In Defense of Food

I am a real skeptic when it comes to nutrition information - I rarely trust neutraceuticals or functional foods, I double-check nutrition advice that's not coming from an RD or an MD, and PubMed is one of my best friends.

Michael Pollan is an exception. A journalist by trade, he has found his niche writing about food and agriculture and how it relates to our health and the health of the environment. In fact, as I read some of his work, I feel it's his lack of nutrition training that allows him to see the big picture.

I know this review is *really* late. The internet buzz surrounding In Defense of Food when it first came out to ring in the new year in 2008 has come and gone, and the book's been out in paperback for almost five months! (And I finished it two months ago...) Still, Michael Pollan is relevant. He and Joel Salatin, one of the main "characters" in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, were featured in the summer documentary Food, Inc, a young readers' edition of The Omnivore's Dilemma is coming out next month, and Pollan recently wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times on how food system reform is just as important as health care reform in improving the health of Americans.

But getting back on topic here...

I'll admit that I couldn't help but cringe as I read the first bits of the book; it's a full out diss of nutritional science, or as Pollan refers to it, "nutritionism". On one hand, his arguments make sense - studies are often flawed because of the reductionist nature of their design (i.e. looking at one nutrient as opposed to the food as a whole) and also because most of them are funded by the food industry and their "eat more" messages. Consumers have only become more confused and more obese as the industry pushes out more foods that are engineered to be "better" for us based on the "hottest" nutrient of the time. On the other hand, however, does his demonization of nutritional science as "nutritionism" imply that he thinks my profession shouldn't exist?

At one point, Pollan even appears to praise Gary Taubes (author of Good Fats, Bad Fats) for raising doubts against the "lipid theory" which made me cringe because he has gone in a completely different direction, but then in a footnote Pollan adds, "But the healthy skepticism Taubes brought to the lipid hypothesis is nowhere in evidence when he writes about the (also unproven) carbohydrate hypothesis. [...] Indeed, Taubes is so single-minded in his demonization of the carbohydrate that he overlooks several other possible explanations for the deleterious effects of the Western diet..." *phew!*

The book does get better - I think Pollan's explanation of the limitations of nutritional science is worth reading. I definitely don't see it as a slight toward dietitians and nutritionists; I think as a profession we are all getting sick of media reports sensationalizing singular studies of how combining one antioxidant isolated from a food (with many vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and possibly other compounds we haven't discovered yet) with some diseased cells in a petri dish causes such-and-such, or that by injecting some other food component in some rats causes so-and-so, and the effect that it has on the food choices that people make or the food products that companies produce. Our bodies are different from rats and are more than just a combination of cells, and our diets consist of different foods, in different combinations, not just nutrients.

The best part of the book is towards the end, not because it's ending (!), but because Pollan tries to make eating an easy act again by proposing some simple rules, based on the now well-known phrase that he utters at the beginning of the book: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

• EAT FOOD:
  • Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
    
  • Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup.
    
  • Avoid food products that make health claims.
    
  • Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
    
  • Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.
• MOSTLY PLANTS:
  • Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
    
  • You are what what you eat eats too.
    
  • If you have the space, buy a freezer.
    
  • Eat like an omnivore.
    
  • Eat well-grown food from healthy soils.
    
  • Eat wild foods when you can.
    
  • Be the kind of person who takes supplements.
    
  • Eat more like the French. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or the Indians. Or the Greeks.
    
  • Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism.
    
  • Don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet.
    
  • Have a glass of wine with dinner.
• NOT TOO MUCH:
  • Pay more, eat less.
    
  • Eat meals.
    
  • Do all your eating at a table.
    
  • Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does.
    
  • Try not to eat alone.
    
  • Consult your gut.
    
  • Eat slowly.
    
  • Cook and, if you can, plant a garden.

All these tips make sense (although it is debatable how realistic some of them are for many people), and none of them involve counting calories, watching carbs, protein, or fat or any other nutrition jargon. Nutritional science is complicating and often doesn't prove anything, but food and eating shouldn't be. We need it to live. Like Omnivore's Dilemma, I highly recommend In Defense of Food to anyone who eats.

PS: I am now on the hunt for some new reading picks, fiction and non-fiction. Although I think Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life is next on my list, I'm interested in hearing what you guys have been reading lately ;)