Post 1: Response to In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food is very a controversial book, but Pollan does bring up many strong points about today’s status of processed foods and lack of nutrients within most foods. In the first few pages of the book, Pollan explains that with the rise of more processed foods, the rise of more chronic diseases in humans come with it. In the January issue of American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a study was published about linking lung cancer to processed foods. Although this study was done on mice, it is a sign that we should stop, or slow down, eating processed foods due to their high inorganic content.
A great example of a highly used processed food is margarine. Margarine is what Pollan refers to as a “spreadable vegetable oil.” To me, this does not make much sense. How can an oil become spreadable if oil is liquid? Supposedly developed in the 1950s sometime, margarine has changed its label many times to advertise the newest vitamin or fat it contains. It is these types of processed foods that have caused massive health problems not only in Americans, but in people all over the world. We, as eaters, get all of this news about the newest foods and studies about foods instantly with technology of the twenty-first century. From television commercials to the newspaper, people are telling us to eat more this and less of that. Pollan describes this and wants to get his message across that not all these studies are correct because they have tested only a handful of patients with very rigorous guidelines. Once people realize that most of what they are eating on a daily basis and what people tell them to eat is not good for their health, they will stop eating poorly and become much more healthy.