Today is the last Wednesday of the month, which mean the discussion over the last section of Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food". Today I will be talking about the final section in his book, titled "Getting Over Nutritionism".
Pollan begins this section with a chapter to sum up the first 140 pages of his book in order to remind us why making a change in our eating and out thinking is so important to our health. Pollan tells us that most of the science he talks about in the first sections can be classified as reductionist science, "focusing as it does on individual nutrients rather than on whole foods or dietary patterns." But Pollan believes that this is only natural for scientists to do, to lean towards "a single, all-encompassing explanation" for all of the problems in our diets. The solution to our problems does not lie in the individual nutrients, but rather in our ability to stop eating a Western diet. But this is much harder than it would seem because the theories of Nutritionism are very powerful. It is important to remember, though, who these theories are truly valuable to. Pollan explains that, "new theories beget new drugs to treat diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol; new treatments and procedures to ameliorate chronic diseases; and new diets organized around each new theory's elevation of one class of nutrient and demotion of another." In truth, the only ones benefiting from these theories of diet are the food industry and the medical community, not the consumer. Because of the benefits it reaps economically, Pollan tells us that it would not be" expected for the medical community to be sensitive to the cultural or ecological dimensions of the food problem - and it isn't." We will know when there had been a change in the mindset of the medical world: when the doctors finally kick the fast food franchises out of hospitals.
Pollan believes that to escape the Western diet, we just have to stop eating and thinking that way. That instead of avoiding nutrients, we should avoid overly processed foods ("products of industry rather than of nature"). We have to no longer just think about the kinds of food we are eating, but also the environment these foods were raised in: animal and plant products alike. Pollan does not fool us into thinking it will be easier to escape from the Western way of eating, in fact he admits that it will involve more work. He believes that "to eat well we need to invest more time, effort, and resources in providing for our sustenance than most of us do today". We need to escape the American way of thinking about food; where the average family spends less than 10% of their income on their food, less than and hour an a half preparing meals each day, and a little more than an hour enjoying them. In the remaining portion of Pollan's book, he tells us that he will talk about how to practically eat real food, what foods are the best types to eat, and about going back to eating as a cultural pleasure.
Eat Food: Food Defined
Under this section, Pollan's first rule is to not "eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food". Pollan decides to go back a couple of generations to your great grandparents because at this point, our mothers and possibly even our grandmothers are just as confused about Nutritionism as the rest of us. So what does this mean? Pollan suggests to pretend like your great grandmother is shopping along side you in the supermarket. Suppose you were to stop to get some Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt tubes. You're great grandmother would certainly be confused as to what this product is to begin with, but after looking at the ingredients list (including items like high-fructose corn syrup, modified corn starch, carrageenen, tricalcium phosphate, and more), she may even doubt that it truly is yogurt at all! Another mini rule Pollan suggests is to never eat anything incapable of rotting; like, for instance, Twinkies. While the act of preserving foods has been around for generations, modern processing aims to do much more than increase the shelf life of products. They also design their products to appeal to our inborn preferences for sweetness, fat, and salt. Pollan tells us that "Tastes great, less filling!" could very well be the motto for most processed foods. In addition to not being filling, most processed foods also contain much less water, fiber, and micronutrients, but have more sugar and fat. So the motto "More fattening, less nutritious!" could also apply.
Pollan's second rule is to "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". Interestingly, food products such as bread can take as few as four ingredients to make: flour, yeast, water, and a pinch of salt. But today, most of our industrially made breads come with a whole slew of ingredients. According to Pollan, who studied the ingredients found in Sara Lee's Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread, a single package of industrial bread violates all four of these points. He tells us, "it's got unfamiliar ingredients (ethoxylated monoglycerides?); unpronounceable ingredients (azodicarbonamide); it exceeds the maximum of five ingredients (by roughly thirty-six); and it contains high-fructose corn syrup." Often, the food science that is working to make our foods more nutritious are actually making them more complex, but not necessarily any better for us. So Pollan encourages us to stick to foods that have less than five ingredients to avoid over-processed foods.
Next, Pollan urges us to "avoid food products that make health claims". He explains that in order for a food product to even make a health claim, it first must have a box on which to make the claim. So right off the bat, the product is more likely to be a processed food than a whole food. Under a lot of pressure from the food industry, the FDA made it easier for food companies to make "increasingly doubtful health claims, such as that eating something like Frito-Lay chips is somehow good for your heart". The FDA will include disclaimers saying there is little scientific evidence to support these health claims, but the actual claim will be in very large print to catch the consumer's eyes, while the disclaimer will be in teeny tiny font. The American Heart Association will also currently bestow its heart healthy seal of approval for a fee on products like lucky charms, cocoa puffs, and Healthy Choice's Ice Cream Sandwiches. This is interesting, seeing how many scientists are coming to recognize that dietary sugars probably plays a more important role in heart disease than dietary fat. In the meantime, the genuinely heart healthy foods like a few isles over in the produce section, without their health claims because of a lack of financial and political clout of the packaged foods.
