PDF Summary:In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan

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With all of this at stake, why would these industries work to stabilize nutritional information or make deciding what to eat easy?

They wouldn’t. Instead, these industries have created an atmosphere that supports three prominent myths about food:

1. Nutrients are more important than food type.
2. Nutrients are complicated and require scientific explanations.
3. Eating is simply a means to a healthy body.

Through these myths, we’ve become victims of the oppressive message that science knows best when it comes to food. And we’re told that everything we need to know about what to eat can be found on dietary labels.

One problem with this mindset is that food is not merely an engine that fuels biological health. Eating is a cultural practice as much as it is an avenue toward health. Food is also meant to be enjoyed. It helps create cultural, community, and individual identity. Sharing meals strengthens family and social bonds.

These aspects are not represented by the mass-marketing of processed foods and nutrition science. Instead, they have gone by the wayside of a cultural obsession with the body. Unfortunately, this obsession hasn’t led to healthier bodies.

The...

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• In contrast, oranges and potatoes had a curative effect on the sailor’s health.

These observations led to further research, and from those efforts came vitamins. Vitamins became the new best thing in nutritional science. Deficiency conditions, like beriberi and scurvy, cleared up because of certain vitamins. Then vitamins were linked to growth and vitality. By the mid-20th century, vitamins took center stage as the answer to the question of what to eat, leaving whole foods further behind.

Cementing Nutrient-Focused Science

In the 1960s, the government sought answers to the growing health crisis in America, including the increase of killer diseases and malnutrition. The Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs was formed to research the relationship between food and health. At the head of the committee was South Dakota Senator George McGovern. For several years, scientists studied food consumption and health in America and discovered some interesting patterns.

• During World War II, meat and dairy were strictly rationed, and rates of heart disease were reduced.
• After the war, when rationing was no longer required, coronary heart disease...

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Bread and pasta manufacturers began to re-engineer their products to reduce carbs and increase protein. Low-carb breads and pastas flooded the market, some even stamped as “Atkin-friendly.” Unfortunately for vegetable and fruit farmers, there was no way to make a potato or banana low-carb. These foods became doomed under this fad.

Before 1973, a label of “imitation” would have been added to these breads and pastas. Without the label, these highly processed food-like products were consumed en masse.

Rise of the Lipid Hypothesis

With so much emphasis put on nutrients for health, you’d expect to see the healthiest population in the world. This expectation suggests that the science and policies surrounding food are sound and unquestionable, which has rarely been true. In fact, the most significant nutritionism movement of the last 30 years is based on conjecture and contributed to the current health epidemic—the lipid hypothesis.

• As a reminder, the lipid hypothesis states that fat and cholesterol, mostly from meat and dairy, lead to increased rates of heart disease. The evidence came from assumptions made about health and eating habits surrounding...

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The reluctance to see the whole from the parts is ingrained in the field of study. The general paradigm of all scientific study is to isolate a variable to add to or remove from a sample to observe the effect. But to reduce scientific assessment of food to one variable leads to false assumptions. An example of the problem with this approach is the antioxidant revolution.

The Curious Case of Antioxidants

Scientists know that there is a connection among fruits and vegetables and cancer. To determine what this connection was, they isolated the various components and discovered the benefits of antioxidants. One benefit is that antioxidants seem to occupy cell receptors so free radicals—which destroy cells and cause cancer—can’t.

The nutritionism strategy is to isolate this nutrient in supplement form to create the same benefits. But antioxidant supplements have proven ineffective in providing the same benefits. The following factors could be why:

• The antioxidant alone may not be what reduces free radicals, but rather the role of antioxidants in the whole food.
• How the antioxidant-rich food is digested could improve antioxidant absorption.
• An...

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The results revealed that the negative health outcomes experienced by western populations could be reduced by changes in diet. The beauty of O’Dea’s study was her lack of focus on nutrients. She didn’t break down the nutrients in the foods the Aborigines ate. She focused, rather, on their overall dietary patterns.

The focus on dietary patterns makes it difficult to pin down exactly what needs to change in the Western diet, but it raises a lot of questions about whole foods and health. These questions are more important than ever:

• Two-thirds of Americans are obese.
• One-fourth have metabolic syndrome.
• Approximately 54 million people are pre-diabetic.
• Type 2 diabetes has increased by 4% since 1990 (about 20 million people).

But if this information was known in 1982, why are we still stuck in the Western diet culture?

Western Denial

Most nutritional studies focus on nutrients, not foods or dietary patterns. But these are two of the most important factors to consider if a shift in nutrition and health can happen. Almost every nutritional study, from the Nurses’ study to the Women’s Health Initiative, fails to address the main staples of the...

