We’ve all heard a hundred million times how living a healthy lifestyle is not just about sweating up a storm at the gym; it is also about maintaining a balanced diet. It’s always so hard for me to pass up the desserts in the Caf—I’ve already told you that—or to bypass the Cheez-It® crackers in the grocery store. Now that I’m trying to improve my overall fitness, I’m also working on becoming more conscious of what I’m putting in my mouth (as I eat my frosted and sprinkled sugar cookie from the Cage…whoops).
This semester I am taking an Environmental Health class, and one of our assignments recently was to listen to two NPR podcasts of interviews with Michael Pollan. Pollan is a professor at UC-Berkeley, as well as a famous author of best-selling books such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. The interviews inspired me to think more about what I’m eating…and to start eating even more fruits and veggies.
This week I want to share with you a few interesting tidbits about food that I gathered from listening to these interviews.
- Americans are “People of Corn.” Think about it: so much that we eat comes from corn, especially processed foods and even meat. Pollan mentions that 56% of a McDonald’s burger is corn carbon. Like the Irish and their potatoes, we tend to base our diet off of one specific crop, which can be risky (see “potato famine” on Wikipedia).
- “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” These are the seven words that Pollan says summarize his book,In Defense of Food. If you are eating straight fruits and veggies, you know you’re not always eating corn- and soy-based foods, and they aren’t processed. You’re getting a greater variety of nutrients in their most natural form, which is more beneficial to you than taking pure supplements.
- Eat meat more as a side dish. It is certainly nutritious, so don’t stop eating meat if you like it, but nowadays we might eat a little too much of it. Meat used to be a luxury for people, and maybe it was never intended for someone to consume a huge steak dinner with a minimal side of cooked vegetables within an hour.
- Science and nutritionism are part of the problem. They focus more on individual nutrients and not their role within the context of the foods themselves, but “foods are more than the sum of their nutrients.” Pollan explains that beta-carotene doesn’t work the same outside of the carrot as it does within it. People ate healthy for years without knowing what an antioxidant is, back in the days when there weren’t as many processed foods. Pollan’s advice? “Don’t eat anything that your great-grandmother would not recognize as food.”
- Back in the ‘60s, people spent 18% of their income on food and only 5% on healthcare. Now people spend 10% or less of their income on food and 16% on healthcare. Packaged foods are not necessarily cheaper in the long run…
- Stick to the peripherals of the grocery store…that’s where you find the vegetables, the fruit, the eggs, the milk, the cheese, the deli. The middle isles tend to have the chips and the cookies and all that junky goodness.
I’m not saying that you should take all these tidbits to heart. I don’t know enough about nutrition and food to do that either. But I certainly enjoyed listening to the interviews, and I do know that what our parents have been telling us all along is truly important: Eat your broccoli, kids.
If you want to hear the full podcasts, check out these NPR links:
How Food Finds its Way to Your Plate
Author Comes to Natural Food’s ‘Defense’.
Enjoy the rest of your February!
Emily