In Defence of Food

So I just finished reading Michael Pollan's In Defence of Food on Saturday night- it took me a while to get into it probably more to do with Hockey coaches than anything to do with the book though. Once I did get going it went really fast and I really really enjoyed it! It is full of really interesting information that makes so much sense but hadn't occurred to me before. And also a section of really good advice on what, where and how to eat.

Two quotes from the book I enjoyed....

"But while nutritionism has its roots in a scientific approach to food, it’s important to remember that it is not a science but an ideology, and that the food industry, journalism, and government bear just as much responsibility for its conquest of our minds and diets. All three helped to amplify the signal of nutritionism: journalism by uncritically reporting the  latest dietary studies on its front pages; the food industry by marketing dubious foodlike products on the basis of tenuous health claims; and the government by taking it upon itself to issue official dietary advice based on sketchy science in the first place and corrupted by political pressure in the second. The novel food products the industry designed according to the latest nutritionist specs certainly helped push real food off our plates. But the industry's influence would not be nearly so great had the ideology of nutritionism not already undermined the influence of tradition and habit and common sense — and the transmitter of all those values, mom — on our eating. 

Now, all this might be tolerable if eating by the light of nutritionism made us, if not happier, then at least healthier. That it has failed to do. Thirty years of nutritional advice have left us fatter, sicker, and more poorly nourished. Which is why we find ourselves in the predicament we do: in need of a whole new way to think about eating."

On marketing of foods: “But don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.”

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