No, I am not attacking food.  I wouldn’t even necessarily say that I’m going to disagree too seriously with Michael Pollan’s overall position.  That having been said, listening to an audiobook recording of In Defense of Food was both frustrating and enlightening.  He has some good things to say, but the way he approached the issue and the way he argued his points were terribly off-putting.

On the whole, the book sought to explain why Americans have so much trouble eating well.  He came at it from many angles, ranging from our eating habits to our beliefs about nutrition to our relationships surrounding food purchasing, preparation, and consumption.  He had a lot to say, both criticizing others and offering his own advice.  Probably the best place to start would be at the end, where he revealed his seven word mantra:

Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.

You might not think that there’s a lot to disagree with in those three sentences, but you’d be surprised.  Let’s take them one at a time, and get into the meat (heh) of Pollan’s arguments.

Not Too Much

We’ll start here, because this sentence is the most obviously correct.  Pollan isn’t saying much here, and to be fair he doesn’t claim that he is.  If you only eat as much food as your body burns through in a day, then you’re never going to gain weight.  (See Entry 19 for the details.)

Pollan used this section to make a number of lifestyle suggestions.  He points out that people in many other modern cultures tend to eat until they are full, rather than eat until their plate is empty.  On the sub-plate scale, portion control is key; using smaller glasses, spoons, and plates might help you eat less.  You also have to look out for the unit fallacy, because not all single units of food are calorically identical.  (People tend to think that all, say, muffins are equally good/bad regardless of their size.)  He also suggests eating slower, enjoying your meals, and avoiding snacking between meals.

Nothing earth-shattering, but also nothing terribly controversial.  While he doesn’t have rock-solid evidence that issues like eating-on-the-go or the unit fallacy directly contribute to America’s obesity problem, I’d say it’s obvious that they at least aren’t helping.

Eat Food

While this seems as much of an “uh-duh” as the previous section, this statement is actually quite a bit more controversial.  Pollan’s point here is that he doesn’t consider much of what people eat to actually be food.  Rather, the majority of the items on the shelves in your grocery store are food products.  According to Pollan, the food is mostly around the perimeter of the grocery store: produce, meat, unprocessed dairy, and unprocessed frozen stuff.

I don’t recall Pollan ever strictly demarcating the food/food-product line, but he did give a handful of heuristics.  Food products might be: anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food, anything with more than five ingredients, anything with high fructose corn syrup, anything with ingredients you cannot pronounce, and so forth.  In general, you want to avoid these things because they’re likely to be worse for you than supposedly “real” food.

As you might guess, this is little more than an application of the naturalistic fallacy.  (This is the mistaken idea that supposedly “natural” things are automatically good for you; just ask Socrates about that one.)  I regret laying the smack down on his point so succinctly, because it does have merit.  There’s no doubt that eating pint of blueberries is better than eating a pint of Häagen-Dazs.  However, the reason for this has nothing to do with your grandmother or your ability to pronounce the sixth ingredient in rocky road ice cream.  The reason is contained within the foods themselves; specifically, their nutritional content.

This brings us to probably the most frustrating argument in the book: Pollan’s constant railing against what he calls nutritionism.  This argument was doubly annoying, because he was completely wrong but again he had a very valid point to make.  Unfortunately, he totally overshot this point in his zeal to make food scientists the villain of his story.  And, when scientists are the villain, we get all sorts of fun antiscientific talking points.  Ugh.  (For the last time, it’s fraunken-SHTEEN, people!)

So, what is nutritionism?  It’s a derogatory term to describe the notion that foods are “merely” the sum of their nutritional parts.  This is silly on its own, unless you ascribe some kind of supernatural power to a whole apple.  Hence my frustration.  But, I understand where this sentiment is coming from.  Scientists have identified three macronutrients (fat, carbohydrates, protein) and a few dozen micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, other chemicals) that are absolutely necessary for human survival.  As such, many of these are listed on nutritional labels so that people can make sure to eat them.

So, does that mean that scientists think that an apple is merely a bag of carbs with some vitamins floating in it?  No!  Well then, does that mean that scientists think humans can healthily survive on a bowl of synthetic fat, sugar, essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals?  No!  Pollan isn’t arguing against scientists; he’s arguing against the Wachowski brothers’ writing in The Matrix.  (Actually, if you remember the scene I’m referring to, they even gave anti-nutritionism a voice at the dinner table.)  To again reluctantly characterize his crummy argument for a valid point, this is a strawman.

Scientists measure the things they can detect; what else would you like them to do?  So, the science of nutrition has progressed by studying nutrients as they were discovered and determined to be important.  There was no other way for this field to progress, and Pollan demonstrates this remarkably well by offering little but fallacious arguments for the contrary position.  (Let’s call this idea paranutritionism.)  The field continues to progress, and our understanding of nutrition continues to grow as more compounds and their complex interactions are characterized.

But, you might ask, what about those nutritional labels?  What about the food pyramid?  How about all those studies saying fat is bad?  Or saying eggs are bad because of the cholesterol?  Or claiming red wine is good because of the resveratrol?  According to Pollan, these are the products of a corrupt system and evil reductionist scientists.  And, once again, he’s right for the wrong reasons.

