Max S. Dunn

Book: In Defense of Food

Posted by: Max Dunn on March 6, 2010 15:05:37

The message is simple: Eat food. Not to much. Mostly plants.

"In Defense of Food" elaborates a bit on this starting off with some background on why the amount of saturated fat may have little if any bearing on the risk of heart disease and that 30 years of nutritional advice from our government has left us fatter, sicker and more poorly nourished.

The information about health and eating was also insightful:

• 80 percent of cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented by a change of diet
• Diabetes subtracts roughly 12 years from one's life and incurs medical costs of $13,000 per year compared to $2,500 per year for someone without diabetes
• Health care costs related to diet is estimated to be $250 billion per year

So what can we do? First, don't concentrate on nutrients and vitamins but instead look at eating a healthy, whole diet. And a healthy diet is generally any but a Western diet! Here are some other good rules Pollan encourages us to adopt:

• Avoid food products that contain ingredients that are:
  • Hard to pronounce
  • Unfamiliar
  • More than five in number
  • Include high-fructose corn syrup
• Avoid food products that make health claims: Apples don't have health claims, sugary cereal does 
• Get out of the supermarket where possible: farmer's markets almost guarantee healthy food
• Eat mostly plants, especially leaves
• Eat well grown foods from healthy soils: it doesn't have to be organic to be healthy
• Eat more like the French, or the Italians, or the  Japanese, or the Indians, or the Greeks
• Have a glass of wine with dinner (This is the one that I like!)
• Pay more, eat less
• Eat meals: sitting down with others, taking our time (This is the one I will have the hardest time with)
• Eat slowly