Analysis Of Michael Pollan's In Defense Of Food

A bread is no longer an original bread but a mixture of chemicals. Most products out in the market are not food, and people should choose wisely on what they put in their mouth. It is important for people to eat healthy food and keep their immune system strong. People these days bought food that is cheap and available to them. They have to choices to eat healthy yet it is hard to control themselves against something that is convenient, low cost, and predictable. The article “Eat Food: Food Defined,” written by Michael Pollan, explains what kinds of food people should eat. Based on his explanations the only food are those capable of rotting, less than 5 ingrdients and with pronumbacble ingrdeients. He also said we should not go to the supermarket nor buy can food but to buy fresh food from farmer’s market. His ideas of eating food is push toward the healthy side, and it is a great start for people to understand, to learn and to progress in eating healthily.

In Michael Pollan’s essay, “The American Paradox”, Pollan argues that American’s hold falsified ideas if one is more focused on nutrition. Americans have too much going on in their head with trying to be healthy, that they do not actually become healthy. The notion that “a notably unhealthy population preoccupied with nutrition and the idea of eating healthy” (Pollan 268) is what Pollan defines as the “American paradox”. The amount of time spent focusing on healthy eating habits decreases the joy one contains. Pollan identifies many issues that contribute to what is wrong with the way Americans think about eating today. For instance, we spend too much time and money trying to be healthy, we have strayed away from the past as new inventions occurred and last being we listen to “flawed science”. Despite the fact that many may say they see positive results from focusing on nutrition and health, Americans actually receive negative outcomes from nutrition and health.

The land culture of the Ents in The Lord of the Rings differ greatly from the orcs, thus, providing readers a view of Tolkien’s perspective of agrarianism and current culture. These relationships to land correlate to modern views of the land. In the book The Good Food Revolution, the author, Will Alan, has similar views of land.

First off, in regards to a better diet, what would be considered “healthy” in the perspective of these authors? Explicitly stated by Pollan, “the most important fact about any food is not its nutritional content but its degree of processing” (Pollan 423). With this in mind, it can be determined that contrary to popular belief, how healthy something is does not depend on the nutritional facts printed on the package, but rather the amount of times the food has been processed before reaching the hands of a customer. Moreover, Pollan does not stand-alone in this belief. Zinczenko expresses that “complicating the lack of [alternative food suppliers] is the lack of information about what, exactly, we’re consuming” (Zinczenko 463).

Over the last several decades, the diet of society has been continually changing. This has resulted in different formulas for nutrition and the proper portions of foods that must be consumed. To fully understand the various arguments requires looking at numerous viewpoints. This will be accomplished by focusing on Michael Pollan's Escape from the Western Diet in contrast with Mary Maxfield's Food as thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating. These views will highlight how diet and nutrition is based upon individual opinions. This is the focus of the thesis.

He probes them to learn the what, where, and how of dinner – knowing what is going into the body, knowing where that food came from, and knowing how that food was made. By first knowing what is being consumed, people can make better informed decisions about their purchases. Nutrition, or lack thereof, is a key component in the battle against obesity. Food giants are hoping to hide the often unnecessary filler present in their products by use of dodgy claims and socially engineered advertisements. In general, most consumers probably couldn’t say where their food came from. This usually boils down to the fact that shoppers typically don’t think about it. Breaking this reliance on mass-grown foods is the second part of Pollan’s proposition. The third and equally important element is how the food is produced. More specifically, Pollan is concerned whether or not the food has been produced in a sustainable manner. Preserving the biodiversity of food, maintaining fertile land for future generations, and ensuring consumers receive food that does not compromise health are all factors of sustainability. Without informed consumers, what, where, and how will continue to be unanswered questions. Whether it is for nutritional or ethical choices, a particular food’s history is something that needs to once again become common

In the article “Escape from the Western Diet”, Michael Pollan suggest to the people that they should stop eating a western diet because western diet is also responsible for western diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and many more. In his article he said that “People eating a Western diet are prone to a complex chronic diseases that seldom strike people eating more traditional diets.” He also gave the solution of this problem by telling people to stop eating a western diet. New theories made new treatments to treat different diseases. In his point of view, if people want to escape from western diet they need to stop eating western food daily. He thinks that if people want to stay healthy they should eat food, not too much,

