Michael Pollan Unhappy Meal Analysis

According to the World Health Organization, “Every year, one out of six people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 Americans die from foodborne illnesses.” About 80 percent of all cases of heart disease, strokes and Type 2 diabetes could be prevented if people ate healthier and were more physically active. In the article “Unhappy Meals” by Michael Pollan, the author tries to give advice on how to prevent such illnesses. He argues, how if everyone would “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (Pollan 1) they can easily reach their goal of becoming healthy. He explains this “rule of thumb” by stating that most of the things we consume today are composed of man-made nutrients or enhanced with nutrients, as opposed to the food “your …show more content…
He asserts “the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care.”(Pollan 23). According to The Rationalization and Persistence of Organic Food beliefs in the Face of Contrary Evidence by Olson, Erik L, the authors disprove Pollan’s claim through a content analysis of 710 reader responses for a Stanford study, which objective was to examine the ‘pro-organic’ and ‘organic-skeptic’ reader comments and determine the personal impact of organic food consumption, as well as the environmental impact of organic food production. The exposure of a Stanford University meta-analysis, which concludes that organically produced foods do not offer any significant nutritional advantages, as opposed to, conventionally produced food completely refutes Pollen’s claim. The study proves that just because a food has the label “organic” on it does not mean it is significantly “healthier”. The only difference between man-made food and so called “organic” food would be the price. Although Pollan’s claim was intended to help the reader, it resulted in doing the complete opposite. Due to his invalid information, his argument was convincing the reader to waste their money on overpriced “organic” food when in reality it has no …show more content…
He states that paying more and eating less “will not only contribute to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food” (Pollan 23). However, Pollan’s claim is contradicted in Tesfay Birhane’s article Urban Food Insecurity in the Context of High Food Prices Based on a Cross Sectional Study in Addis Abbab, Ethiopia. In this recently conducted study, a total of 550 households were selected and questioned. The analysis proved that “75% of households were food insecure and 23% were in a state of hunger” those with higher food insecurity were more likely to have lower dietary diversity and are less likely to consume higher quality food. Reducing the meal size and consuming less expensive, lower quality food was the most common coping strategy to high food process of many households. (Birhane 2) This disproves Pollans’ claim and deems it unrealistic for the majority of the world, because, he fails to consider that the majority of his readers would be underprivileged, and unable to afford any money oriented methods of becoming healthy. If they had the money to be healthy, they would consult with a specialist, trainer or a nutritionist to achieve their goal. Once again, Michael Pollan misinterprets his audience and fails to provide an effective