Analysis Of Food Pollan

Analysis Essay: In Defense of Food “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Pollan’s straightforward plan for the right eating habits. Follow these steps and you are set for life. Yet while these steps may seem simple for some to follow, for the majority of us regular folks in the United States this seems more like a myth than reality. Pollan makes it his own mission as the messenger to what healthy eating really is by breaking down part by part the history of nutrition-ism, food industries and their effects on society. Pollan targets the American people who have followed the Western diet (filled with fatty, empty calories) while believing the guidelines set by nutritionists and the FDA to be the right diet. This is the ignorance that …show more content…
The time when Americans moved away from cooking at home to having pre-made meals; either in frozen form or picked up at a local restaurant. Americans are known to eating fatty and sugary foods that leave them not only with a satisfying feeling but with extra weight on their bellies. Pollan’s dislike of the Western Diet might as well be called the diet of death since there is no positive outcome of following it. The author compares the Western Diet to other diets around the world in order for his readers to get a taste of the true rottenness the diet beholds, as Pollan states, “…among a dozen different groups all over the world (including Peruvian Indians, Australian Aborigine, and Swiss mountaineers) seen back much the same news…of the common diseases they’d been hard-pressed to find in the native populations they had treated or studied…” (Pollan 91). There were no findings of hypertension or diabetes in areas where the foods eaten were grown by the people locally. Back in the US, these diseases that were now called “Western Diseases” had been normalized with medicine as the simple way to treat them. Pollan criticizes the fact that as Americans we eat all the sugary, oily foods we can, and as soon as we get sick we simply go to the doctor, swallow some pills and then get back to eating the junk we were eating …show more content…
Throughout the book, Pollan has a deep admiration for the diet of the older generations, which consisted of grains and produce that they grew, Pollan believes that by buying food that has been grown locally not only will our health improve, but a sense of appreciation with the Earth will be developed. This appreciation of growing our own food, putting the effort in preparing a meal will motivate us to continue eating healthy, losing the need of processed foods. eating only what the Earth provides for us and staying away from any food that comes packaged along with a twenty ingredient list, is the solution to overcoming diseases that have controlled the way we