How Far Should You Go To Avoid Processed Foods?

A few years ago, everyone was carb-phobic. Before that Americans went to great lengths to avoid fat. Could processed goods be the next "fear food?"

I found this post on a nutrition blog I follow particularly disconcerting because the person writing in with a question was wondering whether they were better off getting their vitamin D and calcium from supplements after finding out that soy milk is a processed food.

Fortunately, the RD who runs this blog advised that a completely "unprocessed" diet isn't exactly practical and that where the line is drawn between processed and unprocessed is somewhat arbitrary. She points to these points from Michael Pollan's Food Rules as a way of offering guidance:


1. Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize.

2. Don't eat cereal that changes the color of your milk.

3. Eat more food that comes without packaging.

4. Look for foods with fewer than 5 ingredients in the ingredient list.

5. Avoid things made with ingredients that you don't recognize as food.

6. Eat more whole intact grains and less flour.

7. Eat most of your fruit whole and unprocessed.

8. Eat at least some of your vegetables raw every day.

PS—speaking of Michael Pollan, he was on Democracy Now today—definitely worth a listen!

Sorry, Michael Pollan

As I mentioned in Monday's post, Michael Pollan made an appearance last night at the Barnes and Noble in Tribeca. I'm sure a lot of my classmates and fellow Michael Pollan groupies were present, but I decided, instead, to go see my boyfriend's band, My Cousin, the Emperor play a mellow acoustic show at the Rockwood Music Hall.

Sometimes, you just need a night off. When classes are in session, I often have to miss Chris' shows, so it was nice to be able to sit back and enjoy without having to worry about looming assignments or my alarm clock. Since my school is on break and since my two most regular jobs involve colleges in some capacity, I've had a chance to go out to lunch with friends, visit my family, see movies, and even check out a few museums.

As interesting as I find Michael Pollan's work and as great as I'm sure the event was, I just didn't feel like crowding into a Barnes and Noble to talk about someone else's "food rules." And besides, even if I weren't living in sin with the bass player, I'd still love this band.

I think it's important to make time to do things you like to do rather than always do the things you think you "should" do. Enjoying life is just a part of overall wellness as eating right for your body and sleeping enough.

Nutrition and Food in 2010

Good afternoon! I was just procrastinating/perusing some of my favorite blogs, and I came across this post on Marion Nestle's blog Food Politicstitled "What's up with food and nutrition in 2010?"

Her top-ten list includes childhood obesity, food safety regulation, food advertising and labels, and sustainable agriculture, among other things. Definitely worth reading.

Also! If you happen to be in the New York area tomorrow night, Michael Pollan will be appearing at the Barnes and Noble in Tribeca to discuss and sign his new book, Food Rules.

More on The End of Overeating

I love the New York Public Library. I have gotten to read so many great books without having to pay a dime.

David Kessler's The End of Overeating finally came in for me last week, and I must say, if you have the opportunity to read it, do it.

To give you a quick summary, Michael Pollen says of this book: "A fascinating account of the science of human appetite, as well as its exploitation by the food industry. The End of Overeating is an invaluable contribution to the national conversation about the catastrophe that is the modern American diet."

Kessler gets into the specifics of the sugar-salt-fat flavors people are conditioned to crave and the ways in which foods are engineered to be irresistible. I guarantee, you will never look at a TGIFridays or a Chili's or a Cheesecake Factory menu the same way ever again.

I have to say, though, the way he writes about people's responses to trigger foods and their feelings of powerlessness against them stresses me out a little. I think that's a compliment to his writing and ability to communicate the hold these foods have on these individuals. This book is compelling and fascinating and it makes me feel a tiny bit bad for all the lab rats involved in the experiments cited. In short: it's a must-read.

Michael Pollan's Rules

I know that posting about Michael Pollan on a nutrition blog is kind of like posting about jeans on a fashion blog, but the guy is popular for a reason...

This January, he has a new book coming out in which he offers 20 Rules to Eat By. Part of his research included posting a request on Tara Parker-Pope's Well blog on NYTimes.com, asking readers to submit their own rules. Within days he had over 2,500 responses.

"My premise," he says, "is that for all the authority we grant to science in matters of nutrition, culture still has a lot to teach us about how to choose, prepare and eat food, and that this popular wisdom is worth preserving — perhaps today more than ever, in this era of dazzling food science, supersize portions and widespread dietary confusion."

You can read more about these rules here.

Wanna see some of Pollan's favorite rules?

Big Food Vs. Big Insurance

On September 10th, the New York Times ran an Op-Ed by Michael Pollan titled "Big Food Vs. Big Insurance." In the piece, Pollan reflects on the health care debate and suggests that the fact that the U.S. spends twice as much on health care per person as most European countries is because that, on average, we're fatter, according to a recent study.

So many chronic diseases are linked to diet, yet people seem slow to use the power they have to eat better and help prevent the development of these illnesses, such as Type II diabetes (which the U.S. is spending $16 billion to treat).

