Butter is a processed food

March 6, 2012 at 8:06 am · Filed under In Defense of Food, Science ·Tagged , , , ,

In explaining the appeal of nutritionism to food processors, Michael Pollan tells the story of margarine, which “started out in the nineteenth century as a cheap and inferior substitute for butter, but with the emergence of the lipid hypothesis in the 1950s…could be marketed as better–smarter!–than butter” (33).

Margarine isn’t a bad example for building a case against nutritionism; it’s probably the best one there is. While I think that Pollan somewhat overstates the role of nutritionism in pushing margarine into the mainstream (mainly by understating the importance of wartime butter shortages and lower prices to margarine’s success), it has become sufficiently clear that the nutritional establishment erred in recommending that Americans consume trans fats.

With that said, there’s a certain irony to the way in which he contrasts it with butter. When he explains that margarine is “the product not of nature but of human ingenuity” (33), it is worth pointing out that one doesn’t simply find butter in nature, either. Butter is, of course, produced by separating the fat out of cow’s milk.

Now, most food is processed in some way, and one might argue that the process of producing butter is one that has proven itself over time. However, in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan explains the problem with processed foods in a way that makes it hard to give butter a pass:

Natural selection predisposed us to the taste of sugar and fat (its texture as well as taste) because sugars and fats offer the most energy (which is what a calorie is) per bite. Yet in nature–in whole foods–we seldom encounter these nutrients in the concentrations we now find them in in processed foods… (106)

Thus, butter, as a concentrated fat, exemplifies the problem that Pollan identifies with processed foods.

The point here is not about the healthfulness of butter (I’ll leave that question to the nutrition researchers and dietitians) but the shallowness of Pollan’s discussion of food processing. Pollan will later suggest that we should “entertain seriously the proposition that processed foods of any kind are a big part of the problem” (141). Yet he frequently mentions butter in a positive light, never mentioning how it comes to be. It’s a remarkable lack of nuance for somebody who claims to be arguing against a Manichaean ideology.

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Does nutritionism preclude pleasurable eating?

March 3, 2012 at 10:52 am · Filed under In Defense of Food ·Tagged , , ,

Michael Pollan devotes a chapter of In Defense of Food to defining the notion of “nutritionism,” which we’re to distinguish from nutrition. Whereas the latter is a scientific discipline, the professor of journalism explains, “As the ‘-ism’ suggests, [nutritionism] is not a scientific subject but an ideology.” This ideology rests on the premise that “Foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts” and several other premises which flow from this first one.

Pollan argues that because we can’t see nutrients, in the nutritionist view, “it falls to scientists…to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. In form this is a quasireligious idea, suggesting the visible world is not the one that really matters, which implies the need for a priesthood.” The references to religion are a bit odd, given that Pollan will later take nutrition science to task for changing its mind. More importantly, though, the need for expert help doesn’t arise so much from the focus on nutrients as the decision to care about the health consequences of our dietary choices. If I wanted to know whether white rice or brown rice would make for a healthier meal, I suppose I could get all my friends together, assign half of them to eat white rice and half to eat brown rice and then record their health outcomes over the course of the next few years. No experts required! Of course, that would take a long time, I’d probably have a pretty small sample size, and people would stop being friends with me. So I’d prefer to direct the question to the “priesthood,” even though I’d be thinking about foods, which (unlike nutrients) I can see.

Another assumption of nutritionism, he explains, is “that the whole point of eating is to maintain and promote bodily health.” Perhaps this follows if we interpret his definition of nutritionism in the most literal sense, but I would bet that only a tiny minority of people who think about nutrition in terms of nutrients actually believe that we can understand everything there is to know about a food by studying its constituent nutrients. Some might believe that we can understand the relationship between diet and disease in terms of the nutrients, but that doesn’t mean they can’t also see a place for less healthful foods in the diet now and then, perhaps for reasons of culture or pleasure.

Pollan further argues, “It follows from the premise that food is foremost about physical health that the nutrients in food should be divided into the healthy ones and the unhealthy ones–good nutrients and bad.” This is another consequence that doesn’t really follow. Though Pollan has criticized the campaign to reduce fat intake, you’d be hard-pressed to find a nutrition researcher or dietitian who didn’t understand that some amount of dietary fat is essential. The Manichaean view, then, is more a product of a lack of attention to nuance than to the ideology of nutritionism itself.

