Expect the Unexpected Michael Pollan has been writing books for the past twenty-five years, informing society about his belief in respect to what is considered food and what is not considered food. He believes that nature and culture affect our daily food intake and how we build our eating tendencies. In fact, one of his famous books called, “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manisfesto” can help the reader fully understand his theory. Pollan’s goal or reason behind writing this book is “to help us reclaim our health and happiness as eaters.” Most of the food we consume is processed food that comes in packages and claim anything but healthy. The Western Diet, for example is characterized by high intake of red meat, refined sugars, and saturated
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My interest towards this particular topic has to do with a limitation that Pollan states about nutritional science. In Defense of Food has a section called, Nutritionism’s Children in which he describes a study that states, “Assume you are alone in a desert island for one year and you can have water and one other food. Pick the food that will be best for your health.” What do you think people answered? “The choices were corn, alfalfa sprouts, hot dogs, spinach, peaches, bananas, and milk chocolate. The most popular choice was bananas (42 percent), followed by spinach (27 percent), corn (12 percent), alfalfa sprouts (7 percent), peaches (5 percent), hot dogs (4 percent), and milk chocolate (3 percent). Only 7 percent of the participants chose one of the two foods that would in fact best support survival: hot dogs and milk chocolate.” Personally, I would have chosen spinach, but I do not understand why the study had hot dogs and milk chocolate as an option. Doesn’t this go against Pollan’s theory of how bad processed food is to our body? Why are hotdogs and milk chocolate proven to best support survival? Why did only seven percent of the people chose these foods? Was there a misconception with Pollan’s principles of healthy food, such as fruits and vegetables? Besides this confusion, I believe that this book has been somewhat helpful to further my knowledge about
My interest towards this particular topic has to do with a limitation that Pollan states about nutritional science. In Defense of Food has a section called, Nutritionism’s Children in which he describes a study that states, “Assume you are alone in a desert island for one year and you can have water and one other food. Pick the food that will be best for your health.” What do you think people answered? “The choices were corn, alfalfa sprouts, hot dogs, spinach, peaches, bananas, and milk chocolate. The most popular choice was bananas (42 percent), followed by spinach (27 percent), corn (12 percent), alfalfa sprouts (7 percent), peaches (5 percent), hot dogs (4 percent), and milk chocolate (3 percent). Only 7 percent of the participants chose one of the two foods that would in fact best support survival: hot dogs and milk chocolate.” Personally, I would have chosen spinach, but I do not understand why the study had hot dogs and milk chocolate as an option. Doesn’t this go against Pollan’s theory of how bad processed food is to our body? Why are hotdogs and milk chocolate proven to best support survival? Why did only seven percent of the people chose these foods? Was there a misconception with Pollan’s principles of healthy food, such as fruits and vegetables? Besides this confusion, I believe that this book has been somewhat helpful to further my knowledge about