| Pollan = Jefferson?
by Glen Boudreaux
Jolie Vue Farms, Brenham, Texas
I have just begun Michael Pollan's latest book, In Defense of Food. I think I already know the theme - we have become absorbed by "nutritionism", the near-science that attempts to find and classify individual components of food, declare them to be good or bad for us, then promote the good and eliminate the bad by a rigorous injection and processing system for our food. The results to date are likewise good and bad - good for the food processors and bad for us.
What led us to the belief that we could run a few small studies and become the gods of understanding our complex bodily systems? I suspect it is a misplaced belief that through Science, we could know all things. Do not misunderstand me. I admire the quest for understanding the physical and biological world around us. The day we stop exploring and trying to understand our world and everything physical and metaphysical is the day we begin dying as a culture and a civilization. But we are also capitalists, and we have our agendas, don't we? The latter can easily spoil the efforts of gaining knowledge and understanding.
Time and again we have adopted nutrition maxims as though they were set in stone, such as eliminating red meat from our diet and substituting pasta. I like pasta as much as the next, but each time I eat it, less and less often these days, I have to ask myself: should we really be eating the same constituents that will either make spaghetti or Elmer's Glue?
I suspect that this is where Pollan ends up in his new book: stop eating processed food injected with man-made artificials. Instead eat from the complete seasonal array of the natural food world and find it as close to home and as naturally grown as possible. Then put it on your plate in 5 pieces: a meat (which means fish, beef, poultry or pork), 3 vegetables, and a fruit. If we do that, we will come full circle in the science of eating. Back to the Thomas Jefferson diet plan. And TJ did alright, didn't he?
Eat like TJ. You can find it at the Houston Farmers Market.
Yours in the local harvest,
Glen
boboud@aol.com
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