Michael Pollan has written extensively on food and food systems. In 2005 he published The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which looked at the industrial food chain and alternative routes to food production. As an instructor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, Pollan brings a readable style and thorough research to his latest book, In Defense of Food. Published last year by Penguin Books, Pollan’s work lays out a framework for people to use when considering their food choices. Subtitled “An Eater’s Manifesto”, In Defense of Food argues that people need to “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.” While this pithy, seven word statement sums up the thrust of Pollan’s book, he spends a significant portion of time discussing and refuting nutritionism. He defines nutritionism as an ideology based on consuming individual nutrients, not entire foods from which they came (i.e. fruits and vegetables). This ideological position derived from a reductionist approach to food, one that values the nutrient (i.e. antioxidants) over the foods that contain them, such as blueberries.

Under each of his three concise statements that open the first chapter (“Eat Food”, “Not too Much”, and “Mostly Plants”) Pollan has developed a further set of rules for eating. For “Eat Food”, Pollan suggest that people avoid eating “anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food”. He goes on to provide a wealth of other suggestions under the “Eat Food” heading, including this four-part guideline: “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.”

Rules falling under “Mostly Plants” include eating leafy plants, food from “healthy soils”, and wild foods. So-called whole foods (fruits, vegetables, grass-fed beef, or other pre-industrial/mass production engineered foods) also rank high on Pollan’s list. For “Not Too Much”, Pollan suggests buying higher quality produce and meats, then savoring these, paying attention to the subtle (or in some cases not so subtle) differences. He also comes out in favor of communal dining experiences at the table, as opposed to a desk or in the car. For the latter, Pollan says “Don’t get your fuel from the same place as your car.”

Pollan’s book comes down to a thinly veiled proposal for a paleolithic style diet. The argument goes that humans have evolved eating a diet based on so-called “whole foods” (i.e. fruits, vegetables, meat) that cannot be reduced into constituent parts or nutrients. A return to more natural diets, whether they are vegan, vegetarian, or omnivorous does not entirely matter. The point is that humans need to avoid overly manufactured foods in favor of those that can be grown, gathered, or hunted.

- Eric Wilson

[image source MichaelPollan.com]