"Edible Foodlike Substances"

I love Michael Pollan, well not love love, but really admire him and his philosophy on nutrition. Another of my favorite books is "In Defense Of Food" (an eaters manifesto). I can honestly say that this book really, fundamentally changed my thinking of food, nutrition and the nutrition business. And yes, it is a business.

According to Mr. Pollan, "the more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become". It is what he refers to as "nutritionism".  Just what is nutritionsim? I won't be able to explain it as thoroughly as Mr. Pollan, but I will give you the general idea. We've always been told to eat lots of fruit and vegetables because they are healthy for us. Nutritionist have told us that these foods are full of antioxidants such as beta-carotene, lycopene, vitamin A and others. So over the years food scientists have made supplements containing these nutrients so we can just take a pill instead of eating the foods containing them.

I'm sure you've all seen milk containing omega-3, orange juice containing added calcium and other products containing beta-carotene and lypocene. But it seems that even with all this new science, we are getting less healthy and more overweight than ever. Maybe, just maybe, is doesn't all come down to isolating the one particular nutrient.

Whose to say that the beta-carotene in a carrot, while being a powerful antioxidant, doesn't work it's magic because of the other nutrients in the carrot, whether it's the fiber, vitamin A, etc. Could the beta-carotene be destroyed in the digestive system without the other parts of the carrot to help it out? What about the omega-3 in salmon, maybe it needs the nutritional compounds in the rest of the fish to be of any value to us?

That's why Mr. Pollan urges us to eat food instead of  "edible foodlike substances".  It seems that a lot of products on the market today are "no longer the products of nature but of food science". Mr. Pollan also laments our culture of eating in the car instead of at the dinner table. And no truer words are spoken when he tells us to not eat anything if there is nothing in the ingredient list that your grandmother wouldn't recognize and if the list is more than five ingredients long. We should also avoid foods that make health claims.

This is just a small portion of what the book is about, but I think you might get the general idea. He talks about the Western Diet, why you shouldn't get your fuel from the same place your car get its fuel, try to eat with family and friends to fuel not only the body but the soul.

I'm not going to sit here and say that I can follow all of this advice all the time. But I learned a phrase from the Oprah Winfrey Show a few years ago, lean into it. While I would like to follow all these suggestions all the time, making sudden changes usually doesn't work. And when I am eating out or at someone else's home, I will eat their food and enjoy it and be thankful for it and fuel my soul with their company. But I will try to take one day, one meal at a time and "lean into" this way of thinking about food.

If you haven't read this book, I hope you will. I think you will like it and I hope, as fascinating as I did.


Kathy