Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants. -Michael Pollan

I never thought I would be writing a blog post about food! If you asked me 5 years ago, and certainly when I was in high school, if I thought I would be interested in nutrition, and even to write about it, I would have told you ... no way!

However, I have been on an interesting journey, along with my wife and boys, in the area of nutrition.  Some of the stimuli in pushing us on this journey include my reading of In Defense of Food, @Michael Pollan. (which has one of the best subtitles I've ever seen: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.) Another involves some symptoms my wife and one of my sons began to experience. We wanted to to avoid putting lots of medications and artificial substances in our bodies, when it just might be better to address what we're putting in our bodies in the first place!


For now, I'll just share what I learned from Michael Pollan's book. He spends the first few chapters persuading the reader that his way of framing the issues are worth considering. Once this groundwork has been laid, and he does a good job, then he gets practical and prescriptive. Below, I'll give you exactly what those guidelines are.

My family hasn't been able to apply all of these guidelines yet, of course. The ones that we have made progress on are the following:

Only eat foods that your great-grandmother would recognize as foods. More specifically, avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup
All of these are indicators that the "food product" in question is very likely to be highly processed. 
Avoid food products that make health claims. These food products must first have a package, which should be our first clue..

It has been an interesting journey. I encourage you to take a look at our modern American diet, and the diseases that are unique to our time... Pollan posits that these are related, and I'm willing to believe that he's really on to something.


Here are Pollan's "Rules":

Eat Food: Food Defined

1. Don't eat anything your great grand-mother wouldn't recognize as food
2. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more that five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup
3. Avoid food products that make health claims
4. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle
5. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible

Mostly Plants: What to Eat

1. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves
2. You are what what you eat eats too (the diet of the animals we eat has a bearing on the nutritional quality, and healthfulness, of the food itself, whether it is meat or eggs)
3. If you have the space, buy a freezer (So you can buy quality food in quantity when it is available)... I have concerns about this from an energy perspective. I'll have to think about this one, though.
4. Eat well-grown food from healthy soils ("Organic" is not the last word on how to grow well)
5. Eat wild foods when you can
6. Be the kind of person who takes supplements (not necessarily TAKE the supplements; be the kind of person who would: be more health-conscious, better educated, more affluent. So be the kind of person who would take supplements, then save your money)
7. Eat more like the French, or the Italians, or the Japanese, or the Indians, or the Greeks (Eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture. There are two dimensions to this: what a culture eats, and how they eat them. Both are relevant.)
8. Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism (i.e. all the funky ways Americans now eat soy. We actually now eat more soy than the Japanese or Chinese do!)
9. Don't look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet (In the same way that foods are more than the sum of their nutrient parts, dietary patterns seem to be more than the sum of the foods taht comprise them.)
10. Have a glass of wine with dinner

Not Too Much: How to Eat

1. Pay more, eat less (higher quality)
2. Eat meals
3. Do all your eating at a table (no, a desk is not a table)
4. Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does (gas stations now make more money selling food than gasoline...but it's highly processed food)
5. Try not to eat alone (because we tend to eat more when we're alone)
6. Consult your gut (stop when you're full, not when the container is empty)
7. Eat slowly
8. Cook and, if you can, plant a garden

I'm very interesting in seeing the film Food, Inc., which definitely belongs in this conversation... I have requested it at our local library, but so have many other people, so it'll be a while.

20th Century - Bloodiest or most peaceful in history?

Ron Sider, on December 19, 2007, said that the 20th century was the bloodiest in human history.

The 20th century was the bloodiest in human history. In Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century, Jonathan Glover estimates that 86,000,000 people died in wars fought from 1900 to 1989. That means 2,500 people every day, or 100 people every hour, for 90 years.

In addition to those killed in war, government-sponsored genocide and mass murder killed approximately 120,000,000 people in the 20th century—perhaps more than 80,000,000 in the two Communist countries of China and the Soviet Union alone, according to R. J. Rummel's Statistics of Democide.

I've heard Tony Campolo and others quote this from time to time, and was willing to believe it. I had no reason to question it. Sounded pretty logical.

I also believe that things are going to get worse and worse and human history goes on (i.e. the Biblical book of Revelation), rather than better and better until we reach utopia.

However, as I have recently been enjoying several talks from the TED conference podcast, I've been exposed to many new, fun, and intriguing ideas in many subject areas.

This TED talk, given by Steven Pinker, makes one wonder, or at least gives one some historical perspective and some additional things to consider. The comment thread at the bottom of the link above has an interesting dialogue...

So, was the 20th Century the bloodiest or the most peaceful in human history? I don't know. What I do know is that this sinful, fallen world is a mess. It always has been, even since the Fall of Humanity.