Joanne of joanneunleashed-dot-com 2010-03-14
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Having enjoyed Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, I looked forward to reading In Defense of Food, but was ultimately disappointed. The bulk of the book is a florid history of nutritional science's focus on isolated nutrients--nutritionalism--and how the food manufacturing industry takes advantage of scientific findings in both the development and marketing of their products. But the writing style that worked so well in the Omnivore's Dilemma was far too clever in this book for my tastes.
Pollan writes: "In the case of nutritionalism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. Put another way: Foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts." As an example of nutritionism hard at work, saturated fats got a bad rap by Ansel Keys, and so vegetable oil producers capitalized on his findings by promoting polyunsaturated oils, and margarine was touted as preferable to butter. Then when hydrogenation and trans fat took a hit, margarine manufacturers changed their labels to boldly proclaim "NO trans fats." Unfortunately, margin is not a real food. It's a concocted spread.
By capitalizing on science's love for reductionism by isolating nutritional elements from the whole foods package in which they originate, food manufacturers convince us that their highly-processed and nutrient-poor products are "heart healthy," "rich in omega 3s," "contain zero trans fats," "provide daily fiber requirements," or "contain no cholesterol."
It is important to know how we got where we are in our understanding of nutrition if we are to make wise decisions about what to eat. Too many people are informed on diet by slick marketing with little knowledge of real science, and even scientists cannot agree with each other. One report claims saturated fats are bad, another claims they are healthy. How does the average reader and health seeker decide who is right? Pollan feels qualified to advise us on these points. But while he includes the research of some great health educators such as Weston Price and Gary Taubes, he seemingly ignores their contributions when he makes his dietary recommendation of: Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.
Pollan's advice to stick to whole foods--those found along the periphery of the supermarket--is sound, as is his advice to buy directly from the farmer, avoid foods your great grandmother wouldn't recognize, eat slowly and savor your meals at the table with friends or family, grow your own food when possible, eat meat from animals that eat food they were designed to, eat less, etc. (After all that he feels the need to inform readers not to eat at gas stations or avoid foods with health claims on the packaging.) This is all pretty typical advice spurred by the agricultural sustainability movement, but it doesn't really get down to what foods will actually sustain us.
Pollan rightly steers people away from grains and toward eating leaves. But the reason people eat grains is because they were told that saturated fats and cholesterol found in meat will kill them, and grains have a high starch content (as well as opiates), which provides calories for fuel. There just isn't enough fuel in greens. Pollan suggests that eating plants will cause you to eat less. (In actual practice, you might end up gorging on ice cream at the end of the day. Even raw food vegans bulk up on fat by eating large quantities of seeds and nuts.) But then he grants an exception to unrefined grains because their starch content provides needed calories. He fails to give weight to the fact that since the inception of agriculture humans have grown sicker, weaker, and shorter and many people get very sick on certain grains. My own health was immeasurably improved when I gave up gluten-containing grains.
Pollan's advice to eat less is sound, but people naturally eat less when their nutritional and fuel needs are met. As an example, Pollan credits the health of the French to their small portions, leisurely meals, and consumption of wine while seeming to discount the fact that the French eat a LOT of saturated fat, something he concedes elsewhere in the book. Anyone who's eaten a high-fat diet knows how satiating fat is. And low-carb diets work for weight loss precisely because consuming fat and protein provide dense nutrition and sufficient, sustainable fuel, so you end up eating less without hunger. Have a pork chop for breakfast and you can last until dinner; eat a bowl of cereal and you'll be hungry within a few hours.
Yes, he makes suggestions on which meats to eat, but doesn't provide any advice as to why eating meat might be beneficial. Instead, he writes: "Unlike plants, which we can't live without, we don't need to eat meat--with the exception of vitamin B12, every nutrient found in meat can be obtained somewhere else. (And the tiny amount of B12 we need it not too hard to come by; it's found in all animals foods and is produced by bacteria, so you obtain B12 from eating dirty or decaying or fermented produce.)" The Innuit and Masai seem to do fine with a diet very low in plants, and I've yet to read of a culture that is purely vegetarian.
Another common flaw is claiming vegetarian diets are healthier (than meat eating diets is the clear implication). Yes, when you compare them to the standard American diet they are. But where are the studies comparing the vegetarian diet to, say, a paleolithic diet or a diet of whole foods dominated by pasture-raised meats and fats? Frankly, any diet will come out ahead compared to a diet of pizza, pasta, bread, fast food, and beer. Our great grandmothers cooked with lard and tallow. Why didn't they get an honorable mention?
This book is okay if you want a verbose accounting of the history of nutritional science, and Pollan does cover a lot of ground. Serious disconnects occur between the science Pollan writes about in the first two-thirds of the book and the dietary recommendations in the last third. I don't recommend it for dietary advice. If you'd like to learn about better choices in the food you currently eat, I recommend The Real Food Revival, which will provide nonpreachy information on healthier and more sustainable options. For nutritional advice I recommend Primal Body-Primal Mind: Empower Your Total Health The Way Evolution Intended (...And Didn't) or the encouraging The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy.