And Pollan, of course, will sound every bit as Manichaean as any supporter of nutritionism when he contrasts fresh and processed foods. Indeed, in the same chapter, he argues that “the most troubling feature of nutritionism” is that it does not allow for “any qualitative distinction between whole foods and processed foods.” Quoting Gyorgy Scrinis, he argues that in the nutritionist view, “even processed foods may be considered to be ‘healthier’ for you than whole foods if they contain the appropriate quantities of some nutrients.”

To find this idea troubling, one has to take a position that is perhaps more radical than it might sound. One has to reject, for instance, the idea that iodized salt has played an important role in reducing brain damage in infants (or, I suppose, one could reject the idea that brain damage is unhealthy). Elsewhere, David Julian McClements, César Vega, Anne E. McBride, and Eric Andrew Decker have argued that fortification of flour has played a critical role in reducing deaths due to pellagra. To be sure, there are ways to process food that are less benign, but if Scrinis and Pollan want us to believe that processed foods cannot be healthier than whole foods under any circumstances, then they need to be able to answer to these examples.

By the end of the chapter, nutritionism has become something so big and bad that it seems to encompass just about everything that’s wrong with our way of eating. Now the time is ripe for Pollan to save us from this ideology which threatens not just our health but pleasure, common sense, and even food itself.

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Diet, Nutrition, Cancer, and Sloppy Journalism

February 29, 2012 at 7:52 am · Filed under Facts, In Defense of Food, Misrepresentation of sources, Science ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Michael Pollan argues in In Defense of Food that the Dietary Goals for the United States, compiled by Senator George McGovern’s Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, ushered in an era in which dietary guidelines focused on nutrients to the exclusion of whole foods. He explains that McGovern’s committee initially recommended a reduction in red meat and dairy consumption before the interested lobbies complained. The result was a compromise, urging Americans to “choose meats, poultry, and fish that will reduce saturated fat intake.”

Pollan explains the significance of the change,

First, notice that the stark message to “eat less” of a particular food–in this case meat–had been deep-sixed; don’t look for it ever again in any official U.S. government dietary pronouncement. (24)

As evidence of this last point, Pollan trots out the National Academy of Sciences’ 1982 report Diet, Nutrition, and Cancer. He tells us,

The lesson of the McGovern fiasco was quickly absorbed by all who would pronounce on the American diet. When a few years later the National Academy of Sciences looked into the question of diet and cancer, it was careful to frame its recommendations nutrient by nutrient rather than food by food, to avoid offending any powerful interests. (25)

He further notes, “With each of its chapters focused on a single nutrient, the final draft of the National Academy of Sciences report, Diet, Nutrition and Cancer framed its recommendations in terms of saturated fats and antioxidants rather than beef and broccoli” (26).

After a few minutes of skimming the report, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Pollan and I had looked at the same document. He is correct to point out that the recommendations referenced fat, rather than meat. He’s not quite correct to say that each chapter focuses on a single nutrient. Some of the chapters discuss multiple nutrients (for instance, Chapter 10, titled “Minerals,” discusses selenium, zinc, iron, copper, iodine, molybdenum, cadmium, arsenic and lead), but on that point he’s close enough for me.

Where Pollan misses the mark badly is in failing to note that the report’s recommendations weren’t found in these nutrient-focused chapters. These chapters summarized the existing science on the various nutrients, without saying what we should do about it. The report did include a section called “Interim Dietary Guidelines,” but this was found in the report’s Executive Summary. Summarized, the guidelines were as follows:

