Eating Right For Life According To Michael Pollan
Posted by LD on April 2, 2010 under Diet | 
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Michael Pollan is an author who has been writing almost exclusively about food for ten years. He writes about where our food comes from, how it gets to us, and what it is doing to us. He says.
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
This is his advice on eating healthy in 7 words. And that’s it, article over.
OK not really. It does require some explaining in order for it to be useful. Lets break it down into 3 parts.
Eat food.
Michael breaks things down into “Food” and “Edible Food Like Substances (FLS).” Food is a raw material. Food requires no (or very little) packaging. Food Rots. Food is on the outside walls of the grocery store. Food doesn’t contain ingredients (or if it does they are all pronounceable).Food doesn’t have any marketing campaign. Food is something your Great Great Grandmother would recognize.
Food Like Substance is all the stuff in the middle of the super market. It contains unpronounceable ingredients. It has health claims on the box. It is packaged to have a very long shelf life. FLS have massive marketing campaigns.
The problem with FLS is that it is calorie dense and contains very little nutrition. Food on the other had is generally light in calories, and dense in nutrients. It is like comparing a Hostess Apple Pie (Calories = 480) with an Apple (Calories = 72).
Not too much.
The food industry is making enough food and FLS for every person in America to consume 3900 calories per day. In our sedentary lifestyle we should be consuming less calories not more. Eating too much (and eating too much FLS) is connected to obesity and diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, many forms of cancer, arthritis and many inflammation diseases. It also reduces the effectiveness of your immune system to fight off bacteria and viruses, meaning you will get colds and flu more often.
So eat less is good advice even if you are not trying to lose weight.
Mostly plants.
When Michael refers to plants he says to eat more leaves and less grain (seeds). Grains are high in calories, but leaves are high in nutrition.
I’m not a vegetarian and I never plan to be, but eating less meat is a healthy thing to do. This doesn’t mean you can’t have any meat, but reducing your meat intake and increasing the amount of plants you eat will make you healthier. if you can, try to eat grass fed meat rather than corn fed.
Some other advice
Michael talks about nutritionism as a belief structure rather than a science. He suggests you ignore the scientific claims of a particular nutrient and just eat the food. An orange isn’t healthy because it has Vitamin C, its healthy because its an orange.
He also refers to people who are obsessed with Nutrition as having Orthorexia. A eating disorder where pople become obsessed with nutrition. I’ve also heard it called obsessive compusive eating. The problem with orthorexics is that they are generally less healthy than normal people. They read food labels obsessively but health isn’t in a particular nutrient.
So if we abandon nutrition-ism where do we turn?
The answer is culture. Traditional diets have been shaped for thousands and thousands of years. We evolved to eat them. Look at meals your grandparents and great grandparents ate.
Eat like its 1899
Not really but eat like people did in years past. They ate two or three small meals a day. They always ate at the table with family. They ate more vegetables than meat (meat was considered a side). They didn’t snack.
If we go back even 30 years foods like pizza, soft drinks, fried chicken and such were considered banquet foods. They were for special occasions. Now we have that food every day. Its no wonder people have trouble with their weight.
The Dead Simple Advice: Eat Food, Not too much, Mostly Plants.
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