Michael Pollan versus nutritionism 31 January 2007 12:40 am
Posted by Tracy in : vegan, news, health, Morning Glory, Michael Pollan, vegetarian, eating, books, Marion Nestle, cooking , trackbackIt’s not all monkeys and “check out my job application” and what I had for dinner here at TracyFood, I promise (although, dear readers, if you could think good thoughts for me when I interview with Morning Glory this afternoon at 4:15, that would be all right). Sometimes I write about food stuff in the news. As I mentioned on Monday, the cover story on the most recent Sunday New York Times Magazine is an article by Michael Pollan called “Unhappy Meals.” It’s a fun read, all about the dietary confusion he called a “national eating disorder” in the introduction to his 2006 book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Only there’s a new twist. According to Pollan, you see, one of the reasons for the rise of said eating disorder (although he never calls it that in the new Times piece) is a phenomenon he calls “nutritionism” — excessive, reductionistic concern about the nutrients that may or may not be in a food, above and beyond all its other culinary, gastronomic, or even health properties. I won’t deny that the nutritionistic mindset drives me insane, and as a natural foods store customer service burnout, I’m thrilled that we can now label it with a catchy word ending in -ism for those all-important social stigma purposes. BUT.
As I wrote when I had only just started reading the article, nutritionism is a problem of relatively privileged people — folks who have such consistent (perhaps even excessive) access to enough nutritionally adequate calories that they can worry their pretty (or possibly in danger of no longer being considered pretty due to obesity) heads about the finer details of the nutritional content of what they eat. To put things in perspective, the obese and overweight segment of this privileged population are roughly equal in number to the chronically malnourished or undernourished population of the world, and that’s a relatively new historical phenomenon, one that many privileged types (and yes, I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m one of them) are freaking out about. Bigtime. But I digress.
Pollan takes until Page 5 page of a 12-page article to even indirectly mention the economics of nutritionism, when he mentions correlations between affluence and health among vitamin supplement consumers, but at least he gets around to it eventually. More to his credit, he returns to the subject again later, and his conclusion features a list of suggestions for how privileged food consumers can avoid the pitfalls of nutritionism and use their socioeconomic power to support healthier food for everyone, although of course I’m putting it in much more radical anarcho-hippie terms. Which might be why I write rants on the InterWeb, and Pollan’s piece, with its annoying-to-me subtle assumptions of being read by the privileged sorts I mentioned earlier, is perfect for the Times magazine (not that I’m envious or anything).
With that criticism out of the way, there’s a lot of good stuff in the article, even if (again, as I mentioned Monday) it’s a lot of review for anyone who’s read Pollan’s latest book or digs on the works of Marion Nestle, who is quoted in the article, which is worth at least a dozen points as far as I’m concerned. He provides catchy soundbite phrases that summarize some pretty epic dietary changes: from whole foods to refined, from complexity to simplicity (same as the first, only on a more macro level), from leaves to seeds (the discussion of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids went on for a bit too long kinda lost me here, and I’m afraid it’s kind of detail that will distract some readers into thinking about fish oil supplements instead of the big picture, which Pollan nicely describes as food as process instead of object), and from food culture to food science. I really liked his list of rules for avoiding nutritionism, which I will copy/paraphrase as follows:
- Eat food.
- Avoid foods with health claims, because they’re probably over-processed.
- Especially avoid products with unfamiliar, unpronounceable, or uncountable ingredients — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup (that last of course for anybody who hasn’t read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which was enough to turn me off the stuff whenever possible).
- Shop farmer’s markets instead of supermarkets whenever you can. (Or sign up for a farmshare or CSA!)
- Pay more, eat less. (See how that’s all short and catchy and not full of my bombastic socioeconomic rhetoric?)
- Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
- Let culture be your guide, not science.
- Cook, and if you can, garden. (Learn all about the process of food, in other words.)
- Eat diversely: try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet.
In these guidelines and throughout the article, Pollan makes a persuasive case for a plant-centered (”flexitarian”) diet, while mostly avoiding much discussion of vegetarianism or the “way too hardcore for mainstream U.S. consumers” plant-based veganism. I can’t decide if I was weirded out by this or not: every now and then I forget that I live in a town that’s incredibly friendly to vegetarians and vegans, and it’s good to get the occasional reminder that Eugene is the exception rather than the rule. Or maybe I’m just confused to agreeing with the article: I’m certainly not hardcore enough to commit to vegetarianism, let alone veganism, and I’m not sure I want to be, but I am increasingly picky about consuming only animal products that conform to my ever-more-idealistic standards of animal husbandry, labor practices, and environmental stewardship (and oh lady is justifying my pickinesses ever a recurring theme of TracyFood, but I digress).
Another subtle recurring theme of the article and guidelines is that good food is worth your time and effort as well as possible extra expenses, and I am on that idea like too many words on the nutrition facts label of a vitamin-fortified energy drink (ew!) Call it slow food, call it food snobbery, call it whatever you want — taking the time and effort and even expense to eat well is near and dear to my heart and pretty essential to what TracyFood is all about. So maybe my point is: although he starts out sort of weak and annoys me by avoiding those tricksy sociopolitical issues, Michael Pollan makes an envy-inducing strong finish in “Unhappy Meals,” preaching to the TracyFood choir all the way. And even if he loses me now and then along the way, it’s hard to beat that opening paragraph: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Amen.
Comments»
What do you think about slate.com’s response to Pollan’s article?
http://www.slate.com/id/2158736/pagenum/all/#page_start