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Michael pollan publications escape from western diet
Pollan's criticisms of the Western diet
Unhealthy eating habits in america
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In “What’s Eating America,” Micheal Pollan criticizes America’s dependence on fossil fuel and fixed nitrogen instead of organic farming. In 1947, a munition plant used explosives to make chemical fertilizers. After WWII, the surplus of ammonium nitrate are converted into agricultural purposes. Although the earth’s atmosphere consists of 80% nitrogen, almost all the atoms are useless. In 1909, Fritz Haber discovered a way to fix nitrogen molecules by using electrical lightning.
In recent decade, the United States has seen supermarkets continuously get filled with packages labeled with things like “Low sodium” or “No Trans Fats.” Companies stick these labels on their food to match the current fads of what is good for you and what is not. In his essay Unhappy Meals, Michael Pollan advocates a return to natural and basic foods, and deplores nutritionism. Pollan argues that nutritionism does not actually tell people what is healthy or not, and that the only way to be sure you are eating healthy is to eat natural, fresh food.
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.
Michael Pollan’s “Escape from the Western Diet,” is used to directly talk to Americans about the western diet and how he believes they should escape from it. His main point is that we should escape to avoid the harmful effects associated with it such as “western diseases” (Pollan, 420). Then he goes on to describes what Americans believe they should be eating and how they don’t even seem to care. They are nutritionist with their theories, the food industry supporting the theories by new healthy products, and the health industry reaping the reward by making medication to support those same theories. For Americans to escape this diet, they must get the idea of it out of their heads.
The Third Plate by chef Dan Barber is a non-fiction book that examines agriculture, food, and sustainability, which he argues for a new way of thinking about America’s food system. Barber explores how our current system is unsustainable and unhealthy for American’s, and tries to find new ways to change the system by visiting several farms, restaurants, and high class chefs. Barber used a storytelling technique in his writing to convey his viewpoints and facts from a historical illustration, personal experiences, and modern day systems. In the opening part of The Third Plate, Barber tells a historic story about a farmer from Spain who created new ways to modify his wheat in a healthier and tastier way. This opening set a tone for the rest of the book by establishing his approach to exploring sustainable agriculture.
]The first rule I chose in Michael Pollan’s “Food Rules” was rule eight, which was to avoid food products with the word “lite” or the terms “low fat” or “nonfat” in their names. I chose this rule because when eating these foods you’re not getting the vitamins, nutrients, and many other things that strengthen your body. I also chose this rule because, some odd chemicals would be added to incorporated the fat or macromolecule taken away. I can incorporated this rule into my regular diet by having the “whole” version of the product instead of “low fat” or “nonfat”.
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).
In the book, The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Pollan claims we should be more knowledgeable about what we consume as omnivores. As omnivores we have a variety of food, we can choose from, however, we don’t regularly make the best decisions for ourselves. Pollan argues this by showing us where our food really comes from and how we can find many unwanted extras. Pollan shows us that we’ve evolved as humans from how we used to eat to how we eat now. Pollan argues this by introducing us to all the food chains we value today, some much more than others.
I believe that Micheal Pollan has described the bad habbits that the typical Americans do in majority of the time by mistaking fast foods with the whole healthy foods because lack of time or lifestyle. In the Michael Pollans argument about the "Western Diet" he informs that the majority of the American population about the western diet and believes that they need to get away from it, but it's for their own better health that many of us sometimes forget or don't even pay attention to it. There's many factors that the reasons Americans should get away from it is only to avoid the harmful chemicals we eat from a plain cheeseburger or fries and that effects our metabolism to get worse associated with it as the "western diseases" (page 433) Micheal Pollan has said.
Michael Pollan, in "Eat Food: Food Defined" argues that large amounts of what we consume is not food and his goal in this article is to assist eaters. He mentions that ordinary food is an important for consumers. In this article, the author provides some recommendations that eaters should follow to substitute fake foods. Firstly, Pollan gives some pieces of advice explaining how we, as consumers, can avoid food that our grandmother do not identifies by giving an example of unknown ingredients of yogurt. In this example, he tries to show how to read the ingredients label whether it consists of familiar elements or not, and we should be aware of this kind of foods that travel to our body.
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
active is becoming harder in our world, and exercising can not always counteract the type of foods we eat. To burn off a 20 ounces bottle of coke, a child would have to bike for an hour and fifteen minutes. One cookie would take twenty minutes of jogging to burn off, and the medium container of french fries takes one hour and twelve minutes of swimming to burn off. The food that we have to burn off effects how easily we can burn them. An example of this is consuming 160 calories of almonds, as the fiber allows them to go through your system slower, and the blood sugar level does not rise a lot, and the rise it does get lasts longer.
When trying to eat healthier we tend to focus on how many calories and nutrients are in the foods we eat, when we should be focusing on the degree of processing (Pollan 423). He thinks we should eat more whole foods and avoid those that are overly processed. This would be simple, except for the fact that the industry has invaded many whole foods (Pollan 424). One example of this Pollan gives is the beef we eat comes from cattle raised on a Western diet. Because
This source has helped my research a lot because the survey they put on this source states how many people want to live a healthier lifestyle but cannot because they have trouble understanding what foods are healthy and what aren 't because they don 't understand what is being said on the nutrition labels. This source also states that these confusing nutrition labels don 't just make it hard for people who are dieting but it also hard for people who have allergies or sensitivity to some types of foods. The nutrition labels don 't state clear enough of what is actually being processed into the food. I also chose this source because it says that ingredients are a major part in how consumers pick their foods. On most food labels the ingredients are so small that most people cannot see what it says.
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.
