Appealing to a Rational Mind

In his most recent novel, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan keeps the promise of his title: he stands up for the rights of whole foods to exist in a world of nutrient-centered diets. Pollan isn’t the first to defend food; on the contrary, there is an entire movement organized around this idea. The Slow Food Movement, started by Carlo Petrini, is a proponent of organically grown food. The movement also rejects the corporate food industry for it’s processed food-like products. Pollan is unique in that he introduces the idea of industry and capitalism using their self-created problems of heart disease and obesity to their own advantage by turning healthcare into a business opportunity. He convincingly portrays the industrial world as a manipulative community through his use of precise language strategies and direct logic, weaving a story that captures and maintains the attention of his audience.

From the very beginning of In Defense of Food, Pollan makes readers aware of his three enemies: nutritional scientists, journalists, and the food industry. While he argues against these groups of people for various reasons, his dislike for them is united in one main point: they steer people away from natural, whole foods and towards imitation products that will damage their health. However, Pollan does not announce his contempt openly: he takes a sly approach at calling out the perpetrators. At several points in his writing, he innocently mentions that even though the scientists who once forcefully backed the Lipid Hypothesis are silently but swiftly distancing themselves from it, they probably didn’t intend to let their followers go astray. And the journalists also probably didn’t mean to advertise whatever was popular at the time simply for personal gain. According to Pollan, these groups are the reason why our culture is known for obesity and facing numerous fatal diseases. Yet instead of openly placing all of the blame on them, he attempts at taking an objective point of view by somewhat justifying the actions of the other side. This writing strategy draws in readers, making Pollan seem less like a crazed health junkie and more like a levelheaded individual simply trying to point out the facts.

While Pollan doesn’t fully blame the scientists and journalists, he does point a finger directly at one particular group: corporate industry. Pollan contends that the industry uses the work of the nutritional scientists in order to sell more of its products. Marketing of these supposedly nutritious items has become a multi-billion dollar force, intent on corrupting the minds of vulnerable shoppers through flawed nutritional claims. He insists that the food industry consistently spins out thousands of deceiving substances posing as real foods with no regard for the health of the public. Pollan explains that “fully a quarter of all Americans suffer from metabolic syndrome, two thirds of us are overweight or obese, and diet-related diseases are already killing the majority of us” (135).

And if that weren’t doing enough damage, capitalism has decided to take it a step further. While some are shocked by the sheer number of people with food-related diseases, the corporate food industry finds a positive side to this tragedy. Instead of changing the food products it sells to promote a healthier lifestyle and therefore incurring severe losses, the industry has decided to turn the Western diet into a whole new business opportunity: healthcare. The food industry would much rather make a profit and let society deal with the harmful costs.

Pollan uses the persuasive modes of logos and pathos in making his argument convincing. His clear, direct logic is difficult to argue with. While statistics can be manipulated and data can be misconstrued, there is no denying Pollan’s simple logic. The food industry has a clear choice. Instead of making thousands of people morbidly obese and fatally sick, it can choose to stop selling products that are causing these diseases. Yet it continues to promote the “Western diet” and feed Americans with a lot of everything except real food. Pollan convincingly portrays the corporate world as a malignant realm focused on efficiency and profit. Along with bearing a simple logic, he reaches out emotionally to readers with his surprising statistics on diet-related diseases. The large number of fatalities and sicknesses due to these diseases only add to making the corporate food industry seem avaricious and heartless.

Pollan’s arguments are not always consistently convincing. At times throughout the book, his data appears to be skewed and his opinions too biased to be considered seriously. However in this particular argument, Pollan leaves out all biases and still manages to drive home a very strong point. Using basic facts and appealing to a rational mind, he is able to convince readers to contemplate the harmful actions of the corporate food industry and possibly even have them considering joining a mass movement of people striving for a truly healthy lifestyle change.