To a massive, overflow crowd last night, Michael Pollan read from his new book, In Defense of Food, and discussed why we need his manifesto. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking the answer was "To depress us" rather than, as he says, "To return pleasure to eating."
Pollan sees two problems, the more tangible of which is the aggressive food lobby that spends nearly three billion dollars a month basically to give consumers, directly or indirectly, bad information. (He points out that the foods that are best for you, fresh vegetables and fruits, are the only foods that don't carry FDA labels.) The second problem he sees as being worse, and that's "the lens through which we look at food." He is very much against nutritionism. If we believe that nutrients are what matter most, then we necessarily lose control, having no choice but to rely on "experts" because we can't see nutrients. But he repeatedly likened today's food experts to surgeons in the 1600s and offered many examples of them contradicting their new rules about good and bad foods within a few years (e.g., saturated vs. trans fats).
Another example of how little we know: Our digestive tracts have the same number of neurons as our spinal cords; we've mapped and know each one's function on our spinal cords but we're clueless about our guts. More depressing factoids: four of the top ten causes of death in the U.S. are the result of diet, and twenty percent of all food purchased here is consumed in cars. Low fat milk becomes too watery, so dairies have to add dried milk powder to thicken it, which then requires antioxidants to counterbalance that. (A woman in the audience begged him, "Stop!") Because of refrigeration requirements, all supermarkets are laid out the same and Pollan says shop the periphery, the worst items are in the middle.
Reduced to seven words, his manifesto is "Eat food, not too much, mainly plants." (By food he means a food your great-grandmother would recognize, not "food products.") An early, short essay incarnation of the manifesto appears here, curiously suggesting a much older ancestor. When in doubt, act more French: smaller portions of richer foods, eaten together, for pleasure, community, ritual, and family. In response to feverish questions, he said he's not much taken with the raw movement, he loves slow food, and he suspects in years to come we'll all be eating algae. (For the record, the short, lively, older woman in front of me asked, "Do you have any disparaging words about algae or kelp?")
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