Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Michael Pollan, author of the awesome Omnivore's Dilemma, had a new essay published this weekend in the New York Times. It deals with the culture of nutrition, which is a topic that's particularly poignant to me. You see, in the past year I've become an official mostly-vegetarian, worked for organic farms for nothing but vegetables, experimented with pickling and fermenting, discovered Nourishing Traditions, and started drinking raw milk.
Pollan provides a well-reasoned and insightful overview of the political, economic and philosophical forces that influence what Americans are encouraged to eat. He tells the story of how a scientific community wedded to reductionism and the isolation of causal factors has conspired with a late-stage-capitalism food industry where producers must innovate or perish. Every few years, the scientists identify some new secret key to unlocking healthy eating (Low-Fat! Low-Carb! Oat Bran!!!) and the food industry releases a fleet of new products to sell you health. Food processors make a killing, finance a bunch more nutrition research, and the process repeats. Meanwhile, the chronic diseases these food products are supposed to be curing have actually increased.
Here's one of my favorite quotes:
If you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.
If there is a silver bullet to healthy eating, it's this: don't worry about medical research revealing the latest (cause|cure) of (cancer|heart disease|obesity|diabetes|impotence). Eat food your great-great-grandparents would have eaten (yes, that's how far you have to go back before capitalism started poisoning the food supply), and get it from sources that they could have gotten it from-- pesticide and fertilizer-free farms, a cow fed on grass rather than grain, homebrew, etc. That Nourishing Traditions book I mentioned and its author's Weston A. Price Foundation are both great sources of information on how to eat old-school.
Anyway, don't just sit here and listen to me yak about how great it is. Go read it for yourself:
http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=85
Pollan provides a well-reasoned and insightful overview of the political, economic and philosophical forces that influence what Americans are encouraged to eat. He tells the story of how a scientific community wedded to reductionism and the isolation of causal factors has conspired with a late-stage-capitalism food industry where producers must innovate or perish. Every few years, the scientists identify some new secret key to unlocking healthy eating (Low-Fat! Low-Carb! Oat Bran!!!) and the food industry releases a fleet of new products to sell you health. Food processors make a killing, finance a bunch more nutrition research, and the process repeats. Meanwhile, the chronic diseases these food products are supposed to be curing have actually increased.
Here's one of my favorite quotes:
If you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.
If there is a silver bullet to healthy eating, it's this: don't worry about medical research revealing the latest (cause|cure) of (cancer|heart disease|obesity|diabetes|impotence). Eat food your great-great-grandparents would have eaten (yes, that's how far you have to go back before capitalism started poisoning the food supply), and get it from sources that they could have gotten it from-- pesticide and fertilizer-free farms, a cow fed on grass rather than grain, homebrew, etc. That Nourishing Traditions book I mentioned and its author's Weston A. Price Foundation are both great sources of information on how to eat old-school.
Anyway, don't just sit here and listen to me yak about how great it is. Go read it for yourself:
http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=85