Food according to Michael Pollan

I never got around to reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma when it was all the rage two years ago. But as I was leaving the library a few days ago I walked past In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan’s fifth book that supposedly follows up on the ideas that he presented in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and I decided to check it out. Four days later, I’ve finished the book and it’s really gotten me thinking.

The subtitle reveals Pollan’s core message: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” In his supporting arguments to bolster this simple message Pollan laid out a strong critique of nutritionism. I wasn’t familiar with the term prior to reading, but now that I am I see it everywhere. Nutritionism is a food ideology that assumes that a food is merely the sum of its nutrient parts, and as eaters we should engage with various foods based solely on their nutritional makeup.

Pollan thinks nutritionism is at best worthless, at worst dangerous. Instead of paying attention to the nutrients in what we eat, he says, we need to just eat food. The catch is that his definition of food isn’t the one most of us use. Pollan says that most food products in the supermarket aren’t actually food, but rather foodlike substitutes. Ordinary food, the food he is championing, includes produce and traditional foods that your great grandmother would recognize. He rails against breads and yogurts with lengthy ingredient lists and encourages readers to avoid any food products that claim to be healthy on their label. In addition to providing a list of recommendations on what to eat – what he calls a food algorithm – Pollan suggests that readers put the social aspect back into eating by eliminating snacks and focusing on leisurely sit-down meals with friends and family.

Everything Pollan wrote made perfect sense to me. I’ve always been a fairly healthy eater and buy most of my food at a local farmers’ market, so his advice probably won’t revolutionize the way I eat. But I did take away a new idea of what constitutes food and a revitalized disdain for the processed foods that are fattening and sickening a huge portion of our nation’s population.