  1. “The Committee recommends that the consumption of both saturated and unsaturated fats be reduced in the average U.S. diet.”
  2. “The committee emphasizes the importance of including fruits, vegetables, and whole grain cereal products in the daily diet…Results of laboratory experiments have supported these findings in tests of individual nutritive and nonnutritive constituents of fruits (especially citrus fruits) and vegetables (especially carotene-rich and cruciferous vegetables).”
  3. “[T]he committee recommends that the consumption of food preserved by salt-curing (including salt-pickling) or smoking be minimized.”
  4. “The committee recommends that efforts continue to be made to minimize contamination of foods with carcinogens from any source. Where such contaminants are unavoidable, permissible levels should continue to be established and food supply monitored to assure that such levels are not exceeded. Furthermore, intentional additives (direct and indirect) should continue to be evaluated for carcinogenic activity before they are approved for use in the food supply.”
  5. “The committee suggests that further efforts be made to identify mutagens in food and to expedite testing for their carcinogenicity. Where feasible and prudent, mutagens should be removed or their concentration minimized when this can be accomplished without jeopardizing the nutritive value of foods or introducing other potentially hazardous substances into the diet.”
  6. “[T]he committee recommends that if alcoholic beverages are consumed, it be done in moderation.”

Thus, of the six interim guidelines, only one was expressed in terms of nutrients, two phrased their recommendations in terms of foods (one of those even recommended eating less of something!), two were seemingly commonsense encouragements to keep dangerous substances out of the food supply, and one was a reminder not to drink too much.

Although the recommendation pertaining to vegetables did briefly mention carotenes, the committee included a clarification between the second and third guidelines:

These recommendations apply only to foods as sources of nutrients–not to dietary supplements of individual nutrients. The vast literature examined in this report focuses on the relationship between the consumption of foods and the incidence of cancer in human populations. In contrast there, is very little information on the effects of various levels of individual nutrients on the risk of cancer in humans. Therefore, the committee is unable to predict the health effects of high and potentially toxic doses of isolated nutrients consumed in the form of supplements.

They were serious about this point, too. In his critique of reductionism (which Pollan quotes), T. Colin Campbell (a co-author of the report) wrote that the Federal Trade Commission sued General Nutrition Centers for using the report’s guidelines to advertise supplements.

Although Pollan has argued that nutrition science “knows much less than it cares to admit” (14), the report shows that the science admits its limits more than Pollan cares to admit. The lack of recommendations on so many of the nutrients considered is an implicit acknowledgment of the lack of evidence. Reading the chapters focusing on the various nutrients, one sees the point made more explicitly. For instance, the researchers wrote in the conclusion of their section on selenium, “firm conclusions cannot be drawn on the basis of the present limited evidence.”

As for those chapters on nutrients, one finds plenty of references to whole foods there, too. For instance, though Pollan writes, “The language of the final report highlighted the benefits of the antioxidants in vegetables rather than the vegetables themselves” (26), the report’s summary of the epidemiological evidence on vitamin A reads,

A growing accumulation of epidemiological evidence indicates that there is an inverse relationship between the risk of cancer and consumption of foods containing vitamin A (e.g., liver) or its precursors (e.g., some carotenoids in dark green and deep yellow vegetables). Most of the data, however, do not show whether the effects are due to carotenoids, to vitamin A itself, or to some other constituents of these foods.

Of course, none of this is directly relevant to the question of how much we can learn about human nutrition by studying nutrients (instead of foods), and it’s on that question that Pollan seems to make his main argument. However, what we can observe here is a pattern of misrepresenting the claims that science has made. This, of course, is helpful to somebody trying to discredit a scientific discipline. But it should be much less helpful if Pollan wants to convince the reader that he is a careful researcher and a credible source of information.

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Science, culture, and nutrient deficiencies

February 26, 2012 at 8:01 am · Filed under In Defense of Food, Science ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Michael Pollan writes in the first chapter of In Defense of Food,

Vitamins did a lot for the prestige of nutritional science. These special molecules, which at first were isolated from foods and then later synthesized in a laboratory, could cure people of nutritional deficiencies such as scurvy or beriberi almost overnight in a convincing demonstration of reductive chemistry’s power. (21)

Pollan doesn’t dwell on the topic of nutrient deficiencies, but I will. In their article “In Defense of Food Science,” David Julian McClements, César Vega, Anne E. McBride, and Eric Andrew Decker point out that fortified foods have played important role in alleviating a number of diseases, namely pellagra, spinal tube defects, beriberi, goiter, and rickets.

