Blog Post #4:Common Sense>Science

In his book In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan argues that western society is too dependent on the scientifically determined nutritional values associated with the foods that they eat, making the science applied to the food more important than the actual food itself. From this he states that people should instead of focusing on the chemicals that are inside of food, people should focus on the food itself, and use their own common sense to determine the healthiness of the food or not. While the argument he is trying to make is sensible and is quite convincing on its own, it loses effectiveness with Pollan's consistent reference to scientific studies, his own personal eating tips, and similar attempts to support the validity of his argument, when his argument would have been just as valid and much more succinct and to the point if they had not incorporated.

It is argued that people depend too much on the chemicals and nutrients that are in and have been added to foods to decide whether or not the food is what they want to eat. Many food companies have realized this and are trying to find ways to market their products as nutritious, even though their products clearly are nothing more than "junk food." Food companies add the current big important fad nutrients that has society in an uproar for, just so that they can market their products as health foods, even when normally such a product should have nothing to do with that nutrient.

Pollan's argument is quite convincing, and does provide solid evidence to back up his claims. He uses several different methods to try to get his point across and to clarify what actually is the right food one should be eating instead of the scientifically determined to be healthy. One clear and understandable method Pollan uses to state what qualifies as good food is the "great grandmother rule," which states that you really only should be eating what your great grand mother would call food. This specific method is quite effective, as not only does it show what foods are acceptable, but also gives insight as to why those foods are acceptable.

For how good Pollan's argument is, he greatly dilutes it with a disproportionately large number of references to, ironically enough, scientific studies, which appear at a very high rate early on in his book. This tends to make Pollan's well made argument a tad boring, which, if drawn out long enough, will lead to readers not truly reading the entirety of his book, skipping small sections now and then to avoid reader the next inevitable reference to a scientific study. To clarify, referencing scientific studies can be a great way to solidify ones argument, and the very goal of making a stable argument for anything necessitates some scientific backup, but the vast quantity of studies incorporated by Pollan bog down his argument, making what would have been an interesting read into a rather boring experience.

On the whole, Michael Pollan does quite a good job of arguing that people should not rely on the science behind a food and instead use their own common sense to decide which foods are best suited for their needs. The only problem is that he takes a very convincing and interesting argument and dilutes it with an excruciating number of scientific studies.