Author: Forget all those food fears, fads

Michael Pollan serves up a common-sense ‘Manifesto’ on eating

By Audrey Van Buskirk

Pamplin Media Group, Jan 8, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

‘In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto’ by Michael Pollan The Penguin Press

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Here’s a quick way to determine whether you should bother to read Michael Pollan’s latest book, “In Defense of Food.” Just take this quiz:

If you were trapped on an island and could have water and only one food, which of the following would be best for your health?

a) bananas

b) spinach

c) corn

d) alfalfa sprouts

e) hot dogs

f) peaches

g) milk chocolate

If you chose hot dogs or milk chocolate you’re in the minority — according to Pollan, only 7 percent of survey takers chose one of these foods, although they would, indeed, “best support survival.”

If you already knew this, you’re probably an informed food-science skeptic and won’t find much new information here. But if you believe you’d be better off withering away on sprouts, you may find this new book eye-opening and appetite-altering.

First off, Pollan establishes that much of what government officials and scientists have said about food — ever — is at best only one part of a very complicated puzzle, or at worst wrong.

Pollan released “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” in April 2006, and this book feels like a quick, sitting-on-the-couch snack compared with that book’s hearty, lively tale about where our food comes from.

In “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Pollan energetically traced the origins of four meals, rode a tractor through a cornfield, rolled around in mud and killed his own pig.

Pollan describes “In Defense of Food” as a response to readers of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” asking what to eat once chicken nuggets and artificially sweetened cereal are off the table.

Pollan’s answer is laid out on the cover and the book’s first page: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. It might need this caveat: If you’re only going to eat one thing, protein is best. And don’t forget a glass of wine.

Pollan convincingly lays out all the blunders that have taken place in the name of food science and “nutritionism,” a term referring to the ideology of thinking of foods as nutrients rather than whole entities.

From baby formula to margarine to the myriad food products labeled (as the diet winds change) low-fat, low-carb, high-protein, etc., Pollan makes a strong case for ignoring foods that make health claims at all.

It may be hard to believe that people think that it’s better to eat enriched, fortified, hydrogenated, artificially sweetened banana chips rather than bananas — but it is hard to stomach the idea that everything we’ve been taught about fat is wrong.

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