


In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” - no longer the products of nature but of food science. So why should anyone need to defend it?īecause most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it - in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone - is not really eating. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it.

Pollan seems like a likable guy & I'm sure he's very bright & has a lot of good ideas, but what come across here looks like a promo for a book.

(I just wanted to see what was left on the trays at then end of the meal.) Sorry if I seem cynical, but this is pretty lightweight stuff. (I wanted to see what kind of sugar & carb-drenched dressing they used to wash the raw veggies down & if not that then what they used.) The other was some genius from Cornell who revolutionized high school cafeteria eating habits by putting healthy foods like raw carrots first in the cafeteria line so the kids would load up on those. Also annoying & borderline dishonest (IMO) are the gratuitous plugs (after Pollan has knocked Nutritionism) by nutrition propagandists: One raving about converting school kids/borderline delinquents into salad eaters without ever showing them in the act of actually eating lettuce greens. OTW there's not much new here, same old stuff about how sodas & breakfast cereals are bad for you & vegetables are better than meat (but the only meat they show is always a big piece of something that looks like prime rib). The few interesting points are not pursued to any depth, having mostly to do with the role of fiber enhancing the production of beneficial microbes that fight bad bacteria. This is like one of those pseudo-infomercials they play Saturday nights on PBS (to pace out the golden oldies shows with Nick Clooney & Peter Marshall).
