Blog Post #4

In the book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan, Pollan discusses how destructive the Western Diet has become over the years for our bodies. One of his main arguments is that in today’s modern era the food people eat is suppose to be getting healthier for them. In supermarkets everyone sees the ads about how this food item has low carbs or low fats, or food is chocked full of nutrients. These foods are suppose to be better for the human body, and scientists are able to better measure the nutrients in food, but according to Pollan, scientists know little about how these nutrients actually work with the human body. As an increasing amount of people move toward these, “health foods” people are actually becoming less and less healthy. Pollan claimis that this problem is a major cause of disease in the modern age he classifies it as “nutritionism,” and that the people living off the Western Diet are over nourished.

Pollan’s argument is effect in that the book is clearly laid out and the information is separated in a way that makes it easy to follow. He explains that even though people have been making health claims for the past fifty years on different foods, the number of Americans with obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heat disease has increased.These numbers are a lot larger than the Greek, Italians, or even the French. Americans eat food until their plate is empty while in other cultures people eat till they are full. Another problem is that Americans eat around the TV or while they are alone instead of eating in a group

Pollan’s solution is simple to state, but hard to follow. He believes that these “health foods” should be avoided and instead stick with the foods that do not have any health claim labels such as simple fruits and vegetables. Pollan suggest that people need to move back to their roots to become healthy again. The more health claims that food items make the worse that food item becomes. Pollan’s argument can be summed up simply on the cover of the book and the first words, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Pollan discusses his point a view in a very logical way that makes it extremely difficult to refute. In the past people lived healthy lives without needing dietitians and nutritionists telling people what they should or should not eat. As time went on mother’s became the principle person to tell the family what foods should be consumed. Currently Pollan says that, “...mom lost much of her authority over the dinner menu, ceding it to scientist and food marketers (often an unhealthy alliance of the two) and, to a lesser extent, to the government, with its ever-shifting dietary guidelines, food labeling rules, and perplexing pyramids.” Following his logical argument leaves very little room to find a good counterpoint, and to supplement his argument there is about twenty pages of sources to cite where Pollan gained all of his material.

Humans are the only animals that need people telling them what they should or should not eat, and over the past fifty years the health of the western people keeps declining. If scientists can not improve our health to what it once was, doesn’t it just make sense to go back to eating those old things? “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”