Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
That’s it. That’s the revolution. So says Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food. The author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma lays out a fairly convincing case for eating food, not the food products of industry that have made us fat and sick and have driven up rates of so-called “Western” diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
The solution he proposes is so simple that it seems silly in its simplicity; eat only foods that your grandmother (or great-grandmother) would recognize as food. In other words, real, grown, and unprocessed food.
If there’s one book that can change your life, this could be it. It’s certainly the one that resonates most with me of all the books I’ve read this year.
8 users commented in " A (Genuine) Green Revolution "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackOkay, okay, okay, hold on here a minute. Is there a chapter on the natural healing ingredients of chocolate?
When I’m feeling blue, I don’t want something green, Miles. No, no, no. I want that dark, sweet, yummy stuff that melts in your mouth, not in your hands.
I’m afraid neither of my Italian grandmas (including one who actually spent her entire life living in Italy) would have counseled anything like eating mostly plants. Pasta, the staple of all staples, wouldn’t fit in there. While I know Pollan’s suggestions might make sense in a strictly medical way, his suggestion strikes me a little like the idea of rarely going outside to enjoy the sunlight and fresh air, lest you increase your chances of being hit by a bus. For much of the population, the experience of wonderful varied eating is one of life’s central pleasures, and if it might shave a year or two off your life, hell, it seems worth it. Now if it’s going to shave 15 years off, that’s another matter. But all things in moderation.
Well, Neve, chocolate’s origins are in the cacao tree, which is a plant, so… I think you’re OK there…
That’s the trouble with these blog posts; trying so capture the essence of the message, which I didn’t do very well.
By “food” what Pollan means is the stuff that is found on the outer edges of the grocery store; fruits, vegetables, nuts, cheeses, meat, milk, that sort of thing. Basically, the less processed it is the better it will be for you. The problem is with the stuff in the center aisles of the grocery store, the artificial and unnatural hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup and the chemical additives and flavor enhancers that go into food that has had it’s flavor and nutrition taken out of it by industrial processing.
Case in point, my grandmothers and yours as well would recognize bread as consisting mainly of 4 ingredients; flour, yeast, water, and salt. Compare that to a commercially baked “whole grain” bread which contains over 25 ingredients including ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides and azodicarbonamide and a host of other tongue twisters. I’m willing to bet our ancestors didn’t have bottles of these chemicals in their pantries becuase they didn’t need them.
You did a fine job posting here. The image alone really speaks volumes. John and I are probably just projecting. Typical defensive response for all the bad, bad, bad things I somehow end up eating. John, you too?
I do spend a lot of time in the produce section: searching for perfect bananas (could not resist), varied leafy greens, along with a myriad of colored vegetables and fruits with hearty peels and juicy centers.
I can’t say that I bake my own bread though. Now I’ll be OCD’ing over all my pantry items – checking the labels for multitude syllabled words that are not good for me. Can’t I just drink a beer and call it good and healthy? Damn.
…and guess what? I’m hungry now….
Beer is healthy, of course it is. Just water, yeast, and some grains.
The main point is to eat as much real food as possible, and you’ll be OK. No need to obsess about it, but I’d say you eat pretty healthy anyway. And I know John eats well too. Right John?
I eat too well and way too much, Miles. Your eyes should tell you that, amigo.
[...] and Michale Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, which I wrote about here) make appearances in the movie. What the movie does do, through some graphic imagery which meat [...]
Leave A Reply