1C Summer 2010: In Defense of Food: Lessons 1 and 2 on One Post

One. Reading Questions:

 

1. Contrary to the complicated edicts of nutritionism, what simple edict of eating should we follow? 1: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This has become a famous mantra. The problem is what constitutes “food.” Not so simple in this age of nutritionism.

2. Why should you avoid products that make health claims? 2. For 3 reasons: The claims are most likely false. The cost of any such food product is inflated. The product is more of a product than it is food.

3. On page 3, Pollan says there was an eating cultural shift that was to our detriment. What was this shift? Two big shifts: Mother was no longer the cook. She lost her authority to the scientists who have intruded upon our eating with nutritionism. The second shift, related to nutritionism, is the Big Lie of nutrition, which is that a low-fat diet is essential to a healthy heart and overall good health. Americans actually gained weight while incorporating this lie because in the absence of fat, they bulked up on sugar, processed starch, and carbohydrates, which convert into fat and triglycerides, which cause obesity and heart disease. Also see page 7. The low-fat trend was unhealthy.

4. What is driving such relentless change in our eating? See page 4. The 32-billion-dollar food marketing business constantly must mix things up, have new things, just like Apple has to launch a new iPhone or iMac every year or so. You must peddle new stuff, make the old stuff seem obsolete, so you create the need for new food science, most of which is bogus. These processed foods based on phony food science have a higher profit margin than real food like a potato or a banana.

5. How flawed has science been in influencing our diet? See pages 4-5. New studies keep coming out that contradict the previous studies. Fiber is better, but then it’s not. Low-fat is better, but then it’s not. All of these contradictions, confusions, and anxieties are linked to Nutritionism.

6. What is the Dark Age of Nutritionism? It’s a sick cocktail of the greedy food industry, fake nutrition science, and lousy, mainstream journalism. Let’s call this cocktail the Conspiracy of Scientific Complexity. Nutrients won out over foods. See page 26.

7. What is Pollan’s central aim? 7 To reclaim our health and happiness as eaters. And to do this we must extirpate ourselves from Nutritionism, which is both unwittingly and deliberately confusing and focus on real food again.

8. Pollan writes that a lot of food we eat is not food at all. Explain. We eat Pringles instead of potatoes. We eat banana chips instead of bananas. We eat processed soybean oil instead of butter.

 9. How have we become a culture that “eats” to a culture that “feeds”? 7. We’ve lost the joy of eating real food. In real food’s place, we eat processed food that is measured by some phony barometer of nutritional value, which is soon to be contradicted by the nutritionists. We eat and celebrate real food. We feed on nutritional components. Some people’s diet is a series of nutritional components, but as we shall see these isolated components do not interact with the body for optimum health.

10. How is eating “scientifically” a sham that degrades the human spirit and body? 8 We’ve become a nation of orthorexics, obsessed with the myth of food purity and extra strength nutrition through supplements and processed foods. Such obsessions, always worrying about nutrition, the author speculates (and I agree) retard our happiness and make us slaves to the Industrial Food Complex. One worry we should have is the Western Diet, full of cheap processed carbs and sugars, which kills.

11. Contrast the French paradox with the American paradox. 9. The French enjoy moderate portions of fat-rich food and don’t get fat. They don’t obsess over what they eat. In contrast, Americans obsess over their nutrition and binge and purge and eat in all sorts of extreme ways, including crash diets, and they are fatter and unhappier than the French.

Part Two. The Characteristics of Nutritionism

1. We switch from eating food to eating nutrients. This kills the joy of eating and we become feeders, not eaters.

 2. Nutritionism promoted the lipid hypothesis in 1977 and it made us follow the wrong path. The theory is that a diet high in saturated animal fat leads to heart disease. It became the unquestioned dogma (belief system) embraced by the American Heart Association. The theory is only partly right. This high animal-fat diet is dangerous when it’s part of the Western processed diet lacking in vegetables. But as Weston Price discovered, cultures who eat animals are very healthy, but their diet is Paleo or hunter oriented.

3. Nutritionism is not a science. It is an ideology that joylessly places nutrients ahead of food. It is, Pollan argues, a flawed and dangerous ideology.

4. Nutritionism offers a way of life through unexamined assumptions. (Reminds me of Mother Culture in the novel Ishmael). The ideology is to break food down into is parts or nutrients. The “priesthood” who can interpret these nutrients are the scientists and nutritionists. Nutritionism fanatically reduces eating to “promoting health” to the exclusion of pleasure and culture. In the context of the French paradox, nutritionism isn’t even good for you.

5. The Good/Bad Theory of Nutritionism: For every good nutrient is a bad one. As a result macronutrients are always at war. Protein vs. carbs, for example. Or refined carbs vs. fiber. Another huge flaw: Nutritionists focus too much on nutrients while forgetting how to judge the foods themselves. Baby formula and margarine are putrid examples of the failure of nutritionism.

6. Nutritionism is the official ideology of the Food and Drug Administration and the American Heart Association. Pathetic.

 7. Nutritionism is beholden to the various food industries. For example, politicians cannot focus on telling people to eat less meat, just less nutrients. Therefore, nutritionism if focused on nutrients, not food. See page 24.

