The Critique Essay of the “Escape from the Western Diet”
In his work Escape from the Western Diet Michael Pollan focused on American negative food habits, their place in different spheres of the society and general possible ways to improve the food behavior. “The Western Diet is known for its lack of fresh fruit and vegetables and its strong reliance on fast-food, high sugar beverages, high-fat dairy, refined carbohydrates and red meat” (“Western Diet”). While many experts focus on its content, Pollan suggested to turn the attention to the effect the diet has on social, industrial and medical spheres. The author highlighted they unlikely will completely abandon the Western diet as it promote their development. Pollan suggested that, instead
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He explained his critical attitude on the nutritionism, described the place of the Western Diet in the modern world and difficulties linked to its avoidance. The author also proposed several simple ways to improve food behavior. These rules can be treated as a logical fallacy of the article. At the beginning Pollan stated people should escape not only from the Western Diet, but from the nutritionism too. But his first rule “Eat food” that includes the separation of a “real food from the cascade of foodlike products that are surround and confound us” (Pollan 4) make the last task difficult. The author himself mentioned the modern industry made its impact on the “whole food”. So people need to check product’s chemical content to be sure they eat the real food; it makes it impossible to separate diet from science, like Pollan wanted. I also do not think the author treated the nutritionism fairly. While he was right in his critique of debates between different “cults” of direct nutrients, the nutritionism has the true basis. Food’s value really is in its nutrients, and the problem of the Western Diet is that meals lack of some compounds and have an excess of other. It would be difficult to value the food itself more, if people would not know its