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Food Rules By Michael Pollan Summary

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Michael Pollan is the author of “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual”. Throughout his career, Pollan has been investigating about the hazards that industrial foods pose to us, and how we can avoid them and replace them with a healthy diet. He believes that “The way we eats represents our most profound engagement with the natural world.” (Shetterly, Robert. “Michael Pollan.” Americans Who Tell The Truth. N.p., n.d. http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/michael-pollan). In the book, Pollan tries to distinguish between healthy and harmful foods. He says, “Eating in our time has gotten complicated.” (Food Rules, page ix). What he means is that foods today contain various types of ingredients, and you’re just not sure if they are healthy for you or not. Some foods are made of exotic ingredients that we have never heard of. Pollan speaks from the …show more content…

He was curious to find out what’s the right food to eat, how to keep a healthy diet and food habit, and how to distinguish between harmful and hearty foods. Pollan was fascinated with the science of nutrition, so he decided to go ahead and do a research on nutrition. What kept Pollan motivated in this subject is the fact that it all became simpler as he investigated further about nutrition. On page x of the introduction, Pollan states, “Feeling as confused as everyone else, I set out to get to the bottom of a simple question: What should I eat? What do we really know about the links between our diet and our health? I’m not a nutrition expert or a scientist, just a curious journalist hoping to answer a straightforward question for myself and my family.” About his researches, he said, “The deeper I delved into the confused and confusing thicket of nutritional science, sorting through the long-running fats versus carbs wars, the fiber skirmishes and the raging dietary supplement debates, the simpler the picture gradually

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830 Words | 4 Pages

To refresh In Michael Pollan’s (2008) book, In Defense of Food, Pollan maintains that, “…instead of worrying about nutrients, we should simply avoid any food that has been processed to such an extent that it is more product of industry than of nature.” (pg. 143) Basically Pollan is warning people that they need to eat whole foods no matter what, because processed foods no matter their nutrient content are bad for you. I agree with Pollan when he says that we need to not eat processed foods that are more industry then nature, but I still do not agree that have whole foods is more important than the nutrient content of the food. Think about it this way almost anything sold in the supermarket these days is considered processed for example even flour is processed.

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523 Words | 3 Pages

I found Pollan 's book to be very informative and enjoyable to read. I particularly liked the fact that I could associate Pollan’s cultural, political and economic views to the topics we covered in class. In order to complete this assignment, I selected Part 1 of the book "Industrial Food" because I was particularly captivated by the secrets of corn and also because I believed that this section sincerely disclosed the reality behind High-Fructose Corn Syrup (a major participant in the development of obesity). Not only that but, the fact that corn is found in almost every product in our pantry, it’s a little frightening.

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495 Words | 2 Pages

1. Explain why Michael Pollan finds the questions “What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?” so difficult to answer. Michael Pollan finds this question so difficult because all food is made up of other foods, mostly corn. On page 17, he states, "any food whose provenance is so complex or obscure that is requires expert help to ascertain."

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1330 Words | 6 Pages

Relevance between Food and Humans with Rhetorical Analysis In the modern industrial society, being aware of what the food we eat come from is an essential step of preventing the “national eating disorder”. In Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, he identifies the humans as omnivores who eat almost everything, which has been developed into a dominant part of mainstream unhealthiness, gradually causing the severe eating disorder consequences among people. Pollan offers his opinion that throughout the process of the natural history of foods, deciding “what should we have for dinner” can stir the anxiety for people based on considering foods’ quality, taste, price, nutrition, and so on.

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195 Words | 1 Pages

In the essay, “Escape from the Western Diet”, the author, Michael Pollan discuss about how the western diet is harmful for the people. He think that because western diet is responsible for many kinds diseases nowadays such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and etc. I agree with Michael pollan that western diet is very unhealthy for people and the reason behind it, is because of the food industry. Food industry is making more processed food and they are also using different kinds of nutritional theories to make new product which is very unhealthy to those people who mostly eats diet food. Medical industries is also responsible for this problem because they make new drug treatment to treat the diseases.

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730 Words | 3 Pages

Michael Pollan’s Escape from the Western Diet connects well with what Mary Maxfield says in her article. Both Pollan and Maxfield talk about the ways that dieting is taking over American people’s healths and causing them to become even unhealthier. In Mary Maxfield’s argument she talks about how people believe everything that diet industries say, even though they know that the information they give you is false. This connects really well with what Michael Pollan talks about in his article, which is that people know that these theories that are used for the Western diet are not accurate, but yet they still decide to use the Western diet to help them become healthier.