8. Nutritionism embraced chemicals, not food. So the language of Nutritionism is chemical-based: polyunsaturated, beta-carotene, antioxidants, probiotics, etc. This emphasized processed food and food companies could “fortify” these chemicals into the processed food and charge us more money and make higher profits even though these processed foods make us LESS healthy because our bodies don’t interact with fortified processed foods and isolated chemicals. We interact healthily with whole food, real foods.

9. Nutritionists, blinded by their ideology, make the woeful and egregious mistake of reducing food into nutrients rather than looking at foods as a whole entity.

10. The joyless puritanical Nutritionists ignore and disdain the role of pleasure in eating. We digest and assimilate food better when we ENJOY it. Hello.

11. One salient example of the arrogance and failure of Nutritionism: their production of “baby formula,” which is an inferior substitute for breast milk. See page 32.

12. One of the most enduring, inferior products of Nutritionism: Margarine.

 13. Why did Americans grow fatter during the Era of Fake Low-Fat or Fake Nonfat Products? We overate our “whole-grain” Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms and other crap. 35-40.

14. What was the Coming Out Party for nutritionists? Oat bran, 1988. See 37. Now new studies show that all those oat bran claims were exaggerated and outright false.

 15. How were animals affected by nutritionism? See 37: leaner, often unhealthier versions.

16. How did the Atkins diet affect carb foods in terms of processing? 38

17. Why have pomegranates, avocadoes, and bananas, to name a few foods, been spared processing and tinkering by the nutritionists? 38, 39. You can’t stick a health claim on a piece of fruit like you can a tub of margarine or a box of cereal.

 

Part Three. Some Real Food You Should Include in Your Diet, Sometimes Called “Super Foods” (not a complete list):

1.  Salmon

2.  Blueberries

3.  Almonds

4.  Walnuts

5.  Lentils

6.  Beans

7.  Tomatoes

8.  Oranges

9.  Oats

10.               Broccoli

11.               Spinach

12.               Dark greens

13.               Pomegranate

14.               Hot peppers

15.               Yams

 

Part Four. Journal Entry

What percentage of the food do you eat is processed and what percentage is real food? What obstacles prevent you from eating more real food and eating less processed food?

ESSAY OPTIONS:

One. Based on Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food

 

In your first 1.5 pages, define “Nutritionism” and evaluate its dangers and fallacies. Then in another 1.5 pages, define and evaluate the dangers and fallacies of  the Western Diet. In another page, define the idea of “food literacy.” Then in two pages, critique your eating habits in the context of Michael Pollan’s “manifesto” and what it means to be “food literate.” In your final page, describe a meal you make for yourself that you can defend based on the criteria prescribed in Pollan’s “Eater’s Manifesto.”

 

You will need a Works Cited page that cites Pollan, my blog, any recipes you may have to consult for your “defended meal,” and any other source material. Remember: Give your essay a catchy, salient, memorable title.

Two. Open-Ended Option for In Defense of Food:

Analyze the dangers of "Nutritionism" in the context of Pollan's book. Same research methods apply. 

In Defense of Food Lesson #2: The Dangers of Nutritionism and the American Tendency Toward Overeating

Introductory Lexicon:

1. lipid hypothesis: The idea that foods rich in cholesterol spike cholesterol in the blood resulting in plaque build-up in the arteries, which in turn "clog the heart" and result in heart attacks. This idea is NOT scientific. As Donald G. McNeil writes in the New York Times, his plus 300 cholesterol only scored an 11 (400 is the danger mark) in a plague test done on a coronary angiogram. Further, some lipid fats are necessary for absorbing protein and for ultimate brain activity. Your brain craves lipid or saturated fats for a good reason. 

2. dogma: The "teachings" of the scientific authority, which goes unquestioned by the underlings, the younger scientists, those who know that if they question the dogma, no matter how wrong it is, their careers will be squashed like bugs. 

3. groupthink: you compromise your critical, individual thinking skills to conform to the group's prevailing views and opinions so that you fit in with the group rather than seek the truth. 

4. save-your-butt and make-money science: Never assume R&D (research and development) searches for truth and the improvement of society. Decisions are based on two things, self-promotion and funding. Take an example of bacterial research. No money in antibiotics because you only take the drug for a week or so. In contrast, cholesterol drugs are taken until you die. Which drug gets funded more? Which drug is more urgently needed? So don't be naive and say you're going into medical R&D to help the world. In reality, you're a slave to forces you can't control. 

5. trans fats: processed vegetable fats that your body can NEVER get rid of. Equally as bad, trans fats took the place of animal fats, which are needed for brain function and protein assimilation. 

6. nutritional reductionism: good definition from American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

The approach of looking at individual nutrients rather than the food as a whole, and the entire lifestyle. Reductionism stimulates the 500 billion-dollar supplement industry. 

7. Placebo Effect and the need for control studies in the face of nutitritionism claims: If you tell people they will enjoy improved health from taking supplement or food X, they will feel better because of the placebo effect.

8. Consumer gullibility based on failure to discern causation from correlation. You take a supplement and "feel better" after catching a cold, but you would have felt better anyway. That's correlation, not causation. 

