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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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In
Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan |
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Rating: |
**** |
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(Highly Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Pleasure Whether
you eat food or not, read Michael Pollan’s new book In
Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. You’ll understand that sentence
better after reading the book, because “food” has a meaning for Pollan that
may not match what you consumed during your last three meals. In
Defense of Food follows up on his earlier work, The
Omnivore’s Dilemma, as an answer to the questions Pollan kept getting
about what to eat. Even if you skip the book, here’s his manifesto: “Eat
food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” The rest of the book explains what and
why. The writing style is great, and the facts Pollan conveys may convince
some readers to make changes in diet. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning
of Section 3, “Getting Over Nutritionism,” Chapter 1, “Escape From the
Western Diet,” pp. 139-141: The undertow of nutritionism is
powerful, and more than once over the past few pages I've felt myself being
dragged back under. You've no doubt noticed that much of the nutrition
science I've presented here qualifies as reductionist science, focusing as
it does on individual nutrients (such as certain fats or carbohydrates or
antioxidants) rather than on whole foods or dietary patterns. Guilty. But
using this sort of science to try to figure out what's wrong with the Western
diet is probably unavoidable. However imperfect, it's the sharpest
experimental and explanatory tool we have. It also satisfies our hunger for a
simple, one-nutrient explanation. Yet it's one thing to entertain such explanations
and quite another to mistake them for the whole truth or to let any one of
them dictate the way you eat. You've probably also noticed
that many of the scientific theories put forward to account for exactly what
in the Western diet is responsible for Western diseases conflict with one
another. The lipid hypothesis cannot be reconciled with the carbohydrate
hypothesis, and the theory that a deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids (call it
the neolipid hypothesis) is chiefly to blame for chronic illness is at odds
with the theory that refined carbohydrates are the key. And while everyone
can agree that the flood of refined carbohydrates has pushed important micronutrients
out of the modern diet, the scientists who blame our health problems on
deficiencies of these micronutrients are not the same scientists who see a
sugar-soaked diet leading to metabolic syndrome and from there to diabetes,
heart disease, and cancer. It is only natural for scientists no less than the
rest of us to gravitate toward a single, all-encompassing explanation. That
is probably why you now find some of the most fervent critics of the lipid
hypothesis embracing the carbohydrate hypothesis with the same absolutist
zeal that they once condemned in the Fat Boys. In the course of my own
research into these theories, I have been specifically warned by scientists
allied with the carbohydrate camp not to "fall under the spell of the
omega-3 cult." Cult? There is a lot more religion in science than you
might expect. So here we find ourselves once
again, lost at sea amid the crosscurrents of conflicting science. Or do we? Because
it turns out we don't need to declare our allegiance to any one of these
schools of thought in order to figure out how best to eat. In the end, they
are only theories, scientific explanations for an empirical phenomenon that
is not itself in doubt: People eating a Western diet are prone to a complex of
chronic diseases that seldom strike people eating more traditional diets.
Scientists can argue all they want about the biological mechanisms behind
this phenomenon, but whichever it is, the solution to the problem would
appear to remain very much the same: Stop
eating a Western diet. In truth the chief value of any
and all theories of nutrition, apart from satisfying our curiosity about how
things work, is not to the eater so much as it is to the food industry and
the medical community. The food industry needs theories so it can better
redesign specific processed foods; a new theory means a new line of products,
allowing the industry to go on tweaking the Western diet instead of making
any more radical change to its business model. 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. This is
a time of year when many people begin diets. Maybe In
Defense of Food will encourage the kind of change in diet that brings
back pleasure to eating. Read it and decide for yourself. Steve
Hopkins, January 22, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/In Defense of Food.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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