By Jonathan Aluzas
Eat food. Not too much.? Mostly plants.
This is the core wisdom espoused by Michael Pollan, author of the book In Defense of Food. The book is an examination of how America eats, it’s relationship with modern disease and the roles that government and the food industry play in perpetuating and sustaining Western eating habits.
Here are the basic premises:
- Americans eat like crap, consuming massive amounts of processed foods which have been industrialized and rendered nearly devoid of nutritional value.
- Cultures that adopt the Western diet eventually inherit the heart disease, strokes, obsesity, diabetes and immunological disorders that accompany crappy eating.
- The food industry aggressively promotes crappy eating and shrouds it behind false labels that scream out things like “Heart Healthy!” and “Low Fat!” even though these labels mean nothing.? They do this because there are billions of dollars at stake.
- The federal government allows the food industry to get away with promoting crappy eating, to the detriment of the health of the public.
Okay, I know, BIG SURPRISE!!!!? What a revelation!? Americans eat like crap, get sicker and sicker, the food companies continue to push it and the government lets them!? That this is happening is no surprise.? The book however, is brilliant.
If you’re into reading and have even a passing interest in nutrition, disease and the manner in which big business and government collude in ways that don’t serve us, you should read this book (I’m not anti-government or a conspiracy theorist; I’m a full-on capitalist, but this whole scheme is stomach-turning).? It does a great job of illustrating how myopic nutrition science has become and how and why the American diet has gone into the toilet.
Further, it offers advice to those interested in swimming against this gastronomic nightmare, such as:
- Eat food. This may seem obvious, but I’m not so sure our current concept of food is accurate.? In this case “food” is basically natural stuff; unprocessed and devoid of polysyllabic chemical compounds.? Things like organic fruits, vegetables, grass fed meat, etc..
- Avoid food products containing more than five ingredients, ingredients that are unfamiliar or unpronounceable, or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
- Avoid food products that make health claims.? You can be assured it’s all marketing and, therefore, total crap.
- Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.? Fresh food (dairy, produce, meat and fish) tend to line the walls and the processed crap is in the center.
- Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.? Try a farmer’s market (trust me, they’re great).
- Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.? Why?? Because they’re healthy.? That doesn’t mean you can wrap orange chicken in iceberg lettuce and feel good about yourself, though.
- Eat meats that have been fed well, too.? If you eat chicken that was fed crap when it was living then you are, by default, eating crap.? Grass fed meats are a good choice.
- Eat well grown food from healthy soils.? It doesn’t necessarily have to be certified organic, but make sure you’re eating food that hasn’t been treated with pesticides and shipped to you from across the country.
- Be willing to pay more for higher quality food.? I know, that may be hard in these economic times, but you really do get what you pay for.
There are numerous other suggestions that I find to be very sensible, but if you even follow the ones listed above you will undoubtedly clean up your diet significantly.? After all, whether you believe that processed foods, chemicals, pollution, medications and such have overwhelmed our systems to the degree of creating chronic disease or not, it can’t hurt to simply EAT HEALTHIER FOODS!
For more information, visit https://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php
Jonathan Aluzas is the owner of Arena Fitness, a personal training and fitness center in Encino, California.
