How inspiring is Michael Pollan's latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto? So inspiring that, after finishing it, I immediately went into my yard to plant a row of strawberries and start a flat of sweet peas.
A followup to his 2006 book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food starts with a simple question: "What should we eat?" In the context of humanity's long history, the question seems ridiculous. But in today's fast-food, industrial-farming, microwave-meal culture, the query makes sense.
Clearly, what we – in the U.S. especially – eat these days isn't making us healthier and fitter than our great-grandparents were. Grocery stores are overflowing with an abundance our ancestors couldn't even dream of, but most of what's on offer is contributing to an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and diet-related cancers.
Pollan traces the problem to the dawn of the "Age of Nutritionism." Ushered in by science seeking to understand the chemistry of food – vitamins, minerals, fats, carbohydrates, anti-oxidants and so on – nutritionism, Pollan argues, inspired the philosophy that we can make foods better than the ones from nature by isolating the key ingredients for health. Find those "magic bullets," the argument goes, and science and industry can make any food a means for delivering optimal health.
Except that hasn't happened. Despite years of "low-fat" this, "vitamin-enriched" that and thousands of new, laboratory-crafted food products entering the market each year, nutritionism has yet to improve on real food from nature, Pollan says.
"Thirty years of nutritional advice have left us fatter, sicker, and more poorly nourished," he writes. "Which is why we find ourselves in the predicament we do: in need of a whole new way to think about eating."
That new way, Pollan concludes, is actually an old way. To eat the way our great-grandparents did, whether they were from Greenland or India, France or Japan. As omnivores, humans can thrive on an astounding variety of diets, from a diet of meat, blood and milk with almost no plant foods (the Masai of Africa) to the corn- and bean-dominated cuisines of Latin America. The only diet that doesn't seem to sustain us healthfully (or happily), Pollan writes, is the one most of us in the West now eat.
It's not a message nutrition scientists or diet product companies will want to hear, but it's one that will resonate with anyone who wants to live green and eat "real" food. And no matter how well you're already doing in that department, reading In Defense of Food will probably inspire you to do even better ... and maybe plant a few rows of fruits and vegetables in your own backyard. Which is good for you and good for the Earth.
For more green, healthy eating tips from Michael Pollan, see "A Guide to 'Real' Eating."
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