everything corn does is arbitrary by definition. He doesn't get this, instead he uses all the co-incidents of attributes of plants to suggest a pattern of survival skills that show an intelligence by implication, and thereby there is in evidence this under thread or subtext throughout all his books that plants have an intelligent design -- which, in fact, is the very opposite of evolution. But, so what, why let this bother you, or me? Well, that's not all. In the first several chapters of this book or even in the first 15 minutes of his interviews -- you can count 3,4 or even 5 gaffs. Let's see, he says: (1) nutritionists don't really know anything; then (2) doctors don't understand the digestive system; (3) western diet causes all the diseases of later years; (4) corn syrup is killing us... etc., etc., etc. When in fact, these are all very complex and compound ideas and groups of ideas that Pollan lumps into these over broad assumptions and conclusions. The truth is this: Pollan is the one who doesn't understand. He's unstudied and a middle brow at best. He's popular now because people are worried, he's hit a nerve and will get rich, yes, over-ingenious and rich. Gee, I wish I had thought about that. Hmm... NO, It's really spoliation. Spoliation of difficult taxing subject matter which hasn't been given its rightful due. These topics are multilayered and require years of research to tackle just one of Pollan's many broad assumptions. I wish I had the time and space to tick off all of his mistakes. But here's just one example. Western diet and the spread of classic diseases attributed thereto is only corollary driven. There's no necessary foundational or cause and effect connection between the two. Heart disease and cancer are more prevalent as people age and our population has a much older center than the comparatives Pollan holds us up to. Family/tribal support and its dissipation have as much to do with these "western diet" diseases as does diet. Which came first the inability to digest well because of the loss of a nurturing supportive environment or the low quality of the thing being digested?
Moreover, many of the basic foods being discounted were the staples of human migration. Pollan does not count in lifestyle or lack thereof enough, which by itself can account for the set of western diseases associated with the western diet. Well, then again, there is something to eating cheap processed food, but that goes without saying. Pollan just muddies the waters with his endless 19th century over-philosophizing, without adequate basis in well established facts.
The best advice is, therefore, to find a better resource book for this vital topic, as the hubris of over achievement ruins this one.
Book Review: Wanna Save the Planet? Do You REALLY Know What's on Your Plate?
Summary: 5 Stars
"In Defense Of Food"
An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan
Book Review by Jay Gilbertson
From the first sentences, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I wondered where the heck this guy was headed, I mean--we are eating food. But, come to find out, the last thing that most folks are chowing on is anything but food.
Pollan has pulled together an eye-opening study, or perhaps it could be considered revelation of just exactly what are Americans eating? It can all be lumped into what most refer to as (drum roll) The Western Diet. He defines it as a shift from eating leaves to seeds. The four most produced seeds in America? The four most subsidized seeds in America? The four seeds most chemically altered and used to produce over 17,000 new food products in America? Give up? Soy, corn, wheat and rice.
Those four innocent seeds account for two-thirds of the total calories we consume. That's a lot of fake-food people and the fact that those fancy-schmancy pre-packaged NON-food products have the marketing power of 32 billion bucks a year overwhelms the force of tradition (think Mom) and has unfortunately left us in the hands of science, journalism, government and marketing to tell us what to eat. Honestly, do you really think that that nutrition-packed bar, chip, cracker, cereal, bread, icy-soda, burger-helper, yogurt-on-a-stick, is actually good for you?
Think again, please.
So many of us simply want to shove something in and get on with things. What's the rush? Wonder why the French can eat all that heavy food, slug wine and finish things off with some rich pastry? They eat together, they eat food, they eat slowly and they eat far less than Americans as in their actual portion sizes. Take a look at grandma's china and I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts it's about half the size of what most of us have in our cabinets today.
I think one of the most compelling factoids in this fact-packed (and well sourced and footnoted) volume is the indisputable, as well as unfortunate, fact that over two-thirds of Americans are obese. There's also been an enormous increase in diabetes, especially in our kids. Why has this happened? Pollan, with a great deal of clarity and example suggests that we truly are what we eat and isn't it time we spend a little bit more on real food and a little less in front of the TV, computer, or Game-boy? If you're concerned with the health of yourself as well as the health of your family, I can't recommend this book enough. It should be required reading for every high school across America.
Here are just a few things Pollan suggests one considers: "Pay more, eat less." It's simply a known fact that good food is going to ring-up higher. Yet many Americans that eat on the cheap seem to be able to afford that extra phone or deluxe TV or... "Eat Meals." Defined as sitting down at a table (imagine) and eating an honest to goodness meal. We are becoming a nation of snackers and eating less and less together. About a fifth of 18 to 50-year-old Americans eating now takes place in the car. What? "Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does." Think those gas station aisles are packed with fruits and veggies? Not. "Eat Slowly." By eating fast, we tend to eat more and not give our bodies the chance to realize we're stuffed.
Bottom line in this fascinating and empowering book is that the only way we're going to get healthier is by realizing most of the stuff in our cupboards isn't even food and that real food could possibly bring us back to real health.
REALLY!
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