The example of beriberi, which is detailed in Kenneth J. Carpenter’s book Beriberi, White Rice, and Vitamin B: A Disease, A Cause, and a Cure, is particularly instructive. Beriberi, which is often fatal when left untreated, was so prevalent in late nineteenth century Japan that one western doctor dubbed it “the national disease of Japan.” Moreover, western doctors visiting Japan after the Perry Expedition brought about the country’s opening to the West in 1854 found evidence that the disease had been around for a long time.

In the late 1800s, it was determined that beriberi was diet-related, and shortly thereafter it was discovered that beriberi was caused by a deficiency of the nutrient now known as thiamine (vitamin B1). In the case of the Japanese sufferers of beriberi, the thiamine deficiency was related to a diet based heavily on white rice. Although rice naturally contains thiamine, most of that thiamine is found in the husk, which is removed to produce white rice. Carpenter explains the preference for white rice, “In practice, nearly everyone who eats rice as their staple food, that is, the centerpiece for each of their daily meals, prefers white rice if it is available, and eating it can be a status symbol.”

Thus, the example of white rice is one in which longstanding cultural preferences resulted in dietary patterns that were demonstrably unhealthy. This should be reason to doubt an argument Pollan will make later, that the continued existence of a diet is proof of its healthfulness. Furthermore, the subsequent success of nutrition science in curing beriberi shows that science can help improve on a diet that tradition recommends.

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In defense of expertise

February 21, 2012 at 7:22 am · Filed under In Defense of Food, Science ·Tagged , ,

Michael Pollan writes in In Defense of Food,

[I]t does seem to me a symptom of our present confusion about food that people feel the need to consult a journalist, or for that matter a nutritionist or doctor or government food pyramid, on so basic a question about the conduct of our everyday lives as humans. I mean, what other animal needs professional help in deciding what it should eat? (2)

Pollan is, of course, correct to point out that no other species consults experts in deciding what to eat, but this is hardly the only way in which our lives are different from those of other animal species. Some differences–say, replacing candle light with incandescent and later fluorescent lighting–probably don’t heavily influence our dietary needs. Others, such as our tendency to live longer lives and spend more time sitting than our ancestors, seem more likely to factor into our nutritional needs.

That isn’t to say that experts will never give bad advice. However, the idea that Pollan hints at here — that it’s strangely unnatural to seek professional dietary advice — deserves to be placed into context. There are many things that are unnatural about our lives. I’d guess that most of us (at least, most people who are reading this) are far enough removed from nature that if we wanted to eat a “natural” diet, we’d have to consult an expert just to figure out what that even meant.

In spite of Pollan’s appeal to the rest of the animal kingdom, a few sentences later he makes it clear that he’s really lamenting the decline of food culture. This is a surprising turn, considering that so many aspects of food culture are also unique to humans. One wonders if Pollan knows of other animal species that cook their food or have the “[d]eep cultural taboos against gluttony” which Pollan mentioned in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. If not, then his appeal to nature does not seem to fit with his argument.

As for culture, I won’t deny that it can teach us a few things. But it happens that our lives are not only increasingly unnatural, but increasingly different from those of our relatively recent ancestors. It’s not obvious that the diet our ancestors ate will work for our more sedentary lifestyles. For that matter, Pollan tends (as I’ll write about soon) to overstate the extent to which traditional diets have really worked for people. It’s perfectly reasonable to ask whether we can do better, and if we’re going to ask the question, I hope the answer will be based on a careful look at the available evidence.

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Beginning “In Defense of Food”

February 17, 2012 at 10:33 pm · Filed under In Defense of Food ·Tagged , , ,

I will soon commence my third reading of In Defense of Food, and this time I’ll be blogging it. I haven’t exactly decided how much I’ll say. It won’t be a daily thing, but I’ll aim for a couple of posts a week.

For now, here are a few pieces of criticism which I’ve found interesting:

  • Daniel Engber critiques “Unhappy Meals,” the New York Times Magazine piece that grew into In Defense of Food. He argues, “Modern nutrition may be more of an ideology than a science, but so is Pollan’s nutritional Darwinism.”
  • Registered Dietitian Ginny Messina writes,

    But for the most part, Pollan’s reasoning about nutrition and research was pretty unsophisticated and uninformed. He carefully describes all of the reasons why nutrition research is flawed, and then employs some of the worst examples of research (animal studies and completely uncontrolled observational approaches) to support his own arguments. He quotes “nutrition professionals” whose credentials and opinions are questionable at best. Almost without exception, his observations on nutrition are wrong—sometimes subtly so, sometimes overtly so, and sometimes in ways that are actually dangerous.

