Eat Food, Not Nutrients.

Michael Pollan is at it again.

And thank goodness for him!

His long piece on 1/28/07 in the New York Times argues what I've been saying.

Lots of other people say it too.

• Eat simple, whole foods. Emphasize fruits and vegetables.
• Avoid highly refined foods.
• Eat less but better.
• Get some exercise.

But Pollan emphasizes the way our focus on nutrition seems actually to have made us sicker.

"Nutrition" would be an expression of scientific reductionism--the idea that there are agents in food which cause specific effects, apart from the circumstances or contexts.

Pollan wants to emphasize culture, food as part of a way of life.

It's not just something present in or absent from the food that makes it good for you.

It's how it's made, where it comes from, how it's part of larger healthful patterns of life.

It may be familiar, but it bears repeating.

--E. R. O'Neill