To address what distinguishes the food of a western diet, Pollan compares whole foods and processed foods. He quotes Gyorgy Scrinis and concludes to himself “instead of worrying about nutrients, we should simply avoid any food that has been processed to such an extent that it is more the product of industry than nature (Pollan, 438). Pollan agrees with Scrinis for avoiding processed foods, but he complicates it by mentioning that all whole foods are taken over by industrial processes. Again Pollan reminds the reader that escaping the western diet will not be simple,

There are more ways to shun obesity. Michael Pollan, who wrote “Escape from the western diet”, claims that the fast food industry is one of the main reasons why people struggle with their health. He believes that the processed food we consume gives us harmful deceases. Pollan urges us to listen to his words to avoid the western diet, he preaches that we should start eating healthier and to put more time and effort when it comes to buying food. Pollan provides us with his rules as well and claims that it will help us plot our way out of the western diet. Also, Pollan informs us that when it to the intake we tend to over eat, thus it becomes a huge threat to our health. The government has also made an attempt to put a stop to obesity by inverting an array of food options. By focusing on the main causes of obesity, Pollan overlooks the deeper problem of the lack of insufficient information, thus he leaves us with a lot of question marks .

The essay “Eat Food: Food Defined,” from Michael Pollan’s 2008 book In Defense of Food was written to address the American general public about the food industry. Pollan focuses on relatable topics as examples, such as family, common food items, and common belief that everyone wants to be healthy. The essay brings across Pollan’s point by establishing his credibility, explaining why this is important to us, and telling us how to react to the given facts. Pollan makes the readers inquire how we define food by drawing our attention to the importance of examining our food before eating it.

American food culture is not like other countries in the world; the diversity in foods and ethnicity creates its uniqueness. However, Americans mindset of “what should we have for dinner” and the poor decision making about food choices created the “omnivore’s dilemma” or what Pollan, in The Omnivore’s Dilemma calls the American national eating disorder. Pollan explored more about the food that Americans consume in “an investigation of food called the industrial food chain”(Pollan, Omnivore 110). While studying the products in supermarkets, Pollan realized that supermarkets offer a large variety of foods that contain corn, an unhealthy component, in most of its products. While Pollan is compelling claiming that American’s healthy food

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is an eye-opening analysis of the American food industry and the fear driven relationship many of us have with food. He talks in depth about all the little scientific studies, misconceptions and confusions that have gathered over the past fifty years. In the end provide us with a piece of advice that should be obvious but somehow is not, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He follows the history of nutritionism and the industrialization of food, in hopes to answer one question….. how and when "mom" ceded control of our food choices to nutritionists, food marketers and the government.

In “Nutritionism Defined”, Michael Pollan uses a metaphor to construct an argument that shows nutritionism is defined by “empires.” Pollan shows that the “empires” are at war with each other. These “empires” are “refined carbohydrates versus fiber; animal protein versus plant protein; saturated fats versus polyunsaturated fats; and province of the polyunsaturates, omega-3 fatty acids versus omega-6s” (Pollan 492). The metaphor with these empires being at war with each other is able to show the reader that in the eyes of the consumer and their bodies, the nutrients are competing with each other to be the ultimate nutrient. Although these nutrients are said to be the top nutrient empires, they are not the same for each person. Some people may not eat many foods with the leading nutrient for the majority of other people, so for some people it might not be the same. People consume nutrients each and every day,

When Pollan's states to eat food as his first rule, he means exactly that, eat real food. While this statement seems so obvious that it shouldn't need to be a rule, Pollan explains how we are trapped by the Western diet and that access to real food over highly processed food products is harder then it seems. "Taking food's place on the shelves has been an unending stream of foodlike substitutes, some seventeen thousands new ones every year"(Pollan 147). For those that don't know, the Western diet is a term coined to describe our pattern of eating, which is characterized by "lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of everything except fruits, vegetables, and whole grains"(Pollan 89). Using deductive reasoning,

When considering differences between organic and conventional foods often the first thing people comment on is the nutritional value. Organic foods have grown in popularity due to the perception that they are better nutritionally. Barbara Hey (2009), health reporter and author of the article, “A Different Health Debate: Conventional versus Organic Food” and Smith-Spangier, Crystal, et al. (2012), emphasize that the benefits of organic foods and farming are important to society. That organic food can help protect what’s most valuable to people, their health. They suggest that eating a healthy diet rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants is a good investment in preventative care. Jeff Gillman (2008) agrees and states, “ …preventing disease is much more cost effective than treating disease. Organic foods can play a vital role in keeping people healthy” (139).