    Pollan defends his right to provide nutrition advice because he speaks on the authority of “tradition and common sense.” But, tradition and common sense will get you about 90% of the way to a healthy diet. The other 10% can have devastating effects and Pollan really has no sense of this.

  • James McWilliams argues,

    Every book is allowed an inconsistency or two. But In Defense of Food contains so many logical contradictions that it eventually leaves the impression of having been cobbled together in a mad rush to meet a publication deadline. Pollan laments on page 9 that “we are becoming a nation of orthorexics: people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.” But by page 186, as if lacking a culinary care in the world, “we” are consuming calories “found in convenience food-snacks, microwavable entrees, soft drinks, and packaged food of all kinds-which happens to be the source of most of the 300 or so calories Americans have added to their daily diet since 1980.” Suddenly, and without explanation, a nation of obsessive nutrient-counting orthorexics has become a nation of careless, Twinkie-gorging anti-orthorexics.

  • If you have institutional access, food scientists David Julian McClements, César Vega, Anne E. McBride, and Eric Andrew Decker took to the pages of Gastronomica last summer to defend their profession in an article titled “In Defense of Food Science.” They argue, “Pollan’s rules are closer to clever catchprases that advocate a particular point of view rather than offering genuinely practical advice.” They go on to write,

    We…propose that foods be judged on the basis of their final relevant attributes (e.g., quality, nutritional profile, and environmental responsibility), rather than strictly on how they are produced (e.g., at home or in a factory). Although it is generally assumed that homemade foods are better than processed foods, this is not necessarily true. Homemade croissants, cakes, or french fries, may be free of additives, but the nutritional consequences of eating them are similar to those of their factory–or restaurant–produced counterparts. We therefore encourage food activists to advocate not only for high-quality fresh foods, but also for the development of more responsible processed foods.

Also, I’m introducing a new comments policy which delineates which kinds of comments are allowed and which I’ll respond to. In short, so long as you’re civil and stay on topic, you should be fine.

Update (1/18): In the comments, Signe Rousseau reminds me of food scientist Gregory R. Ziegler’s piece criticizing Pollan for “selective use of science to support his opinions.” I might as well also mention that I’ve previously blogged Julie Guthman’s criticisms, as well as a few of my own.

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Do Twinkies make the world a better place?

January 20, 2012 at 8:09 am · Filed under News ·Tagged , ,

Last week, after news of the Hostess bankruptcy broke, The Onion published a set of satirical reactions to the story in its “American Voices” feature. One of The Onion‘s fake real Americans responded with, “Are you happy now, Michael Pollan? Oh, that’s right, it’s corn you’re pissed off about.”

As it happens, Steve Ettlinger, author of the book Twinkie, Deconstructed, has talked to Michael Pollan about Twinkies, and it turns out that Pollan sees a bigger role for the pastry than I would have guessed. Ettlinger has a piece at The Daily Beast addressing the question, “Should Twinkies disappear?” As it happens, Hostess has assured customers that the Twinkie won’t be disappearing, and that’s just fine by Michael Pollan. “A world without Twinkies would be a lesser place—we need them, if only to calibrate our scale of badness in food,” he told Ettlinger.

Before I give my thoughts on this, I want to make one thing clear. I’m not writing to take a position on whether Twinkies are good or bad. As it happens, I’ve never eaten a Twinkie, and I hope to keep it that way. I’m not above admitting that they might taste good, but they’re loaded with things I’d rather not eat, like white flour, sugar, and beef tallow. On the other hand, I think that some of the criticisms that Pollan would probably raise against the Twinkie are silly. For instance, I think it’s silly to avoid foods based on the number of ingredients; I’m more interested in thinking about what the ingredients are. Moreover, I don’t have a problem with every ingredient with a chemical-sounding name. In the past I’ve pointed out that some of those are more familiar than one might think. But none of this is relevant to my main purpose in writing. The point of this post is to analyze the internal logic of Pollan’s statement. That is, assuming that Twinkies are very bad, does it make sense to keep them around to “calibrate our scale of badness”? Or, more precisely, what does it say about Michael Pollan’s food politics that he believes that it does?

