Michael Pollan had what I expect will be a legendary article in the nutrition / health canon last Sunday in the New York Times magazine. It is extraordinarily well-written, entertaining, and practical. It examines the new science of “nutritionism” and how the practice of examining food nutrient-by-nutritent, “takes the nutrient out of the context of food, the food out of the context of diet and the diet out of the context of lifestyle.”
Pollan notes that pressure from specific food industries, processed food, and nutritional surveys (on which most people lie about their eating habits) are all among the reasons for the misinformation about proper diet. Heck, if the American Heart Association simply charges marketers for their endorsement, something must be seriously wrong.
The article ends with nine, “flagrantly unscientific” rules of thumb for good nutrition. Excerpts:
1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.
2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best….
3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup. None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.
4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market; you also won’t find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality….
5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care….
6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less “energy dense” than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians (“flexitarians”) are as healthy as vegetarians…
7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren’t a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others: Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats, as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can’t possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.
8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden.
9. Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases…
I love all the work M. Pollan is doing. I am currently re-reading Omnivore’s Dilemma– cause it is that good.
I got my degree in nutrition at one of the only natural health schools and started out into “health” food, and now advise people to stay away from health food and what the “experts” say. Like, I say, there is a reason my 97 year old Grandmother is so sharp and healthy (having grown up on the farm, eating only the food they produced.)
I could go on and on…
thanks for the post!
Lace
Excellent advice !
Easy to understand,
Simple to communicate,
Tasty to implement.
I like the #7 …
All the best !
Pierre … from France
Two things to add:
– Although the food industry has focused a lot on quantity and price, they have also put a lot into safety. Many of the chemicals in processed foods are preservatives and such. Did you ever wonder why they call it “Safeway”? Unfortunately, these chemicals solve one problem and create others.
– Another rule of thumb I like is to “avoid buying things from the interior of the grocery store.” All the fresh, non-packaged stuff (produce, fresh meat & dairy) is around the outside of the store.
Good points all in Michael Pollan’s article.
I find Andrew Weil’s books on health, healing, and natural medicine to be honest, reliable guides to sensible eating.
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Very nice blog, good work.
Good blog
I hope everybody read this article.
thanks for informations.