I didn't think I would have much to blog about this book, but hey, I'll give it a shot..I've decided to write about everything I read. This book was interesting but really aimed at the American market because lots of the 'food' he wrote about I didn't recognise. His message was how to save the obese nations and get us back to eating normal food. He ranted about health food and said that if a product claimed to be good for your health it was definitely best not to buy it. (This was a good message for me because I have always wondered whether I should be spooning mouthfuls of benecol margarine into me as it claims to reduce cholesterol)
He said that if you were eating food that a Grandmother or Great Grandmother of the world wouldn't recognise you were probably on the super highway to type 2 diabetes and a mobility scooter.
His mantra was EAT FOOD, NOT A LOT, MOSTLY PLANT BASED. He then broke down each part and gave a rather scathing history of the 'nutrition' and marketing behind most of the health food in the West today. I liked the part on how all the cultures which moved to the States all had their own food culture at the beginning but the power of the American nation made them slowly over time forget their food histories and eat a more processed and blander diet to literally bind the people into an identity of being American.
I really enjoyed the history of food production; how sweet food has become much sweeter over the last 40 years due to using cheaper corn syrup, which unfortunately doesn't interact well with the body making us unaware of when we are full. And how trans fat has turned from the newly created super fat of the 70s to the biggest killer now.
He talks about how vitamins can't work well in isolation...we still have no idea how the micro nutrients within a banana are extracted so efficiently by the human body. He is scathing about Mr. Kellogg blaming his weird approach to eating as a basis for the strange Western cereals on the market today. Kellogg's deeply religious beliefs meant he turned eating from a pleasure into nothing more than a way of getting fuel into the body...in fact this way of seeing food as nothing more than fuel is one of the biggest problems behind the western diet.
Then he traipses off round the world talking about the diets of other countries and how superior they are and how the big black cloud of the Western Diet has encrouched and how societies are trying to turn away from the influence of Western food companies.
All this scientific terminology and food history could have become boring but somehow Mr. Pollen pulled it off and the book remained fun and interesting. Lots of it to me were just common sense but it was still a good read.
Here is Mr. Pollen's helpful list on how to eat yourself thin, healthy and maybe more beautiful:
- Don't eat anything which has more than 5 ingredients on the tin and make sure you can pronounce them.
- No high fructose corn syrup
- Avoid food with health claims
- Stay out of the middle of supermarkets...that's where most of the shit lives. keep to the walls!
- Shop at markets when you can.
- You are what your meat has eaten.
- eat more like the French, Italians, Japanese, Indians, Greeks, Turks, Lebanese...blah, blah, blah.
- Don't buy food where you buy petrol
- Pay more and eat less
- eat at a table
- try not to eat alone
- Cook
Simple really...