Pollan’s position on Twinkies exemplifies a characteristic of Pollan’s work that was previously explained by commenter CAW:

There are two conversations that he is always having: (1) what is our relationship with food; and (2) what are the best food policies that we should adopt. Depending on how you conceptualize one or the other, they will at times clash. I think we should, of course, try to create a conception of both that are consistent and mutually reinforcing. But it seems to me that Pollan first asks what food is and then lets everything flow from that first question.

The idea that we should keep something around in order to “calibrate our scale of badness” seems to make sense only if we focus on our relationship with our food. As far as I understand it, Pollan’s point is that keeping some bad food around helps us to better appreciate the good stuff. From a strictly aesthetic (i.e. taste-centric) point of view, that seems plausible. But if our interest is in food politics, I think it ceases to make sense. If we’re concerned about, say, the environmental degradation that results from producing high-fructose corn syrup for Twinkies, the unhappy lives of the cows from which the Twinkies’ beef tallow was made, or the public health implications of Twinkie consumption, why is it better for Twinkies to exist? What’s the worst that would come from ceasing to produce Twinkies? We’d forget how bad they were and start making them again?

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Julie Guthman on Michael Pollan’s letter to Obama

January 19, 2012 at 1:02 am · Filed under Weighing In ·Tagged , , , , , ,

In the concluding chapter of Weighing In, Julie Guthman addresses an open letter that Michael Pollan wrote to the winner of the then-upcoming 2008 presidential election. The letter gave the candidates a long list of suggestions for fixing the American food system. Guthman writes,

 The White House must have been listening. After all, it was one of Pollan’s recommendations to “tear out five prime south-facing acres of the White house lawn and plant in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden.”

…[T]he garden encountered little resistance and was widely heralded, especially by the alternative-food movement. If nothing else, this demonstrates the huge success of the organic farming and gardening movement in communicating its ideas, which used to sit on the countercultural margins, to a much wider audience. To wit, as Pollan also pointed out in the same letter, there is room for food and farming across the political spectrum. “Reforming the food system is not inherently a right-or-left issue: for every Whole Foods shopper with roots in the counterculture you can find a family of evangelicals intent on taking control of its family dinner and diet back from the fast-food industry–the culinary equivalent of home schooling….There is also a strong libertarian component to the sun-food agenda, which seeks to free small producers from the burden of government regulation in order to stoke rural innovation. And what is a higher ‘family value,’ after all, than making time to sit down every night to a shared meal?” Therein lies the problem: an approach that appeals to all parts of the political spectrum cannot challenge the political economic forces that are producing cheap, toxic, and junky food–and making some people dependent on it. (185-186)

Though Guthman agrees with Pollan that farm policy reform may appeal to the entire political spectrum, she faults him for failing to properly place the broken food system in its political context. Guthman argues that our food system’s problems are at least partly the fault of our broken immigration policy (which provides cheap farm labor) and our extreme economic inequality (which creates a need for cheap food), and the solutions to these and other problems would not be nearly as palatable to conservatives as alternative food. Guthman continues,

Since the Obamas planted their organic garden, the rest of the food and agriculture agenda has remained the same, more or less…There is definitely something to be said for creating a highly visible model. My concern, rather, is the absence in the policy agenda of any move that would begin to undermine a food (and industrial) system that simultaneously brings hunger, danger, and unremittingly undercompensated toil; it’s the absence from public discussions of acknowledgment that our food system is part of a political economy that systematically produces inequality; and it’s the reluctance of much of the alternative-food movement to take on the big fights, instead promulgating the notion that education will change how people eat–and thus transform the food system. Obama’s garden, in other words, throws into sharp relief the limitations of alternative food as a change strategy.

