Page 70 - Summer2008

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fat campaign was bogus. He quotes prominent scientists as saying that “it is pastured variety. Studies with conclusions about
now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on meat tell us nothing unless this distinction is

little scientic evidence and may have caused unintended consequences.” made.

An example of awed evidence and logic cited by Pollan is the promotion He cites as a particular authority for the
of the lipid hypothesis even though “during the decades of the twentieth conclusion that we should limit meat The China
century when rates of heart disease were rising in America, Americans Study, by Colin Campbell. This was an epide-
were actually reducing their intake of animal fats (in the form of lard and miological study, subject to a myriad of misin-
tallow). In place of those fats, they consumed substantially more vegetable terpretations—as Pollan demonstrates when he
oils.” He devotes an entire chapter to this logical sleight of hand, “The explores the pitfalls and limitations of modern
Melting of the Lipid Hypothesis.” nutritional studies in the chapter “Bad Science.”
So far so good. But round about here he opines that it is hard for him He closes that section with this comment from a
“to imagine the low fat/high carb craze taking off as it did or our collective noted epidemiologist: “I don’t believe anything
health deteriorating to the extent that it has if the Committee’s original I read in nutritional epidemiology anymore.”
food based recommendations had stood: Eat less meat and dairy products.” But inexplicably, Pollan evinces no such qualms
Actually, I seriously doubt that the original wording by the McGovern about swallowing The China Study.
Committee would have prevented the increasing presence of ersatz car- Finally, in suggesting that we needn’t wait
bohydrate foods in the American diet. As Pollan has explained so well, for science to settle exactly what it is about eating
both here and in his many other writings, the forces of agriculture and the meat that supposedly causes coronary disease
food industry were perfectly poised to take advantage of any opportunity and cancer, Pollan ignores his previous implica-
by which they could increase the sale of corn and soy, using all the food tion that our present national dietary disaster was

engineering, marketing and regulatory inuence that money could buy. created when the McGovern Committee acted in
The taboo against the eating of traditional fats itself was all the opening a similarly precipitous manner.
they needed to push such an agenda. Here is another puzzle: Why does he dis-
More crucially, Pollan makes a compelling case that the lipid hy- regard major portions of the work of Dr. Price
pothesis on which the McGovern Dietary Goals were based, whatever the in preference for others? He gives us a lengthy
choice of words, was seriously awed. By what logic does Pollan demolish discussion of the  ndings of Dr. Weston A. Price,

the foundational hypothesis itself, but then accept with approval the major some of which are slightly misrepresented—just
recommendation it engendered? Pollan doesn’t say, and that is one of the enough so to support the anti-meat stance Pollan
puzzles of this book. seems bent on taking. For example, he says that
Such contradictions continue to crop up, as for example: “But eaters Price found populations who “thrived on diets
worried about their health needn’t wait for science to settle this question in which fruits, vegetables and grain predomi-
[what it is about a meat-heavy diet that causes higher rates of coronary nated.” This statement is not accurate, since it
disease and cancer] before deciding that it might be wise to eat more plants gives the impression that animal foods were not
and less meat. This of course is precisely what the McGovern committee fundamental among the populations Price stud-
was trying to tell us.” ied; and is contradicted when he himself says,
Pollan’s frequent refrain that we should “eat less meat” seems to as- “Price found groups that ate diets of wild animal
sume that the unhealthful consequence of eating a lot of meat is settled  esh to be generally healthier than the agricultur-
science. It is not—he makes it seem so by sleight of hand. He slips in ists who relied on cereals and other plant foods
references to research on the matter without giving it the kind of scrutiny . . .” with “the healthiest of all the populations”
he himself applies to nutritional studies in other parts of the book. For Price studied being “. . .tribes that subsisted on
example, is it known what kind of meat the subjects in these studies were milk, meat, and blood from pastured cattle as
eating? Was it grain-fed or grass-fed? Pollan makes it abundantly clear well as animal food from the Nile River.”
that the two are completely different foods, and advocates eating only the He reports that Price found these diets to
68 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2008