Nutrition vs. Food: Michael Pollan's Eater's Manifesto

What's so bad about convenience food?, I asked Michael Pollan - his new book, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto," has been the number one best-seller nationally for the last few weeks.

"I need to eat in a hurry," I told him, "so I can rush back to checking my email. What I really need is food I can eat WHILE I'm checking my email."

"Why don't you just hook yourself up to an IV?" he replied. "You're missing something. Eating should be a source of pleasure." He said the stuff I had for lunch at my computer was not food, but rather something he called "edible food-like substances."

He seemed to be talking about the breakfast bar I had recently consumed.

"It's very hard to make money selling you oatmeal," he said. "Go to the store, you can buy a pound of plain oats for 79 cents. That's a lot of oats. The companies make money by making breakfast cereal out of the oats. Then they can charge you four or five bucks for a few pennies worth of oats."

I realized he was talking about Cheerios. Breakfast cereal is inconvenient, I told him, because you have to sit down at a table, and pour milk into a bowl with the Cheerios, and then eat with a spoon.

"For people like you," he said, "they invented breakfast bars." I realized he was talking about my Honey Nut Cheerios Milk 'n Cereal bars. "They have a layer of artificial milk going through the middle," he explained, "so you can eat your bowl of cereal at the computer, or in the car - no bowl, no pouring milk, no spoon. Then they're making ten or twenty dollars a pound for those oats."

So it's expensive, I said. I can afford a breakfast bar.

"The problem is that every step of additional processing makes the food less nutritious," he replied. "So they add lots of nutrients back in to the processing so they can make health claims. But they only add what they know is missing. There are other things in whole grains that the scientists don't know about. You'll be missing out on that. But you'll be up to date on your email."

Then he said the "edible food-like substances" I ate for lunch at my desk were the products of something he called "the nutritional-industrial complex."

That didn't sound good.

He explained: "That's the cozy relationship between nutritional science as it's practiced in this country, and the processed food industry. The nutritional scientists are telling us every six months what the new good and new evil nutrients are. For the most part, these are well-intentioned efforts to understand the links between food and health. Then you have the food industry, which loves every change in the nutritional weather, because they can then reformulate the food. The net effect is that it makes all the processed foods in the middle of your supermarket look far more healthy and sophisticated than the genuinely healthy food in the produce section, which of course bear no health claims and sit there are silently as a stroke victim."

That remark about stroke victims made me remember I needed to buy some Pom Wonderful Pomegranate Juice so I could "live young."

Pomegranate juice, he said, "is a great example of a food where the growers went out and hired some scientists to do some studies, and they found out, lo and behold, pomegranates have some life-enhancing anti-oxidants. They've even found that it helps with erectile dysfunction. And the pomegranate, which formerly was a food that was much more trouble to eat than it was worth, has suddenly emerged as one of the most popular fruits in the produce section.

"It's true that pomegranates are healthy," he said. "They are full of anti-oxidants - like all fruits and vegetables. There isn't a plant that doesn't have good anti-oxidants. But the pomegranate people had the money to go out and get the science to prove it. The broccoli growers, the carrot growers, they don't have the money for that kind of science."

I asked Pollan what advice he had for eaters like me. "Eat food," he said. "Not too much. Mostly from plants."

Pollan's previous books include "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals," named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times. He's a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and is a Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

Comments (24)

1. "were the products of something he called "the nutritional-industrial complex."

   Oh good grief. Reminds me of the the X-files episode where Mulder says (seriously, though the episode was satirical) to an author writing about a UFO abduction incident- "You may unwittingly be part of the Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex!"

   Guess next time Mr Melber goes off on the "netroots", I'll call it the "Internet-Industrial Complex" and start people's heads spinning!

   Posted by Mask at 02/18/2008 @ 1:30pm

2. well...dude is right...

   less meat/animal byproducts to rot in your lower digestive tract...

   you know, it never ceases to amaze me how some people, usually in my experience younger females, but not always, are so grossed out by sitting their precious little buttcheeks down on a public toilet because it grosses them out and they fear the butt cooties, but have no problem whatsoever walking around for hours with a load of toxic feces soaking into their rectum's and large intestine's lining and literally poisoning their asses...

   lol. how do they do it?

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 02/18/2008 @ 1:46pm

3. Posted by IBBLEBLIBBLE 02/18/2008 @ 1:46pm

   Not sure I see the EXACT analogy of "sitting on other people's urine and feces" and "eating a Royale with cheese"?!?!? Would that be like "brushing your teeth with a stranger's toothbrush" and "eating a mess of scrambled eggs"???

   Posted by Mask at 02/18/2008 @ 1:51pm

4. Posted by MASK 02/18/2008 @ 1:51pm

   lol...unless there are open lesions on one's buttcheek...theres this thing called "skin" which is actually pretty darned good at protecting the body from infection...

   i dated a young woman once who refused to poop in public until she damned near had an embarassing accident...it was really rather neurotic...

   nobady who has to poop is scintillating company...and a loaf of foul toxic biowaste stewing in one's bowels is a hell of a lot nastier than an icky public terlet! ass cancer is rampant!

   but sure...less processed animal by product, more locally produced unrefined veggie/grains...

   we've known this for a while...

