Eat Food By Michael Pollan

The Rules for a Better Life

The topic of food and nutrition has been one of much debate. It began back when everything you needed to eat and stay alive was forged and hunted for. But since then we have come a long way. Now we must make the decision whether we want it pre made or make it ourselves, low in sugar or high in fiber. We have all the choice to eat whatever we want. Food is an interesting thing, for that what we eat and how we get our foods have been shaped in our minds from the things we have grown up with and how we view the food we put in our bodies. But our choice has been starting to be swayed by the new innovations in the food industry. Michael Pollan, food and eating expert and author of many books, has come up with three

He speaks about how as a society we need to get away from the Western Diet. Pollan states “This sounds like a sensible rule of thumb until you realize that industrial processes have by now invaded many whole foods too. Is a steak from a feedlot steer that consumed a diet of corn, various industrial waste products, antibiotics, and hormones still a ‘whole food’? I’m not so sure” (424). When we eat food, we don’t normally think about where that food has come from and what they were fed. He believes that we need to stay away from processed foods. Along with Pollan’s view on the consumption of food; Mary Maxfield, graduate student at Bowling Green State University, thinks of food more as a religion. Maxfield writes about how Pollan’s view and others like him are concerned with the American health. She writes, “Food—be it French fry or granola bar, Twinkie or brown rice—isn’t moral or immoral. Inherently, food is ethically neutral; notions of good and bad, healthy and unhealthy are projected onto it by culture” (446). She is saying that people can take the words “Eat Food” as two different things, so it is up to the person to truly decide what it means to

This is probably the most important rule of them all. Especially now since the obesity rate has been going up in past years. David Zinczenko, fitness and health expert, gives a great insight into eating too much and then saving himself. He grew up as a heavier kid and his eating patterns were no help. He was forced to get fast food for dinner for himself. He then turned his life around, joined the Navy Reserves and got his weight back in check. Zinczenko then speaks about how the fast-food industry has been lying to us for a long time. He speaks about how a salad, that is supposed to be good for you, turns out to add up the calories fast. He says “…But that’s not all. Read the small print on the back of the dressing packet and you’ll realize it actually contains 2.5 servings…” (464). Finally, Pollan writes about how as Americans we don’t spend a lot of time or money on our food like that used to back a few hundred years. Pollan states “In order to eat well we need to invest more time, effort, and resources in providing for our sustenance, to dust off a word, than most of us do today” (425). He says this guide us to put more meaning into the foods that we eat and if we put in time there will be more quality food instead of just large amounts of it