When going to the supermarket, Pollan suggests that we "shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle". Since processed foods tend to dominate the middle of grocery stores, while produce, dairy, meats, and fish line the walls, sticking to the edges of the store will help you to pick up more real food than shopping in the middle.
Finally, Pollan suggests for us to "get out of the supermarket whenever possible". He tells us that we won't find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmers' market, but we will find fresh whole foods picked at the peak of their taste and nutritional quality! Pollan says that it is "hard to eat badly from the farmers; market, from a community-supported agriculture box, or from your garden". Additionally, when you eat from the farmers' market, you automatically eat food that is in season, which is usually when it is most nutritious, and you also obtain one of the most important health consequences of buying food from local farmers: cooking. Buying from local farmers can also create a sort of accountability and relationship, making food more than a label, regulation, or legal liability. Pollan tells us to "shake the hand that feeds you" and encourages us to create these relationships with both the farmer and the food they grow. When it comes to spending on food, Pollan suggests we look at it as more than only shopping, but also as a sort of vote - a vote for health. He says, "depending on how we spend them, our food dollars can either go to support a food industry devoted to quantity and convenience and "value" or they can nourish a food chain organized around values - values like quality and health."
Mostly Plants: What to Eat
In Pollan's wish to help us decide what foods are best for us to eat, he continues in this section with some more rules to follow when it comes to choosing our meals.
First, Pollan tells us to "eat mostly plants, especially leaves". Even with all of the scientific developments of Nutrition Science today, all scientists will still recommend for us to eat more plants. Plants are, and have always been good for humans, and especially after we evolved to biologically process vitamin C from scratch. Over the years, free radicals have "been implicated in a great many health problems, including cancer and the various problems associated with aging". Antioxidants, like vitamin C, harmlessly absorb these free radicals and stabilize them before they can cause us any harm. Antioxidants also cause the liver to produce enzymes that break them down as well as any toxin that resembles the antioxidant. It is important, therefore, to eat as many kinds of plants as possible, because different plants have different antioxidants; and the more antioxidants you consume, the more toxins will be broken down! All kinds of literature and research exists to prove the healthy benefits of eating plants; that they reduce the risk of dying from all the Western diseases, including cancer. And even better is the fact that leaf plants are usually lower in calories, therefore we can eat more of them! Unlike plants, which we cannot live without, we don't actually need to eat meat. With the exception of vitamin B-12, every other nutrient found in meat can also be obtained from somewhere else. Meat, however, is full of essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals, and there really is no health reason to exclude it from the diet. BUT, "meat in tremendous quantities", according to Pollan, "is probably not a good idea, especially when that meat comes from a highly industrialized food chain." While high amounts of meat, especially red meat, lead to increases in risk of heart disease and cancer, small amounts (one serving or less per day) don't appear to increase anyone's risk. The problem of increases in risk of disease may actually be because of eating too much meat, but it may also be because more meat means less plants in the diet. In any case, it is important for us to consume lots of plants and to be aware of the health of the animals we are eating.
Pollan's second rule actually emphasizes this fact in saying "you are what you eat eats too". In today's food economy, the diets of most of our food animals has evolved from plants to seeds. This is because "animals grow faster and produce more milk and eggs on a high-energy diet of grain." But when animals eat too much grain, it actually makes them sick. This is why many grain-fed cattle have to be given antibiotics to help them live longer. When looking at the grass-fed animals we eat, "a diet of grass means much healthier fats in their meat, milk, and eggs, as well as appreciably higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants." Therefore, the rule about eating more leaves and fewer seeds goes not only for us, but also for the animals in our food chain.
Next, Pollan recommends that, "if you have the space, buy a freezer". Pollan believes that being able to freeze large quantities of food means that you can buy in bulk from farmers' markets or directly from farms when plants and animal food is at it's peak nutritious state and then freeze it to use for long periods of time. After all, unlike canning, freezing does not significantly diminish the nutritional value of our products.
Pollan's fourth rule is to "eat like an omnivore". In addition to this, he also suggests to change up the species of what you are eating with both animal and plant products.
Pollan further encourages us to "eat well-grown food from healthy soils". While organic is nice and important, it is not the end all of how to grow food well or how to determine healthy foods. Some foods, like for instance Organic Oreos, are not a health food. However, when food is grown or raised off of soils rich in organic matter, they produce more nutrition for us! Living ideally, it is best to not only obtain food that is grown organically, but also food that is grown locally.
