I love Michael Pollan’s no nonsense, commonsense advice. If you haven’t read his books In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, then you must get onto to them. Now. Because being the mindful foodie that you are, I’m sure you would love what he has to say — which he does in such an engaging way. Whether you’re reading his words or hearing him speak.
Speaking of which, I was very fortunate to attend his talk in Melbourne last Sunday. (Thank you to the Wheeler Centre for making this possible).
He started his talk with some ‘groceries’ he had bought from one of our big two supermarket chains. I must say he has a penchant pulling apart commercial cereals as well as yoghurt. Let’s just say that Michael identified many major Aussie food products as ‘edible food-like substances’ — he refuses to call them food. Which, I agree, they are not.
By the way, did you know that commercial, low-fat flavoured yogurt has the same, if not more, sugar per unit than coca cola?
But, thanks to TV ads, people think this type of yoghurt is a health food, right? That couldn’t be further from the truth.
That and much more straightforward advice was delivered throughout Michael’s talk. Here’s a snapshot —
- In the supermarket (and on TV), food is loud — it’s ‘screaming’ health claims at us. The real food is silent — there are no health claims on an apple, are there?
- You don’t need to know what an oxidant is to eat healthily —just eat your colours in fruits and vegetables, not cereal (e.g. fruit loops!).
- Don’t eat food that won’t rot. Food is a living thing, and will eventually die.
(Get his food rules book for more insights — there are over 60 rules!)
It’s such a shame that we need to these kind of rules to know how to eat. It just shows that we’ve lost our basic knowledge and intuition when it comes to food, and the hold the food industry has on the community. It’s no wonder we are confused!
All this confusion is making us sick. Why?
Michael puts it down to too much nutrition talk. He says (these are not quotes but a sum-up of his points, with my thoughts in brackets) —
In the Western world we are obsessed with nutrients and ‘nutritional science’.
Where else in life do you need so much science to get through the day? When you focus on nutrients you rely on experts to tell you how to eat. And is becomes all about steering away from bad nutrients and eating only good nutrients. (When we go mad for a good ingredient, all we want to do is pull it out of the food and eat it in copious amounts — that, in itself, is not healthy in my opinion).
But food is much bigger than health — we also eat for taste, sense of community, conviviality and identity.
Besides, nutritionalism is an unhealthy way to talk about food. Talking about nutrients is just a great way to sell food — because that way food manufactures can ignore the bad stuff and highlight or tweak other ingredients to sell processed foods.
We are ignoring the elephant in the room when we only talk nutrients — this way of eating is killing us.
For example by demonising fat in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s we ended up with margarine and a whole lot of low fat processed goods on the supermarket shelves (which are still there, by the way). It gave a ‘free pass’ to eat and drink as much as you want because it was low fat.
But instead we became fat.
It’s really hard to study food – it’s extremely complex. It’s not like studying pharmaceuticals. “There’s no placebo for broccoli.” Many food studies rely on surveying people (epidemiological surveillance type studies). There are no tight controls and it’s easy for people to forget what they eat or even lie on the survey. So the data has problems.
Nutritional ‘science’ is a young science “it’s where surgery was in the 1650s”.
So what facts do we know about food?
- Every time we remove a nutrient — so that we can just consume the nutrient — it doesn’t work like it should, as it does in the whole food.
- Populations that eat a Western diet (that is, processed foods) have a high prevalence of chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes. (These are diseases of the West.)
- Populations that eat traditional diets, rarely get chronic diseases.
- People who get off the Western diet revert the markers of chronic diseases — which means they get better or totally heal themselves.
In the next 10 years, 1 in 3 kids will develop type 2 diabetes — unless we change the way we eat.
The best way to take control of our food — away from corporations — is to cook at home.
So Michael’s main message is this:
Get off the Western diet.
The Western diet is about profit. Not health. It’s not food.
In other words, eat (real) food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (sound familiar?)
Lesh Karan 
Great blog article!
Great recap Lesh – it was a brilliant talk 🙂
Hi Lesh, I found this post about Mike Pollan’s talk vey inspiring. It was a nice reminder to eat whole, clean and real foods, and to not complicate my choices. With kids, it’s a little harder to do this all the time, but I am re-motivated to make it ‘most-of-the-time’. Thanks, Birgit.
Great post! It sounds like it was an inspiring talk and it’s made me want to read those books now even more! I totally agree with his philosophy and this post just brought it home even more 🙂
great article! I am a big fan of michael pollan after reading “The omnivore’s Dilemma”. If you havent read it, I would highly recommend it to you to do so! its a great book- i was serisously reading it with a highlighter in my hand and underlining all the points he made in his “story”.
Its so true that food and health has become so scientific. It should be simple and accessible. The problem is though that most people do not even know what a simple food is and how to eat it!??! I remember reading about an American study where kids had to taste fruit and vegetable with their eyes closed. More than half couldnt recognize the apple that they were eating! shocking!
I support everything that everything in this article, and it makes me upset and frustrated that the government and companies are willing to put millions of people’s health at risk so they can make a profit. It’s so inhumane!
Hey Lisa, it is frustrating. All we can do as consumers is vote with our dollar by shopping at farmer’s markets or buying from the farmer direct in other ways (e.g. veggie box delivery) etc. Things are changing slowly since people are becoming more aware, thanks to leaders like Michael Pollan. While we may not see large changes in our time, I think they will definitely happen, as the world can’t sustain the way we are eating – both from a health and resource point of view.
There is nothing worse than watching someone you love eat “healthfully” in front of you, when the food they are consuming is loaded with sugar (or, “sugar”) and other garbage. Also, when are grocery stores going to offer coupons/discount incentives for wholesome food like real produce? That would make me a loyal shopper anywhere. Thanks for helping bring attn to this. PS — I would love to hear Michael Pollan speak! So cool!
Yes! That’ll be the day when real foods are subsidised and fake ones aren’t. Hopefully. One day.
[…] group most crackers into the rubbish, processed food camp. Unless they’re made of whole food ingredients — something like this for example — […]
Reblogged this on haveturtlewilltravel and commented:
Awesome article. Once again, we have lost the forest for the trees. It REALLY is about WHAT you eat and WHERE it comes from when it comes to your health. It’s a matter of simplifying everything we all do to the basics, but that is so hard for so many to grasp. Health does not have to be complicated. Eat. Real. Food.
[…] foods sold to us. And then companies who make these processed foods tell us a whole bunch of misleading nutrition talk to brainwash convince us their product is the best for our health — when this couldn’t be […]
[…] Key to Healing Through Nutrition (over three years ago now), I’ve been avoiding pro-inflammatory food-like substances. (Important note – I don’t feel deprived because I can either make my own version with real […]