9. The Western Diet: an abundance of addicting refined carbohydrates and sugars that convert into triglycerides, which convert into fat and clog the arteries.  

10. The rise of corn syrup. As Americans ate less lipids, they ate cheaper forms of sugar, corn syrup, which can not be broken down in the liver without harming the body. 

Part One. The Dangers of Nutritionism

1. What has happened to Americans’ health as nutritionism has grown and grown? See page 40.

2. What is the driving force behind nutritionism? See page 40. The lipid hypothesis. We ate less animal fats and more vegetable-based trans fats, which are even worse. New data shows that the argument for a low-fat diet has been wrong. Eating less fat, people eat more carbs, which makes them even more fat. Fat fills us up. Carbs don’t. Carbs make you more hungry. The appetites become inflamed on a low-fat, high-carb, high-sugar diet. See page 59: Refined carbs interfere with insulin metabolism in ways that stimulate hunger, promote overeating, and fat storage in the body. This results in obesity and diabetes.

 

3. Gary Taubes is quoted from Good Calories, Bad Calories in which he shows there is no science behind the lipid hypothesis, which is nothing more than an ideology, the "beliefs" of a few powerful scientists.

 

4. Without scientific evidence and with consensus upholding bogus nutrition recommendations, we can blame groupthink, the phenomenon in which the group compromises critical thinking and in fact is frightened to voice opposition because conformity to the group is the first priority. Nutritionism rests upon groupthink. Consensus based on conformity, not scientific rigor. People “saving their butts” by conforming to the system rather than voicing intelligence and critical thinking. Not just nutritionism, but educational standards in the public school system are created the same way. Business people, lobbyists, and administrators, not educators, lay down the “standards” that are not based on sound research or experience but based on groupthink.

 

5. As Americans followed the bogus low-fat recommendations after World War II, heart attacks went up. Animal fat intake went down from 84 pounds to 71 pounds per capita and this resulted in increased heart attacks. More trans fats were consumed. All of this was recommended by nutritionism.

 

6. Nutritionism made a huge error in making a simple link between fat intake and increased cholesterol. Causation is not so simple. Against nutritionism, real science shows that fat is needed to absorb essential vitamins.

 

7. In Chapter 6, Pollan chronicles how as Americans obeyed the rules of Nutritionism they got fatter and fatter. While eating less fat, they ate more sugar, corn syrup and low-fat Snackwell’s cookies. In 1977, fat was 42% of total calories. In 1995 fat was down to 34% of total calories. But the TOTAL CONSUMPTION  OF FAT DID NOT DECREASE. WE JUST ATE MORE OF EVERYTHING. By following the dogma of “eat more low-fat” foods,” Americans just ate more of everything else and got fatter. 

 

8. One of the evils of Nutritionism, we read at the end of Chapter 5, is that disgusting processed foods can be injected with nutrients (polyunsaturated fats, “whole-grain”) and be marketed as healthy food. Rubbish.

 

9. One of the key characteristics of Nutritionism, we read in Chapter 9 (Bad Science) is that it embraces scientific reductionism, breaking down food into nutrient components rather than looking at the food as a whole and how that whole interacts with the human body. This reductionism is partly a result of groupthink. For example, reductionism says ingest lots of the anti-oxidant beta-carotene, but the body doesn’t assimilate beta-carotene when it’s isolated in a pill or injected into some processed food. We need to eat it from the original plant to assimilate it. See page 64.

 

10. Too much of Nutritionism is based on the Placebo Effect. One third of Americans are “responders.” They respond to any new program because they think they’ll improve. But this change isn’t based on science. See page 69.

 

11. One of the Great Lies of Nutritionism, we read on page 71, is that lifestyle choices determine our health. Wrong. Social class does. The poor get fatter and die younger for many reasons.

 

Part Two. The Causes Behind Americans’ Tendency Toward Overeating

 

1. The sheer abundance of food makes Americans eat in a perfunctory, mindless way. Eating slop. Not really eating but feeding. The difference between being human and animal.

 

2. Our religious, puritanical history makes us suspicious of eating pleasure. We are more comfortable equating eating with nutrition. We escape our repression and become gluttons.

 

3. Low-fat, high-carb, high-sugar foods marketed as healthy allowed us to eat like pigs and feel okay about it.

 

4. We have a history of being gullible to food faddism all the way back to quacks John Harvey Kellogg, Horace Fletcher the Masticator and other charlatans. See page 56.

 

Part Three. Review of Nutritionism from Diet Blog.

Nutritionism: What Is It and Why Is It Ruining Our Diet?

Part Four. Qualities of an Eater and a Feeder

The eater is engaging in

1. social interaction

2. bonding

3. the making of culture

4. slow appreciation of fresh ingredients

5. savoring food means actually thoroughly chewing your food

A feeder

1. eats in a rush, perhaps in the car.

2. does not chew, but inhales food, resulting in dyspepsia.

3. eats in darkness or even a closet in a state of shame.

4. consumes food mindlessly like an animal.

5. consumes food alone to be anti-social like a partitioned restaurant with TVs in every booth.