Author: Simple, organic foods key to healthy life

TEMPE — Michael Pollan proposes a simple solution to the abundance of packaged, processed, manipulated food products contributing to society’s unhealthy lifestyles.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

The latest book from the award-winning food expert, In Defense of Food, advocates for simple diets that avoid foods “your grandmother wouldn’t be able to recognize.”

Pollan, a former environmental journalist who now teaches at University of California Berkeley, writes that people become confused with the bright packaging and lengthy lists of seemingly appealing additives, such as no-cholesterol or high-fiber.

He says it causes people to believe that the scientifically listed nutrients are healthier than any fresh, unprocessed food.

Convinced of society’s dietary confusion, Pollan breaks down a list of ingredients to avoid: 1) the unfamiliar, 2) the unpronounceable, 3) more than five in number, 4) high fructose corn syrup.

He offers the term “nutritionism” for the ever-changing nutritional advice from scientists, who consider foods in a nutrient-by-nutrient way instead of as a whole. This means they might highlight the good nutrients over the bad, and clever marketers are only too happy to capitalize.

The result? Sugar-filled snacks that pack lots of protein get a splashy label: “Great source of Protein!”

Pollan stresses the need to reclaim our health and happiness as eaters, simply through finding nature once again and re-establishing our relationship with natural food.

He says that includes focusing on farming legislation that might spur the growth of more organic crops and ditching the local supermarket for the farmer’s market.

Pollan draws an entertaining picture in the opening chapter of his book.

“It’s a lot easier to slap a health claim on a sugary box of cereal than on a raw potato or carrot, while the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over in Cereal the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming their newfound ‘whole-grain goodness’ to the rafters,” he writes. “Watch out for those health claims.”

Local experts in health, fitness and culinary arts laud Pollan’s manifesto as knowledgeable and enlightening.

“The book is an easy read, making it accessible and helpful for people confused with their diets and dizzy from the contradictory advice in their ears,” says Erik Gibson, a health and fitness trainer at the YMCA in Downtown Phoenix. “Aside from outlining why we are so absorbed in processed foods, he points out the fact that people are focusing more on healthcare and less on the details of what they’re actually consuming.”

Allan Schanbacher, in-house chef for PHOENIX magazine, says the book is a must read. Indeed, he taped a review to the refrigerator in the company’s break room.

“It’s definitely something people need to read to be aware of how our food is being manipulated. It’s important to eat for reasons other than convenience. People should have at least one meal a day as a unit, sitting down and obtaining a social interaction with food…diets are really very simple, natural, and organic focused.”

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