Returning to the basics.

By Adrian Simonis

Michael Pollan’s manifesto, “In defense of Food”, is a detailed work that stresses the insufficiencies of our diet and how to correct the unhealthy additions we’ve added to it over the years. Pollan’s main argument is that we should return to eating the basic substances we used to, and not the food like substances we currently consume day in and day out. He lays down many simple rules to easily do so, such as not eating things that your grandmother wouldn’t recognize and avoiding foods that boast healthiness. He continues on to explain the American paradox: the more time we spend worrying about food and trying to correct our diets, the less healthy we actually become.

Pollan continues to explain where the title of his book comes from, including the odd concept of defending food and why something so commonplace would need defending. The reason Pollan feels the need to defend food is because we have taken home grown produce and injected so many unnecessary additives that they can barely be considered “food”. Pollan argues that we should return to the original foods that we produce and consume them without the artificial ingredients as opposed to our current fake foods. Pollan also feels the need to defend food from the industry that creates these fraudulent foods and advertises them as “healthy”.

In order to correct these problems, Pollan promotes an idea that’s been around for centuries, yet is rarely followed: eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By following these seven simple words, we agree to abide by Pollan’s idea of nutritionism, which includes returning to eat what is truly food and only food that is completely free of detrimental preservatives. Pollan encourages us to escape the western diet confronted in a majority of supermarkets, compacted into packages that don’t carry food, but rather an unhealthy substation of food. We can create a healthy diet by avoiding these mock foods and returning to sensible food consumed in proper context.

Pollan does an effective job of presenting the harms of our current food industry and the unnecessary additives that are so commonplace in our current food markets. He brings up the point that people won’t be reading his ideas on how to stay healthy if they don’t want to change their eating habits, and uses multiple examples on how we can efficiently do so. Pollan shows us how to clean up our increasingly unhealthy diet and the consequences we will suffer if we don’t do so.

One of the main drawbacks in Pollan’s argument is his assumption that all foods claiming to be “healthy” aren’t always the opposite of what they claim to be. Foods that are composed of basic organic substances and have little to no added ingredients are allowed to bear the title “healthy” and may choose to do so. Although most of these products don’t need to do so, they still reserve the right and can claim to be healthy while being completely accurate with their statement. While it may not be a big shortcoming in his argument, it’s still unfair for Pollan to advertise a general rule of thumb that any product bragging to be “healthy” is automatically the opposite. Aside from small setbacks like these, Pollan combines multiple arguments with countless examples to both explain and show the western culture why it is beneficial to return to eating plants and how easy it is to do so.