In Defense of Food
Synopsis: We're all about healthy eating here in America - but you'd never know it by looking at our med charts. Food activist and UC Berkeley journalism prof Michael Pollan takes on health advisors, the food industry, and scientists in his latest book, which takes eating back to basics and might just make you change your diet.
About the author: Michael Pollan, winner of the James Beard Award, is the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma (named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by both the New York Times and the Washington Post), as well as several other books. Pollan is in the documentary film Food, Inc. that just hit theaters this June, and this fall PBS will air a doc based on his other best-selling book, The Botany of Desire, giving us a "plant's-eye view" of the world.
About the author: Michael Pollan, winner of the James Beard Award, is the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma (named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by both the New York Times and the Washington Post), as well as several other books. Pollan is in the documentary film Food, Inc. that just hit theaters this June, and this fall PBS will air a doc based on his other best-selling book, The Botany of Desire, giving us a "plant's-eye view" of the world.
Reading Selection Week 1:(July 6-12) Intro through Part 1, Ch. 6; 53 pages.
Leaping Lipids
As Mike noted yesterday, there are lots of powerful forces at work in shaping the food system - I just never imagined that large-scale experimentation would be one of them.
But look at Pollan’s chapter on the “lipid hypothesis” where he writes, “What the Soviet Union was to the ideology of Marxism, the Low-Fat Campaign is to the ideology of nutritionism - its supreme test and...its most abject failure.” Ooof.
So we changed our food supply upside down on a hunch? Should we trust public health officials or the FDA after this one? I’m sure many of us won’t (or never did), but unfortch we do need some kind of regulating body. How do we build one that’s responsible then to its most important constituents - us?
But look at Pollan’s chapter on the “lipid hypothesis” where he writes, “What the Soviet Union was to the ideology of Marxism, the Low-Fat Campaign is to the ideology of nutritionism - its supreme test and...its most abject failure.” Ooof.
So we changed our food supply upside down on a hunch? Should we trust public health officials or the FDA after this one? I’m sure many of us won’t (or never did), but unfortch we do need some kind of regulating body. How do we build one that’s responsible then to its most important constituents - us?
Submitted by alara on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 11:00pm.
The only way it would work is if there was some large panel that was made up of enough folks to represent all those forces, so all those differing viewpoints would have to somehow come to an agreement. And then there'd have to be some sort of ombudsman or Director of Common Sense to double-check it with a skeptical eye.
But even then, I dunno. I'd personally rather just assume that if I eat whole foods, cut down on processed stuff, and get some exercise, that's about as good as I can do.
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