"That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry," he says, calling the way American's eat the "elephant in the room" during the healthcare debate.

"To put it more bluntly," says Pollan, "the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup."

He praises the soda tax and the new "are you pouring on the fat?" anti-sugary beverage ad campaign as well as innovations in the approach to tackling childhood obesity.

Personally, I agree with a lot of what he says, but reforming the food industry is going to take a lot of time and energy. I'd love to see a bunch of people get on board for this and make it priority, but the U.S. really isn't so big on preventative medicine. You'd almost think they want you to get as sick as possible so you'll just have to spend more to "fix the problem." That's just my cynical viewpoint on it, though perhaps that "wait until a problem develops and then treat just the acute symptoms thing" is more subconscious, something deeply ingrained in our society and not a conscious attempt at making more money.

The main thing I feel after reading this is that I hope a lot more people wake up to the idea that if you work to maintain a healthy lifestyle during the course of your life, you're more likely to avoid preventable, expensive illnesses. The question is how are you going to wake them up?

Cooking as Spectator Sport

Michael Pollan has a cover article in this week's New York Times Magazine called "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch" about how cooking shows and the food network have changed the way Americans cook and view cooking.

A lot has changed since 1963, when Julia Child's "The French Chef" first appeared on American television (which also happened to be the year that Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique came out).

A lot of shows like Iron Chef America, Top Chef, and The Next Food Network Star move so fast and involve so many obscure ingredients, it's hard to garner any kind of information about cooking. The focus is more on the consumption of "high-end food" rather than the production of it. The message has become: Don't try this at home. If you want to eat like this, go to a restaurant.

"If Julia took the fear out of cooking," Pollan writes, "these shows take the fear—the social anxiety—out of ordering in restaurants (Hey, now I know what a shiso leaf is and what 'crudo' means!)."

The intention is to have people interested enough in the food and the cooking of it to stay glued to the TV, but not into it in the way that they would want to get up and go make that food instead of remaining glued in front of the set. The ads aren't even geared towards cooking or kitchen appliances—they're for foods.

One of my favorite quotes from this article is about when Pollan asks a chef friend if he can learn anything about cooking from the Food Network, and the friend replies, "How much do you learn about basketball by watching the NBA?"

Hm...Also valid: watching basketball sure as hell doesn't make me want to go dribble a ball outside with a bunch of dudes who are two feet taller than me. I'd rather marvel at the athleticism of the bros on TV. Not that I ever watch basketball—but if I did...

Anyway, there are so many aspects of this article I could go on and on about.

It's definitely worth a read...

Mushroom-Hunting Adages

I've been reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma the past week-and-a-half. I was just reading a chapter about his mushroom-hunting experience in California and felt compelled to share this paragraph, found in the middle of page 383:

Ben and Anthony had a slew of these mushroom-hunting adages and I collected them over the course of the day. "Seeing is boleting" means you never see any mushrooms until someone else has demonstrated their presence by finding one. "Mushroom frustration" is what you feel when everyone around you is seeing them and you're still blind—until, that is, you find your first, thereby breaking you "mushroom virginity." Then there's the "cluster fuck," when your eyes are on and other hunters crowd you, hoping your good fortune will rub off. Cluster fucking, I was given to understand, was bad manners. And then there was the "screen-saver"—the fact that after several hours interrogating the ground for little brown dunce caps, their images will be burned on your retinas. "You'll see, when you get into bed tonight," Ben said, "you'll shut your eyes and there they'll be again—wall-to-wall morels."

Heat & Eat At Your Own Risk

On the front page of today's New York Times was an article about ConAgra's attempts to figure out which of the 25 ingredients in their frozen chicken pot pie had caused salmonella poisoning in an estimated 15,000 people in 2007. 

To deal with the problem, they told consumers to heat the pie to 165 degrees, using a thermometer to ensure safety. The Times tested this found it ain't so easy. 

And ConAgra isn't the only company to be in this position. Other food companies are revamping their food safety notices and instructions in hopes that consumers will be sure to cook food thoroughly and avoid infection. You hear that? It's in your hands, kids.  

What especially creeps me out is that there are so many ingredients in the pie in the first place. Worse, a lot of companies reportedly don't even know who supplies all those ingredients!

Perhaps I'm hyper-sensitive to that issue right now because I recently read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, which explores how all the added nutrients and additives in food have us consuming more and more "edible foodlike substances," products of food science rather than nature.  

Sure, that thing in front of you may look like a loaf of bread, but what's with the "azodicarbonamide" and "triticale?" I thought bread was basically just flour, water, yeast, and salt. 

I know that in our fridge, we have a hearty loaf of Arnold's Grains & More DOUBLE PROTEIN. Yikes! Wouldn't it be better to get protein from sources in which nature intended there to be protein? Yet we still bought it because, eh, this is what was on sale this week. Besides, people who follow a vegetarian diet need to get as much protein from alternative sources as possible, right? I hate feeling like I'm being swayed by marketing, but I guess it's hard to avoid.