Page 69 - Summer2008

All Thumbs Book Reviews

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto processed foods is lost.
by Michael Pollan Nutritionism is complex and reductionist,
Penguin Press, 2008 Pollan says. His antidote to the resulting confu-
sion is this simple admonition: “Eat food. Not too
Michael Pollan is an elegant and engaging much. Mostly Plants.” Clever. And it works. But
writer. He can take a complex subject and weave only up to a point. At the end of the book, as he
its many threads into a seamless narrative that is  eshes out these simple phrases, he offers invalu-
both highly informative amd eminently readable. able guidelines to help reprogram the victims
With his best selling The Omnivore’s Dilemma, of nutritionism: Accept as food only things that your great-grandmother
he opened the eyes of the masses to the ecologi- would have recognized as such. Buy a good portion of it from local farmers
cal and ethical dimensions of our food choices. who raise “well-grown food from healthy soils;” or better still, grow some
No wonder so many people concerned with the of it yourself, if only a pot of herbs. Take time to prepare meals yourself,
future of agriculture and our food supply began and sit down at the table with family and friends to enjoy it together in a
to think of him as Saint Michael. leisurely way.
It feels a bit like blasphemy, then, to take is- His goal is to help us reclaim our health and happiness as eaters by
sue with his current offering, In Defense of Food. opting out of the Western Diet. But we may not get there from here using
It has much to recommend it, especially when his directions, because there is a fundamental disconnect between his
he delineates how we came to the current sorry excellent analysis and some of his recommendations—often obscured by
state of affairs in which human beings—who his enormous skill as a writer.
have been eating for millions of years—suddenly He tells us to eat less meat and that just about any old traditional diet

nd themselves in need of expert guidance for will do. He tells us to eat more plants, but never more saturated fat. Indeed,
this most basic activity. He gives us a history of he continually refers to saturated fat as something to be avoided. It is hard

the conuence of well intentioned government to understand how he comes to such conclusions when they contradict

policy, awed science, industrial proteering, what he has said elsewhere in the book.
and regulatory idiocy. As a result, food itself We will come back to these points later, but rst let us look at what he

now needs to be defended against the Nutritional has to say about the rise of nutritionism. As he tells it, the crucial moment
Industrial Complex, which conspires to disas- was in 1977, when the McGovern Committee on Nutrition and Human

semble and then recongure it in beguiling new Needs formulated their Dietary Goals for the United States. Because they
forms, in response to ever changing nutritional embraced the “lipid hypothesis”—which held that the consumption of fat
ideology. and dietary cholesterol was responsible for the rapidly rising rates of heart
The concept of “Nutritionism” is one of the disease during the twentieth century—they initially advised Americans to
catchy hooks upon which he hangs his story. It “reduce consumption of meat and dairy products.” In the face of pressure
is the central theme for his powerful case against from the powerful meat and dairy industries, however, the wording was
our modern food culture. Essentially, nutrition- changed to “choose meats, poultry and sh that will reduce saturated fat

ism is the widely shared but unexamined assump- intake.” According to Pollan, the implication of this apparently simple
tion that the key to understanding food lies in its change was profound: The focus was now on individual nutrients rather
individual nutrients. Because these are abstract than on actual foods.
and invisible, we need scientists and journalists This shift of focus supplied the “ultimate justication for processing

to explain them to us. We then begin to think food by implying that with a judicious application of food science, fake
of food only in terms of bodily health, and lose foods can be made even more nutritious than the real thing.” What fol-
sight of its pleasurable and social aspects. Food lowed was thirty years in which we replaced fats with carbohydrates, and
becomes nothing more than a nutrient delivery have become less healthy and considerably fatter.
system, and the distinction between whole and But now, Pollan tells us, scientists have come to see that the whole low-

SUMMER 2008 Wise Traditions 67