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 02/18/2008 @ 2:22pm

5. "Eating should be a source of pleasure."

   oh yeah.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 2:26pm

6. breakfast bar

   oxymoron

   Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 2:26pm

7. Honey Nut Cheerios Milk 'n Cereal bars.

   instant indigestion.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 2:27pm

8. "Go to the store, you can buy a pound of plain oats for 79 cents."

   so cheap. so easy.

   people are dumb.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 2:28pm

9. "The problem is that every step of additional processing makes the food less nutritious," he replied. "So they add lots of nutrients back in to the processing so they can make health claims. But they only add what they know is missing. There are other things in whole grains that the scientists don't know about. You'll be missing out on that. But you'll be up to date on your email."

   we eat food in order to:

   a) extract processed solar energy for our fight against entropy

   b) collect more building blocks with which we can construct more body.

   we eat food to EXTRACT THE LIFE from it.

   compare the effect an apple picked directly from the trees has on you

   with one shipped two months ago from chile.

   no compare those two with

   a

   NUTRIOAT APPLE'N'TOEJAM WONDERBAR.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 2:32pm

10. Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 02/18/2008 @ 2:32pm | ignore this person

    mmmm...toejam...cheezy good...

    Posted by ibbleblibble at 02/18/2008 @ 2:34pm

11. And the pomegranate, which formerly was a food that was much more trouble to eat than it was worth, has suddenly emerged as one of the most popular fruits in the produce section

    mmmmmmmmmm,

    pomegranate.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 2:39pm

12. Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 02/18/2008 @ 2:39pm

    Hah! Sounds like Homer Simpson. Of course, Homer would never eat healthy. The man ate a sub sandwich he had saved behind the sofa for a month. Anyway, the public has been informed of this. We just don't want to hear it. My worry is also the influence that the FDA has on this nutritional-industrial-complex. Mr. Melber, did Mr. Pollan mention anything about the FDA? Lord knows, I'm not gonna buy the book. Just being honest.

    Posted by k330k at 02/18/2008 @ 2:48pm

13. I asked Pollan what advice he had for eaters like me. "Eat food," he said. "Not too much. Mostly from plants."

    wow. that's complicated.

    THIS WILL INFRINGE ON MY LIFESTYLE!!!!!!!!

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 2:58pm

14. Lord knows, I'm not gonna buy the book.

    Posted by K330K 02/18/2008 @ 2:48pm

    no need.

    "Eat food," he said. "Not too much. Mostly from plants."

    that's all you need.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 3:07pm

15. we've known this for a while...

    Posted by IBBLEBLIBBLE 02/18/2008 @ 2:22pm

    yet people get fatter and fatter...........

    moooo

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 3:10pm

16. "Eating should be a source of pleasure."

    So eating a big bag of Cheetos isn't a "pleasure"? (sometimes)

    Posted by Mask at 02/18/2008 @ 4:09pm

17. So eating a big bag of Cheetos isn't a "pleasure"? (sometimes)

    Posted by MASK 02/18/2008 @ 4:09pm

    of course.

    even better, you should try my cheetos-jell-o casserole.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 7:51pm

18. ..."ass cancer is rampant!"

    Posted by IBBLEBLIBBLE 02/18/2008 @ 2:22pm

    IBBLE, you are so crazy!!.....LOL

    Posted by ACook at 02/18/2008 @ 8:44pm

19. even better, you should try my cheetos-jell-o casserole.

    Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 02/18/2008 @ 7:51pm

    Okay...I have officialy....heard it all.

    heheh

    Posted by Mask at 02/18/2008 @ 9:27pm

20. Okay...I have officialy....heard it all.

    heheh

    Posted by MASK 02/18/2008 @ 9:27pm

    we's only gettin' warmed up................

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/18/2008 @ 9:42pm

21. Not a banner day for reader commentary at the Nation. Here's a question: do you know where your food comes from? Americans inability to answer that question beyond "the supermarket" is the reason why yet another Farm Bill has passed with money being siphoned to agri-business without any transparency, why Americans can speak about the insidiousness of immigration without a notion as to why a migrant farmer might cross a desert to work for peanuts in a country several borders away from his or her family, why food "scares" have so much media traction and why ethanol is even considered a potential alternative fuel--they are all connected and not, believe it or not, just in my head. What did you eat for lunch? Do you know who made it? Who grew it? How much gasoline it took to get it into your hands? Asking yourself those questions can be the beginning of a very simple and effective political act.

    Posted by ANDREWBAUER at 02/18/2008 @ 10:30pm

22. I don't get it. I thought we all had learned in Botany of Desire that the plants we grow reflect different aspects of what it means to be human, and as a result, the different things we consume should be appreciated individually. Then we listened to Pollan postulate that a main driver behind our intelligence, as humans, is the need to make sense of the world of food available to an omnivorous animal. But he caps it off with a statement that deemphasizes the diversity he trumpeted in Botany and insults our hard won intelligence he argued for in Omnivore.

    Eat food, not too much, mostly from plants. . .

    I suppose only some omnivores have evolved to where they are capable of deciding what to eat. Too bad for the rest of us.

    Posted by NarTheDough at 02/19/2008 @ 12:42am

23. Humans evolved in Southern Africa, where I come from. The archaeology shows that they ate... food, not too much, mostly plants.

    I asked an archaeologist friend what life was like then. He said: 'It was tough. There were no Post Toasties."

    Posted by mikecope at 02/19/2008 @ 12:59am

24. Posted by NARTHEDOUGH 02/19/2008 @ 12:42am

    hey, lots of plants are just as intelligent.

    look at tobacco.

    a parasite that has used us to multiply at a rate unfathomable without human intervention.

    hey, i need a smoke................

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/19/2008 @ 01:31am