The Complete Patient

Where has America gone wrong in its shift to unhealthy nutrition?

Michael Pollan of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” fame tackles that question in an extremely informative New York Times Magazine article, "Unhappy Meals." Be prepared, though—it’s a very long article, and heavy duty in its writing, so I’ve tried to capture some of the salient points.

He sums up the thesis very well in the opening few sentences: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” He then goes on to explain why these simple suggestions have gotten so badly screwed up:

--Since simply selling whole basic foods isn’t very profitable, businesses need to come up with ways to procecess and repackage what we eat.

--Powerful industry lobbies prevent the government from telling the truth about nutrition

--Scientists focus too much on specific nutrients and overlook the more complex issue of how nutrients within foods interact with each other.

--Many studies on nutrition are poorly conceived.

--Processing depletes the nutritional value of many foods.

--Factory farming has depleted the soil, and reduced the nutritional value of grains, grass, vegetables, and fruit.

--There’s a “fad-of-the-year” tendency in foods, beginning with oat bran in 1988. This year, he predicts it will be omega-3.

--He offers excellent suggestions at the end of the article, such as avoiding foods with more than five ingredients, staying away from anything with high-fructose corn syrup, and simply eating less.

Unfortunately, some controversial topics that are part of the problematic food chain he describes are glaringly missing:

--The role of the medical community in fostering poor nutrition, largely through its ignorance and preference for pharmaceutical and surgical approaches to health problems.

--The role of Big Pharma in undermining good nutrition by providing “cures” for diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and other byproducts of poor nutrition.

--The role of insurance companies in upholding the previous two problems.

--And, not surprisingly, omission of the debates over raw milk, grass-fed beef (except via inference, where he explains in general how animal products are affected by what the animals eat).

--And omission of the impact of the food industry’s coming push into “functional foods.”

It’s also a bit simplistic in tracing much of the poor advice we’ve received, such as reducing fat and increasing carbohydrates, to a single change in words by a congressional committee. Surely the food industry (along with Big Pharma, big medicine, and others) would have found a way around the “problem.” In sum, though, this article is additional evidence of a greater willingness by major media to acknowledge the errors of our nutritional ways.