We should also "eat wild foods when you can". According to Pollan, "two of the most nutritious plants in the world are weeds - lamb's quarters and purslane - and some of the healthiest traditional diets, such as the Mediterranean, make frequent use of wild greens." Wild game also has some nutritional benefits to consuming, such as less saturated fat and more omega-3 fatty acids than domesticated animals. Wild fish also have higher levels of omega-3s than farmed fish.
Pollan next suggests to us to "be the kind of person who takes supplements". This suggestion is not necessarily to actually take supplements, as much as it is to act like the people who do. Supplement takers are usually more health conscious, better educated, and more affluent. However, Pollan does recommend (from professional advice) to take a multivitamin as you get older. After the child-bearing years are done, natural selection takes little interest in our health and survival. Therefore, as we age, we need more antioxidants in order to make up for our body's decreased ability to absorb them.
Pollan believes that we should "eat more like the French, or the Italians, or the Japanese, or the Indians, or the Greeks". People who eat according to rules of a traditional food culture are typically much healthier than people eating a Western diet. Pollan believes that any other traditional diet would actually be healthier than the current Western diet many of us are on. "If they weren't a healthy regimen", Pollan says, "the diet and the people who followed it wouldn't still be around." Many times, the ways and combinations that cultures consume their foods in can actually influence the nutrients that they get. For example, corn is traditionally eaten with bean in Latin America. Interestingly, each plant is deficient in an essential amino acid that happens to be very abundant in the other. So together, beans and corn form a balanced diet!
Pollan tells us to "regard nontraditional food with skepticism" and warns us not to "look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet". Just like foods are more than the sum of their nutrients, dietary patterns are also more than the sum of the foods that comprise them! Take for example the French. French individuals are stereotyped to eat poorly: "way too much saturated fat and wine", yet these individuals are healthier than those on the contemporary Western diet. This dietary paradox, and others like it, are best to be thought of as breakdowns in nutritionist thinking, "a sign that something is wrong with the scientific consensus rather than the diet in question."
Finally, Pollan tells us to "have a glass of wine with dinner". People who drink moderately and regularly actually live longer and suffer considerably less heart disease. It appears, in fact, that alcohol of any kind reduces the risk of heart disease but that the polyphenols in red wine have more unique protective qualities than all other types of alcohol. Experts tell us that when it comes to regular moderate drinking, men should have no more than two drinks a day, and women no more than one.
Not Too Much: How To Eat
In the last section of Pollan's book, he shares with us one last major factor that we need to change in our Western way of thinking about eating in order to make us healthier and happier: how we eat as a culture. He begins by comparing us with the French way of eating. Pollan reminds us that the French eat very differently than us. "They seldom snack, and they eat most of their food at meals shared with other people. They eat small portions and don't come back for seconds. And they spend considerably more time eating than we do. The French consume fewer calories than we do, yet manage to enjoy them far more!" In restaurants all over France, the meal sizes are considerably less than those served in America, yet the French seem to enjoy their small portions more than we enjoy our gigantic ones. Pollan suggests that we in America need to change the way we eat our foods. He continues this section by giving us eight guidelines to help us on our way!
First, Pollan tells us to "pay more, eat less". According to Pollan, "The American food system has more than a century devoted its energies to quantity and price rather than to quality." In order to escape from the food grown with the hope of quantity and less nutrition, we have to buy foods that are grown for taste and nutritional quality, products that are grown with more care and less intensively. However, there is no denying that these foods actually cost more than the unhealthy versions. While not everyone can even afford to eat high-quality food in America, there are some huge benefits for those who can. Buying these better foods "benefits not only your own health, but also the health of the people who grow the food as well as the people who live downstream and downwind of the farms where it is grown." In terms of how much to eat, it is often difficult to know exactly how much is too much or too little. One good rule to adopt is the 80% of the French, to simply eat until you are 80% full and to never go for seconds. Americans, on the other hand, "typically eat not until they're full but rather until they receive some visual cue from their environment that it's time to stop: the bowl or package is empty, the plate is clean, or the TV show is over." Americans are guilty of paying much more attention to external than to internal cues about their satiety. Often times, the amount of food we eat is directly influenced by the cost of the food and the time it takes to prepare it. Take for instance French fries. Having access to fries that you can heat up in the microwave or get through a drive through allows us to eat a lot of fries all the time. BUT how often do you think you would eat them if you had to peel the potatoes yourself, cut them into fry sizes, fry/bake them up yourself, and then clean up the mess? In a study conduced by a group of Harvard economists, the more technology we have to make our foods at a faster pace, the more of it we tend to eat! Here is another interesting fact: According to Pollan, "for the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. Is it just a coincidence that as the portion of our income spend on food has declined, spending on health care has soared?" Pollan encourages us, therefore, to be willing to spend more on our food, because "quality itself, besides tending to cost more, may have a direct bearing on the quantity you'll want to eat. The better the food, the less of it you need to eat in order to feel satisfied."
