In Defense Of Food Essay

In his book "In Defense of Food", Michael Pollan talks about how the invention of diets, and the rage of establishing nutritional parameters supported by scientific data; has caused our health to be affected, and created an uncontrolled need for healthy eating. For Pollan, the nutritional value that a food may have is much more than the sum of the individual nutrients it may have. I love food and I love to eat, but I never thought about importance of food, and how people see it. For me, the truth is that they did not matter; but now that I think about it, seeing it and analyzing it the way Pollan describes it, he is right. An obsession has been created around food and how it helps us to see ourselves and feel healthy, but the truth is that in most occasions what we believe is wrong. Nutritionism has changed the way we look at food, and it has influenced the agency that controls food, FDA, in its favor. They see food like the sum of the nutrients, and these nutrients can be counted. The reality is that throughout history we have been greatly confused, as Pollen mentions in his book, “This brings us to one of the most troubling features of nutritionism, though it is a feature certainly not troubling to all. When the emphasis is on quantifying the nutrients contained in foods (or to be precise, the recognized nutrients in food),

The scientist Justus von Liebig, based on the theory that the main constituents of food, were protein, fat and carbohydrates; decided to create the first formula for babies, the formula contained cow's milk, wheat flour, malted flour and potassium bicarbonate. The doctors began to notice that the babies who consumed the milk created by Liebig, became ill, since they had not added vitamins, essential fats and amino acids. As Pollan says, “The entire history of baby formula has been the history of one overlooked nutrient after