Eat Food

I think it’s pretty safe to say that most people are confused about what to eat. Take the example of soy and soy based products. These foods have been receiving positive health hype for decades. Studies demonstrate the positive effects soy has on heart health, bone health, and menopause. Yet, other studies conclude that soy may pose health problems and even increase the risk of some cancers, particularly breast cancer. So what is someone to make of such conflicting advice? Read Michael Pollan’s Book. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto unpacks the mixed messages of nutritional science that confuse people about what to eat. The science is complicated, but Pollan succeeds at making it accessible to the everyday eater. He encourages his readers to think critically about health claims, as groups invested in increased sales of a product often supply the funding for its nutritional research. Instead of trying to make sense of the changing claims, Pollan, in essence, encourages his readers to forget about them. There are other places to look than nutritional science for educated advice about what to eat and his book does a very good job of mapping out exactly what those are.

Pollan’s last section is devoted to a set of guidelines that help people make choices about what to eat and how to eat it. The first is his famous phrase “Eat Food.” According to Pollan, a food is something that your great grandmother would recognize as a food and doesn’t contain more than five pronounceable ingredients. If you can’t count the ingredients on one hand, if you have to play “sound it out” to pronounce it, or if Great Grandma Gurdy thinks it’s an object from outer space, its not a food. It’s a “food like substance.” Processed = chemical = yucky.

Another guideline is to eat according to the rules of traditional food culture. French, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, any one will do. Traditional food cultures must evolve through time with their people, so if the people of that food culture are thriving then it’s a healthy choice. Food cultures consist not only of the types of food eaten, but how the food is grown, processed and eaten. This brings me to me to the last of the rules, those covering how to eat – at a table, slowly, and connected to the shortest food chain possible. This means to deliberately slow down for meals to eat “from freedom instead of compulsion” (196) in a setting where you can focus on the food, not on driving the car, or writing a paper (guilty!). It’s supporting local growers and growing and cooking your own food. It’s ultimately about prioritizing. Saying that our bodies, our communities, and our planet deserve a pleasurable and sustainable dining experience, every time. And, let’s face it; fresh unprocessed foods taste a hell of a lot better. So if you don’t care about the health of your body or our planet, at least do it for the selfish reason of the best tasting bite. I’m not sure there is a better one.