I haven’t read the book although I read about it in nutrition related news sources when it was published. I’m personally a hobby reader of nutrition science since a couple of years, and what put me somewhat off regarding this book was this motto of the authors: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
The reason is that—without going into the details—I am confident that the “mostly plants” part is false. Skimming the reviews, looking through the table of contents and reading some pages (all through Amazon) I just subtracted several further points from the book because of numerous scientific inaccuracies, overly polemic tone and the usual vacuous blaming of food industries and nutrition science. And yep, the identification of nutritionism as a form of evil raises another red flag. It seems to me that the author justifies ad-hoc conclusions with the (basically false) argument that “foods can’t be reduced to the constituent chemicals”, and then sends several circular justifications forth and back.
The harm done by margarine, wheat, sugar etc. is the consequence of doing bad science and reaching incorrect conclusions. The remedy, however, comes from doing good science and honest reductionism, not from espousing various forms of non-science and magical thinking.
but they aren’t Food, at least not according to Pollan. He tries to emphasize that people used to be much healthier because they ate Things, rather than Parts of Things. He claims that historically, when we take a plant and process it to get a single nutrient out of it, we are likely to produce much less healthful food, and that applies to pretty much all three of your points, with the possible exception of wheat (especially if you eat most of the plant).
This is his argument, not mine, but it’s one I’m moderately swayed by.
By the end of the book he’s also clarified that it’s not that food reductionism doesn’t work, period. It’s just that it’s not nearly at a point yet where we actually know what we’re doing.
Right. It’s very important to note (especially around here) that he’s not anti-science, he’s just pointing out that the current state of nutrition science is awful and that we’re currently not ready to custom-design our food.
I also more-or-less agree with this. I also think that for similar reasons it makes sense to get your protein from meat rather then processed soy or whatever.
For the record, I get my protein from dairy and eggs, which is basically the same. people vastly overestimate how much protein they need. Three glasses of milk is basically it. It’s also perfectly healthy to get your protein from rice and beans and similar combinations.
But I do eat a lot of processed soy products, and the book has made me rethink that a bit. I converted to partial vegetarianism a while ago, and used Boca products to ease the transition. Then I stayed that way for five years. It’s probably time to try and take some more steps to improving my diet.
Cool. My guess is that the snippets you’ve heard so far are the same kinds of buzzwords that were bothering me in the first half of the book. I think at least some of his motivation for that was to make the book more controversial and generate more buzz. Which, in terms of reaching the general population, may have been a good decision on his part. But I admit that if all you’re aware of is the controversial buzzwords, and there’s plenty of other good books you could be reading, ignoring a book with controversial buzzwords is also rational.
I haven’t read the book although I read about it in nutrition related news sources when it was published. I’m personally a hobby reader of nutrition science since a couple of years, and what put me somewhat off regarding this book was this motto of the authors: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
The reason is that—without going into the details—I am confident that the “mostly plants” part is false. Skimming the reviews, looking through the table of contents and reading some pages (all through Amazon) I just subtracted several further points from the book because of numerous scientific inaccuracies, overly polemic tone and the usual vacuous blaming of food industries and nutrition science. And yep, the identification of nutritionism as a form of evil raises another red flag. It seems to me that the author justifies ad-hoc conclusions with the (basically false) argument that “foods can’t be reduced to the constituent chemicals”, and then sends several circular justifications forth and back.
The harm done by margarine, wheat, sugar etc. is the consequence of doing bad science and reaching incorrect conclusions. The remedy, however, comes from doing good science and honest reductionism, not from espousing various forms of non-science and magical thinking.
For comparison, these three blogs are pretty well-researched and overall well-written: Whole Health Source, Daily Lipid, Raw Food SOS
I haven’t read the book either but am wondering how on earth he comes up with ‘mostly plants’ given that the three harmful products just mentioned:
are all plant products.
Especially looking at margarine, which is a plant product whose substitution for animal products (butter and lard) turned out to have been a bad idea.
but they aren’t Food, at least not according to Pollan. He tries to emphasize that people used to be much healthier because they ate Things, rather than Parts of Things. He claims that historically, when we take a plant and process it to get a single nutrient out of it, we are likely to produce much less healthful food, and that applies to pretty much all three of your points, with the possible exception of wheat (especially if you eat most of the plant).
This is his argument, not mine, but it’s one I’m moderately swayed by.
By the end of the book he’s also clarified that it’s not that food reductionism doesn’t work, period. It’s just that it’s not nearly at a point yet where we actually know what we’re doing.
Right. It’s very important to note (especially around here) that he’s not anti-science, he’s just pointing out that the current state of nutrition science is awful and that we’re currently not ready to custom-design our food.
I also more-or-less agree with this. I also think that for similar reasons it makes sense to get your protein from meat rather then processed soy or whatever.
For the record, I get my protein from dairy and eggs, which is basically the same. people vastly overestimate how much protein they need. Three glasses of milk is basically it. It’s also perfectly healthy to get your protein from rice and beans and similar combinations.
But I do eat a lot of processed soy products, and the book has made me rethink that a bit. I converted to partial vegetarianism a while ago, and used Boca products to ease the transition. Then I stayed that way for five years. It’s probably time to try and take some more steps to improving my diet.
Margarine doesn’t count as “food” according to his definition.
I am interested in what you have to say about the “mostly plants” details. That part syncs up with pretty much everything I’ve otherwise heard.
I’m currently reading the full book; I’ll try to post some detailed thoughts after I finish and have some time.
Cool. My guess is that the snippets you’ve heard so far are the same kinds of buzzwords that were bothering me in the first half of the book. I think at least some of his motivation for that was to make the book more controversial and generate more buzz. Which, in terms of reaching the general population, may have been a good decision on his part. But I admit that if all you’re aware of is the controversial buzzwords, and there’s plenty of other good books you could be reading, ignoring a book with controversial buzzwords is also rational.