Page 60 - Spring2010

All Thumbs Book Reviews

to Wise Traditions readers but perhaps not to typical readers of The New assimilation, and stress causes the adrenals to
York Times. The dangers of rancid, factory-produced oils that are heavy “waste” the mineral as well. An over abundance
in inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids, transmogrified trans fats, and par- of calcium—magnesium’s metabolic dance part-
tially hydrogenated oils are revealed to be the dietary villains they are. A ner—means that the deficiency can cause serious
chapter on cholesterol vindicates the useful nutrient from the scapegoating conditions such as calcification of soft tissues (as
it has suffered for decades as heart-health scourge, while throwing light in the arteries), muscle cramping, including that
on the serious dangers (and futility) of statin drugs. Blood lipid levels are of the heart (calcium contracts, magnesium re-
important signals regarding cardiovascular health and their relationship laxes) and impaired bone and tooth maintenance.
to high insulin as well as to good fats and other nutrients in the diet are Iron presents the opposite problem: most
explored in detail. men and post-menopausal women are at risk to
Chapters entitled “The Miracle Magnesium” and “The Modern Iron accumulate too much. The excess iron is not nec-
Age” present important information on these two minerals that may be essarily coming from a diet of red meat, but from
new to readers. The Eades frequently have their patients supplement their all the iron-fortified wheat products that make up
diets with magnesium to improve health conditions as varied as hyperten- the vast majority of processed foods, from cold
sion, pre-diabetes and gout. Magnesium is required for the functioning of breakfast cereals to pastries, crackers, and other
at least three hundred metabolic pathways in the body. The modern diet snack items lining supermarket shelves. Although
is severely deficient in this mineral—the best food sources include tree iron is absolutely necessary for life, excess iron
nuts, leafy greens and bones—but mineral-deficient farming soils and the is an oxidizer—rust comes easily to mind—and
preponderance of processed foods mean most people receive very little. can cause serious problems in the organs in which
A high-carbohydrate diet demands a great deal of magnesium during it accumulates, such as the heart, liver, thyroid,

FOOD RULES: AN EATER’S MANUAL
By Michael Pollan
Penguin Group

In this little volume, Michael Pollan of The Ominivore’s Dilemma fame decries the confusion and uncertainty in the
field of nutrition. For the “Nutritional Industrial Complex,” confusion about food “is good business,” he says. Food Rules
builds on Pollan’s haiku-like aphorisms: Eat food; mostly plants; not too much. But his prescription is nothing but confu-
sion and contradiction from square one. Case in point: He comes out firmly against meat in the Introduction, lumping
consumption of meat with “added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains” instead of “vegetables, whole grains and fruits” as
the cause—agreed upon by “all contending parties in the nutrition wars”—of all the Western diseases (he didn’t ask our
opinon). Yet he notes that the Eskimos, the Masai and the French are healthy—and these folks eat lots of meat. He also
says to eat the way our grandmothers ate; weren’t our grandmothers the ones who heaped our plates with meat so we’d
be healthy and strong? No, says Pollan, “Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating
what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than what stands on four legs [cows, pigs and other mammals.]” Snacks,
he says, should be limited to unprocessed plant foods—hungry teenagers should lift their sagging blood sugar with carrot
sticks, according to Pollan, not cheese, eggs, milk or salami.
Likewise regarding saturated fats, Pollan dedicates the book to his mother, “who always knew butter was better for
you than margarine” and admonishes readers to avoid foods with the words “lite” or “lowfat” on the labels. But elsewhere
Pollan hews to the party line, blaming saturated fats for chronic disease. (There’s nary a mention of trans fats in the whole
book; we shouldn’t focus, says Pollan, on “the evil nutrient in the Western diet.”)
“Don’t eat cereals that change the color of your milk,” says Pollan, but studiously avoids discussion of breakfast cereals
or milk—presumably as long as your breakfast cereal doesn’t change the color of your UHT milk, you’ll be fine. Pollan’s
rules are witty and clever, but they do not answer the questions that people are asking and certainly don’t make the
subject of nutrition any less confusing. Don’t waste your money on this book. THUMBS DOWN.

60 Wise Traditions SPRING 2010