Pollan actually spends quite a lot of time detailing how political pressures and industrial consortia dictated much of our current nutritional labeling and recommendation schemes.  Beyond the issue that he’s practically proposing a grand conspiracy theory, he deftly hoists himself on his own petard with that explanation.  The nutritionism he so despises didn’t come from the food scientists he excoriates for it!  It came from politicians bowing to industrial pressure, who in turn were bowing to the almighty dollar.

One last point, and then I promise that I’m finally done dissecting the recommendation that you “eat food.”  Pollan loves omega-3 fatty acids.  Adores them.  Heaps so much praise on them that you’d think he was a nutter on Oprah selling acai berry ice cream.  He might even have gone so far as to suggest taking omega-3 supplement pills, but don’t quote me on it.  You know omega-3 fatty acids, right?  Those chemicals discovered by reductionist food scientists and demonstrated to be an important singular component of good nutrition?  Though Pollan nobly admitted some hypocrisy after gushing over this fat molecule, I think this is worth noting and speaks for itself.

Mostly Plants

Pollan didn’t advocate vegetarianism, but he did emphasize that you probably want to err on the plant side of things to maintain a healthy diet.  In fact, you probably want to aim particularly at leaves; seeds are calorie-dense and fiber-poor, making them rather like meat in this regard.  I don’t really have much of a problem with this suggestion, but I once again took issue with how Pollan arrived at his conclusion.

As I’ve hinted at, much of Pollan’s evidence for his beliefs about what to eat (at least when he wasn’t disingenuously resorting to “reductionist science”) came from looking at other cultures.  Beyond his grandmother, he also discussed and surmised the eating habits of ancient and indigenous cultures.  (And, beyond the naturalistic fallacy, this statement might be considered the fallacious argument from … anyone, anyone … antiquity.)  He marveled that societies have thrived on all manner of diets, from high fat to high carbohydrate to high protein.  Human prehistory covers the entire culinary spectrum, from fully vegetarian Jains to fully carnivorous Eskimos.

Wait a second … where did the Eskimos get their leaves to maintain their healthy diets?  It would seem that the Eskimos’ example is great for the first two words of Pollan’s mantra, but ought to be ignored while considering the last two words.  Well, then.

Furthermore, how do we know that the diets of ancient societies even provided adequate nutrition?  Imagine the worst possible scenario of the so-called Western diet: someone morbidly obese who consumes nothing but processed, high-calorie, low-micronutrient foods.  This person will probably make it into their 40s or 50s without inordinate trouble.  This is well past the life expectancy of your average prehistoric man.  We can squabble about infant mortality and accidental deaths all day long, but the fact remains that our hypothetical dead-at-fifty Western diet glutton would have lived to be the oldest caveman on the block ten millennia ago.

How About:  Move More, Eat Less, Try Different Foods

I really wanted to like In Defense of Food, both before and after I finished it.  I think there are some very good points in the book, and you cannot deny that our culture needs to drastically change the way we approach food.

An apple is absolutely not equivalent to a sugar packet and a multivitamin.  However, this does not imply that apples are magical, nor does it imply that Doritos are evil incarnate.  Ideally, you’d like to eat more apple-like things than Doritos-like things, but don’t obsess over it and try to keep it all in perspective.

Perspective is key.  When Michael Pollan gets roundly dismissed by a critic, it’s typically because they find him elitist or impractical.  These are pretty fair labels; he is clearly a hardcore foodie, and he can be idealistic to the point of naivety.  At one point he even suggested that people venture out into the wilderness to gather things to eat; I’m surprised he hasn’t been sued by the family of someone who took his advice and died after eating a poisonous mushroom.

I think making an effort at some of the lifestyle changes Pollan suggests would be worthwhile.  But, you have to stay grounded.  I love the farmers’ market in my town, but the prices are high, the selection is paltry compared to the grocery store, and my schedule doesn’t allow me to devote every Saturday morning to shopping.  I wish I had the time to cook elaborate meals from scratch on a daily basis, but there are plenty of others things I’d like to spend my time doing.  Avoiding processed foods is a noble goal, but nobility has nothing to do with how little I want to cook anything beyond a bowl of cereal when I wake up in the morning.

In light of all this, I’ve decided to take my own stab at a seven word mantra for Americans to consider while working to avoid the dangers of the Western Diet.

Move more.  Eat less.  Try different foods.

The first two parts are self-explanatory.  Per the discussion in Entry 19, everything boils down to the calorie balance.  And, the only surefire ways to tip the calorie balance are to consume less of ‘em and burn more of ‘em.  The last part hopefully covers the positive parts of Pollan’s message while avoiding all the baggage I’ve gone over here.  Mixing up your diet will prevent you from missing key nutrients, will subtly make food a bigger part of your life, will keep you from eating Cheetos until you possibly overdose on artificial food coloring, and won’t necessarily cost you money or time.

Maybe I’ll get a chance to run all this by Michael Pollan.  He’s been invited to my campus to give some talks this fall, so perhaps later you’ll get an update about what he thinks of my seven words.