Yet, it is the appeals to obesity to which I draw your attention. Naturally, in his open letter Pollan also discussed the health costs and dangers of type 2 diabetes and obesity, which he said could be avoided with changes to diet and lifestyle…

…[I]n urging people to make better “choices,” those who advocate for fresh, organic, and local produce as a means of weight loss are not wholly unlike those who want to combat global warming by getting consumers to swap their incandescent light bulbs for fluorescent ones….These suggestions are based on a singular hegemonic understanding of the cause of the problem: calories and carbon dioxide emissions, which to some degree forecloses efforts to search for other causes…

This, by the way, concludes my series of posts on Weighing In. I’ll have some new posts based on my own thoughts in the near future.

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Julie Guthman on cheap food and the economy

January 17, 2012 at 11:08 pm · Filed under The Omnivore's Dilemma, Weighing In ·Tagged , , ,

Julie Guthman explains a key difference between her position and Michael Pollan’s:

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan argues that those crop surpluses end up in our bodies; subsidized crops like corn and soy are most likely to go into the processed foods that have become a mainstay of American diets. In turn, these processed foods may contribute to fatness (although not necessarily in the ways he discusses). But he pretty much leaves it there. My argument is much more expansive. I argue that a much broader set of food and agricultural policies are implicated in fatness–but also thinness, and a host of other health conditions that may not manifest in either direction. The food economy, that is, mirrors the larger economy: it is full of contradictions, some of which are literally embodied. But I take it even a step further, to consider policies not even directly related to food and agriculture, such as taxation, financial regulation, and economic development policies that have created huge disparities between rich and poor. To the extent that socioeconomic status and body size are associated, these policies must somehow be implicated in fatness and thinness. Part of this inverse association between size and class status appears to rest on cheap food and the need that neoliberal policy has created for it. (173)

Whereas Pollan is troubled by our dietary habits and argues that we should eat differently, Guthman believes that the problem lies with the structure of our economy:

The decline in family wages…has pushed many women into the workforce, and many household providers hold multiple jobs to make ends meet. Having to work several jobs has surely increased the need for fast and convenient food and contributed to the decline of the much-lauded (and perhaps overly romanticized) family meal. Snack foods, heat ‘n serve meals, supermarket takeout, and eating on the run are not just “lifestyle choices” or, for that matter, signs of the failure of women to fulfill their familial duty. For many, managing jobs, children, and elderly parents and taking time for the most minimal self-care are real challenges that no amount of cajoling about how we should cook our own meals is likely to solve.

The point, though, is not only to defend those who cannot follow the food gurus. It is to note that these ways of eating are central to the current economy. If anything, fast and convenient food has been a triply good fix for American capitalism. It entails the super-exploitation of the labor force in its production, it provides cheap food to support the low wages of the food and other industries by feeding their low-wage workers, and it absorbs the surpluses of the agricultural economy, soaking up, as it were, the excesses of overproduction to keep the farm sector marginally viable. (174)

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If you eat the Pollan diet, will it make you thin?

January 16, 2012 at 6:29 am · Filed under Weighing In ·Tagged , ,

In Weighing In, Julie Guthman questions whether Michael Pollan really persuades people:

Yet, like most missionary work, the message [of alternative food] speaks mainly to the almost or already converted. Just as the audience for the obesity statistics is those who are most invested in upholding bodily norms (the already thin or just slightly “overweight”), the audience for organic local food is those who already have a stake in good eating and status. Although I have no ultimate proof of Michael Pollan’s audience, I have come across many of his fans in classrooms, speaking engagements, and public forums. Without an obvious exception, I’ve noticed that they are white, educated, urbane, and thin–and already quite convinced of alternative food’s goodness. It may be that Pollan’s iconic power has less to do with changing minds than with animating something latent. In a funny way, even Michael Pollan knows this. In Defense of Food is full of appeals to “us.” In other words, it’s not so much that the discourse of good food convinces its subjects; rather, the discourse chooses subjects who are ready to believe it. Think about it: If you eat the Pollan diet, will it make you thin? (It hasn’t worked for me.) Or is it that because you are thin, you are more likely to read about and eat the Pollan diet? (158-159)

To be fair, I can think of a number of Pollan’s fans who are not white, but I’m not sure I’d be able to think of counterexamples to the other three adjectives (educated, urbane, and thin). But in any case, Guthman’s question seems like an important one.

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