Blog Post #4

Health is important. You can hardly deny this viewpoint. Today more and more people begin to care about their health statues. They go to the hospital to check up every year; they do exercise every week; and, they eat so called healthy food every day. They can easily find the nutrition values table on the package and they believe that they can find out how is food by these data. However, no matter how reasonable an opinion is, there are always some one who stand on the opposite to contradict the opinion. In the book “In Defense of Food”, Michael Pollan argued that nutritionism could not improve, or even deteriorate the quality food and human’s life.

Michael Pollan tried to use a great deal of facts and statistics to prove his observation. He successfully persuaded me that nutritionism changes food in the first Chapter of his book. But, when I moved on through the book, I can scarcely agree with him because of the bugs in his logic.

In the book, the author mentioned that people are living an unhealthier life than before. He listed many general diet-related diseases which were not so popular several decades before. But these facts are not credible. In 1900, a diabetic might not be able to know that he is a patient because the medical technology was not well-developed then. We can only say that more people are diagnosed as patients today, but not more people become patient today. What’s more, because of nutritionism, the rate of diseases caused by undernourishment is getting lower and lower. Michael Pollan averted to write about these facts in his book in order to demonstrate his own view.

What’s more, even if it can be confirmed that nowadays the physical situation of human beings is getting worse and worse, is it food that causes this tragedy? In this book, the author didn’t provide enough evidences to show the relationship between food and health. He pointed out that the change of food and the change of health status are happening at the same time. But this might just be a kind of coincidence. We can not always say that one of the two things happened together is the cause while the other is the effect. In addition, he produced some instances, in both Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, to elucidate that some compound from which modern food is made might cause some diseases. But, actually, these examples are merely some special cases. The author used some micro study results to explain a macro argument, that it is the change food which makes people unhealthier than before. His logic is approximately the same as “In 2009, all the flu is swine flu because my mother had swine flu this year.” In fact, besides food, many factors can worsen human’s physical condition, such as environmental pollution and high mental pressure. We can not reach the conclusion that it is food which makes people sick.

To sum up, though Michael Pollan provided plenty of convincing theories and facts to prove the seeming truth of nutritionism makes food become unhealthier, his argument still can not be accepted by me since his logic is coherent and credible enough. An ancient proverb states: Every coin has two sides. It seems such an obvious wisdom now. Michael Pollan’s contention is unilateral and subjective. He should study an object from different aspects, but not focuses on only one dimension by using all the positive illustrations and ignoring all the adverse ones.