Michael Pollen clearly states his opinion on food in his book, In Defense of Food. He starts out by saying to “Eat food” and elaborates on this idea early on in the book. By food, Pollan simply means to eat real, healthy food. He brings us years back to when our food choices were solely influenced from what our parents, and what their parents made for dinner. Pollan argues that official scientific opinion is the reason why this food was driven away from our dinner tables. Scientists came out with evidence that allow them to link certain nutrients to positively or negatively increase some diseases. According to Pollan, these scientists focused solely on the nutrients and do not know enough about the other factors that may have an influence in the food. This overlooking of other factors lead food industries to focus more on the addition or subtraction of healthy nutrients instead of producing overall healthy food. He elaborates on this subject by explaining how our quality of food has decreased since the rise of “nutritionism.”
I agree with Pollan when he talks about eating real, whole foods. It is obvious that a piece of fruit is a better snack than a granola bar, even if the granola bar has the healthy nutrients that we are supposed to eat. History can prove the significance of healthy, whole foods as Michael Pollan pans out in the book. I came across the blog Nutrition Thoughts http://nutritionthoughts.blogspot.com which talks about dietary imbalance, and how it affects one’s lifespan.