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This example shows just how far removed we’ve become from our natural relationships with food in the Western diet. How did this relationship become so rocky? Five shifts in nutrition are responsible for the movement away from nature and toward the modern diet.

Shift #1: The Rise of Refined Foods

The advent of refined carbohydrates is one of the most fundamental changes in the history of food and one of the most damaging to the human body. Refined grains, rice, and sugar have many benefits, but none of them involve health. In fact, refined foods are almost empty of nutritional value without fortification and lead to massive influxes of glucose and fructose in the body. So why do we eat so much of them? Part of the answer is history.

Grains

Before the Industrial Revolution, grains were stone ground in small batches by mills run on water power. The flour was yellowish and pungent. The grinders could remove the bran from wheat but not the germ. When the germ was crushed, it released an oil, which created the color and smell. The oil also oxidized quickly, making the shelf life of the flour short.

When steel, iron, and porcelain rollers were invented, they were...

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What Is the Solution?

It seems like the obvious answer is “don’t eat the Western diet,” but that advice is not as simple as it sounds. Our culture is deeply embedded in the Western diet and nutritionism ideology, and many of us don’t live in environments where returning to ancestral traditions is truly possible. Whole foods are not what they used to be. The beef you eat is not the beef your ancestors ate.

• Your beef was likely raised in a stockyard and fed the Western diet.
• Hormones, antibiotics, and industrial waste and chemicals were likely introduced.
• The soil used to grow the corn or grain the cows eat was likely fertilized with industrial-grade fertilizers.

Although a whole food, this product has been adulterated by industry and has less nutritional value than before. Does this beef count as a whole food? Perhaps not. This brings up one of the main issues you’ll find in the following advice on how to shift your eating away from the Western diet. How a food is produced is just as important as what the food is and how you eat it.

The guidance that follows attempts to provide a new way of thinking about food that focuses on the food chain and...

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Furthermore, these foods are not merely adulterated to improve shelf life. They are geared to tempt the brain and body with salt, fat, and sugar, which the body needs certain amounts of to survive. In the natural environment, the avenues for these substances are narrow, and they are accompanied by water, fiber, and complex nutrient structures that help break them down. But industry adds salt, fat, and sugar to get you to eat more, hence buy more, without the added buffers. So you’re eating more and gaining nothing in return.

Some processed foods are so cleverly designed that even great-grandma might be fooled. Foods like bread look like bread despite being heavily processed. But because of the reversal of the imitation law, manufacturers are not required to label them as such, which leads us to the next rule.

Rule #2: Don’t Eat Foods with Complicated Ingredients

Basically, foods with unfamiliar or unpronounceable ingredients, more than five ingredients, or high-fructose corn syrup as an ingredient should be avoided. When these aspects are present, it’s a good bet the food is not real food.

When you make bread at home, you use flour, water, yeast, and a pinch of...

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However, the large plant-based diet of your ancestors contained so much vitamin C, the body had no need to continue producing its own. This ability was weeded out through evolution and made humans dependent on plants to receive these vital nutrients. This is one of the main reasons they are so good for you.

There are various other benefits humans get from plants. Vegetarians tend to be healthier and live longer. Plants also have fewer energy properties, hence, fewer calories. And unlike meat, which you don’t need to survive, you do need plants to survive. Still, meat does provide some essential amino acids, so a diet including small portions of meat is not necessarily a bad thing.

The problem with meat comes from the way we consume it and the way it is processed. The large portions of meat as main courses is extreme, and industrialized meat is not good. Meat sits at the top of the food chain, so it has the distinction of soaking up all the nutrients—and toxins—running up that chain. Thus, meat is the pinnacle evidence for why the health of the food chain is so important, which relates to the second rule.

Rule #2: You Are Not Just Eating What You Eat

As...

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More expensive food is often so because it has required more care and energy to produce, rather than being mass-produced in factories, stockyards, or single-crop farms. These foods are better for you because of a lack of toxins or improved nutritional quality. Also, you’re more likely to eat less food when it costs more.

The lure of high-calorie products is their cheap price and convenience. This food is easy to eat and requires little effort to prepare or clean-up thanks to the invention of the microwave. These factors cause people to eat more. If we had to make our own junk food, such as baking our own hostess cakes or frying our own potato chips, we would eat less. You’ll eat less food if it is more expensive and requires more effort to prepare.

The advice to “eat less” is not part of the American vocabulary and hasn’t been since McGovern’s revisions of the dietary guidelines in the 1970s. The culture is inundated with cheap calories, and no aspect of our eating customs points away from indulging, like in other cultures. For instance, second portions are taboo in France. In Okinawa, Japan, a region boasting some of the oldest and healthiest people, they eat following...