Secondly, Pollan tells us to "eat meals". In today's age, we are snacking far more and we are eating far fewer meals together. Interestingly enough, for Americans, roughly a fifth of all eating now takes place in the car! Pollan urges us to get back to meals sitting around a table, where we "socialize and civilize our children, teaching them manners and the art of conversation. At the dinner table, parents can determine portion sizes, model eating and drinking behavior, and enforce social norms about greed and gluttony and waste." Parents should also expose their children to all types of foods, and to back away from the modern family meal where a different food is made for each individual. When people are given exactly what they want, they actually tend to eat more. But most of all, Pollan warns us to be careful of snacking: what he believes to be "the biggest threat to the meal-as-we-know-it". In order to counter the rise of snacking and bring back the traditional meal, Pollan tells us to follow a few rules of thumb (his last six rules):
First, to "do all your eating at a table". He also advises us to not "get your fuel from the same place your car does". Pollan tells us that gas stations have become processed-corn stations: "ethanol outside for your car and high-fructose corn syrup inside for you." Pollan further urges us to "try not to eat alone" because we are less likely to stuff ourselves if other people are watching.
The next rule is to "consult your gut". While it supposedly takes twenty minutes before the brain gets a notification that the stomach is full, "most of us take considerably less than twenty minutes to finish a meal, with the result that the sensation of feeling full exerts little if any influence on how much we eat." Pollan suggests to "serve smaller portions on smaller plates; serve food and beverages from small containers; leave detritus on the table (empty bottles, bones, etc) so you can see how much you've eaten or drunk; use glasses that are more vertical than horizontal; leave healthy foods in view, unhealthy ones out of view; and leave serving bowls in the kitchen rather than on the table to discourage second helpings."
Additionally, Pollan tells us to "eat slowly". According to a movement called Slow Food, "making time and slowing down to eat, an activity that happens three times a day and ramifies all through a culture, is precisely the wedge that can begin to crack the whole edifice." But to eat slowly does not just pertain to speed, it also means to eat deliberately, or out of will rather than out of compulsion. "But perhaps an even better way", according to Pollan, "is for eaters to involve themselves in food production to whatever extent they can."
Which brings us to Pollan's final point and rule in his book: "Cook and, if you can, plant a garden". The food you can grow yourself will be fresher than anything you can buy and it doesn't cost anything but a few hours of your time each week and the price of a few packets of seeds! Gardening is not only good for your nutritional health, but also for your physical health and your mental health (learning about different kinds of plants, how to grow them, learning about climates and chemicals and more). According to Pollan, "when the basket of produce lands on the kitchen counter, when we start in on the cleaning and cutting and chopping, we're thinking about a dozen different things - what to make, how to make it - but nutrition, or even health, is probably not high on the list." Pollan concludes his book by telling us that "reclaim[ing] this much control over one's food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing; indeed, in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts. And what these acts subvert is Nutritionism: the belief that food is foremost about nutrition and nutrition is so complex that only experts and industry can possibly supply it." For the cook who prepares food from their own garden; from plants and from animals "has a great many things to worry about, "health" is simply not one of them, because it is given."
Thank you Michael Pollan for the wonderful book and the immense knowledge gained through reading it!
Today's Workout: I have decided today to finish out this week through Friday not working out. Since I have not been truly well for almost two weeks, I want to make sure I am completely healthy before I put my body into any type of physical stress. For those of you who are up to it, today is a running and Yoga day. Warm yourself up by jogging or running a mile or two. Then head into Yoga class and enjoy an hours worth of this relaxing workout.
Today's Food Tip: If you are like me and you tend to wake up in the mornings not feeling all that hungry but you know you should eat something for breakfast, an easy, filing, and healthy meal (full of fiber, which makes you feel full) is a small bowl of oatmeal. Get some 3 minute Quaker Oats from the store and make yourself a small bowl in the mornings. I like to put a splash of milk, sprinkle of cinnamon, and spoon full of brown sugar into mine. In order to get a serving of fruit in your morning too, you can also try chopping up a banana, a peach, or throwing a handful of berries into your bowl as well!
Today's Relaxation Activity: Today's relaxation activity is a good stretch to do to relieve tension in your neck. Let your head drop until your chin touches your chest. Then, very slowly, roll your head from side to side. Feeling your neck muscles stretch out connecting to your shoulders. Then gently tip your head from the front to the back. Do this a few times to relieve tension directly over your spine. Do these stretches for about 3 to 5 minutes; especially when looking down for long periods of time, or right before you sleep!
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