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717 Words | 3 Pages

In turn, he provides his own rules for escaping the western diet as well as the idea of nutritionist set forth by scientists.   Then Pollan explains that scientific theories of nutritionist focus on individual nutrients rather than foods as a whole. He further goes on to refute this claim mentioning that these scientific theories contradict with one another. Pollan explains “the scientists who blame our health problems on deficiencies of [micronutrients] are not the same scientists who see a sugar soaked diet leading to metabolic syndrome and from there to diabetes, heart disease…” (Pollan, 421).

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1739 Words | 7 Pages

On a differing take on the solution, “Escape from the Western Diet” by Michael Pollan provides the complete change of our diet and way of life based around cooking and eating meals. however creates a more powerful and logical argument against the “Western Diet” in his article, He uses a combination of his credibility from his publications on health and foods, evidence against the practices of the medical community, along with his solution to the issue of obesity to create an article that draws in audience’s emotions and rationale. Pollan’s strongest points in his article was the use of credibility and his ability to bring logic and reason to most of his points against medical society and the publics solution to obesity. Pollan comes in with a stronger

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This appeals to our physiological needs because naturally, humans need to eat food and to hear from a professional that there are other influences outside of food that are giving cause to the obesity crisis gives Americans a slight sigh of relief when it comes to the degree of toxicity of our foods. Furthermore, that people eat a more wholesome diet versus those that do not, tend to be healthier than that live on fast and processed foods,there are also stark differences to recognize between these classes that should be taken into account as well such as the tendency to engage in exercise, air quality, and other health considerations such as smoking and

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209 Words | 1 Pages

Author of the essay “Eat Food: Food Defined” Michael Pollan, states that everything that pretends to be a food really isn’t a food. Michael persuaded me into agreeing with his argument by talking about how people shouldn’t eat anything their great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food and avoid food products containing ingredients that are unpronounceable, lists more than five, and contains high fructose corn syrup. He opened my eyes to information I wouldn’t have thought about or researched myself. He got into depth about a type of Sara Lee bread that contains way more ingredients than needed to make the bread, including high fructose corn syrup that isn’t good for you. Marketers are doing this to sell more of their product by making it taste

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533 Words | 3 Pages

Why are our foods making us unhealthy? Some issues Sinclair includes in “The Jungle” (Sinclair 352-355) are chemical additives that are being used in foods to enhance flavor (taste), and fast food chains are making their food portions bigger which may cause more people to be unhealthy. Importantly, chemicals are being used in foods to enhance flavor (taste). The flavor industries are highly secretive and will not reveal the formulas to their clients.

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Pollan’s writing begins strong, he gives an excellent example of what can occur within the various food industries. He begins by providing a small example with some statistics to show how many

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240 Words | 1 Pages

In this non-fiction book by a journalism professor at UC Berkley, Michael Pollan asks the age old question…”What’s for dinner?” Michael Pollan believes that how we answer that question may well determine how we survive as a species. In his book he details how we as a country have been lead down the convenience path when choosing what we eat. Fast food chains and the American Supermarket have changed the way we eat as a nation and Michael Pollan is considered an expert in this subject. In this award winning book, he follows the four food chains: industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves and the impact these sources are having on the health of our country.

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670 Words | 3 Pages

In “How Junk Food Can End Obesity,” by David H. Freedman, he claims that processed foods can help fix the obesity crisis in a more realistic manner, rather than whole-some foods. The popular opinion emphasizes whole-some foods because they aren’t informed about the similitude between processed and unprocessed foods. The essence of the essay is that people believe processed foods are bad and unhealthy for us, therefore whole-some foods are highly recommended for the health of an individual. Freedman mentions many prominent authors who wrote books on food processing, but the most influential voice in the food culture Freedman makes a point of is, American journalist, Michael Pollan. The media and Michael Pollan indicate that everything should be replaced with real, fresh, and unprocessed foods, instead of engineering in as much sugar, salt, and fat as possible into industrialized foods.

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1004 Words | 5 Pages

To illustrate, one of the biggest contributors to unhealthy eating habits is the confusion of determine what’s healthy food. A lot of people gets health tips from many sources like newspaper, website, radio and so on. With so many information from so many sources, it’s easy to let people get fuzzy about which source to believe in. A new survey suggests that most American are confused about what count as a healthy food choice. About eight in 10 survey respondents said they have found conflicting information about what foods to eat and what foods to avoid -- and more than half of them said the conflicting information has them second-guessing the choices they make, according to the International Food Information Council Foundation 's annual Food and Health survey.(Howard)

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