Eating "food" again

[K8memphis]

I just don't believe that the nuggets supply any of the nutrition that growing kids (or people, for that matter) need.  And I do believe that the corn sweetner in a daily glass of Coke (not that I think for a minute that a kid today who's being fed fast food is even limited in how much soda he drinks) is going to kill him.

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Yet there are millions of strong, healthy young adults who grew up eating just that. I know plenty of families -- I mean, middle class people I went to law school with -- whose kids eat almost exclusively processed foods, starting with things like Pop Tarts in the morning, moving on to awful public school lunches, to various convenience foods for dinner, with chips, cookies and other snacks in between. They rarely eat a piece of fruit or a salad. And they're in great shape. Is it the best way to eat? Maybe not. But no matter how much you, Pollan and anybody else believes there's no nutrition in McDonald's food and that soda is going to kill our children, it's not a supportable claim.

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Let me assure you that a diet rich in baked goods, processed foods, Coke, Cheez Its & chips deep fried in stress eaten long enough will totally risk screwing your health. Oh for very sure it will. It did mine. I'm back on the right track-ish. Sometimes one cannot control outside stresses, mine almost killed me. I cannot eat that same previous diet without quick weight gain and generally feeling icky albeit richly rewarded with my sinful delicious delight. I can still eat chocolate, but add some flour though & I'm carrying it around in belly fat. Belly fat of course is the worst kind for cardio health. Coping skills alone are impaired by such a diet.

No it's true for me. However our bodies do adapt to extremes because our bodies are so miraculous, but there comes a day when the toll from the excess becomes due and we pay in full.

Dick Clark looked the same for 30-40 years because he ate so carefully. Looking the same (to me) is synonymous with not aging as much.

Food totally kicks your butt-- beats you up. We're tough but we're not that tough. Food certainly affects longevity and produces or reduces the effects of aging. And also certainly that whole everything in moderation is the golden rule (Doc, it's not anything in moderation it's everything in moderation. )

...guess I should read pages 8-12...

[markk]

Yet there are millions of strong, healthy young adults who grew up eating just that. I know plenty of families -- I mean, middle class people I went to law school with -- whose kids eat almost exclusively processed foods, starting with things like Pop Tarts in the morning, moving on to awful public school lunches, to various convenience foods for dinner, with chips, cookies and other snacks in between. They rarely eat a piece of fruit or a salad. And they're in great shape.

Are they truly in 'great shape', or are they way too young to tell? A lot of the dangers from the saturated and trans fats and corn sweetner that they will have eaten are things that catch up with you (such as coronary artery disease, adult-onset diabetes, etc.) when you get a little older, you know. I don't know that kids are diagnosed with high cholesterol, or artery disease, because I don't even think they're tested for it. To say that they're in 'great shape' as opposed to the fact that they're still alive and not showing outward sympoms of these things may not be the same thing, unless you're looking in their arteries and reading stress-test results.

Now, please don't get me wrong. I do of course see your point, and I hope that I made it very clear in my posts that my own repulsion at processed foods is a very personal issue, and a "gut feeling". And I'll admit that I can't really argue the point scientifically that these things will kill you soon after fifty, because people in earlier times also died young, although whether they died from the same things as we do may be unknown. Their hearts may just have given out from all the strenuous physical activity in their lifestyles. But you haven't convinced me that the diet that these kids are eating isn't dangerous, for what it contains and doesn't, and that it won't catch up with them by the time they're forty, in the same way that kids who smoke will seem to be in great shape when they're young as well before that catches up with them.

And for what it's worth, I know one pre-teen with horrible eating habits who suffers from medical problems that she and her parents have been told come entirely from malnutrition, eating junk instead of real food. She's simply not getting the nutrition she needs from what she eats instead of what she should, and her body is suffering badly because of it. Of course, this is only one kid, ststistically insignificant, but instead of it catching up with her at forty as I'm suggesting it may with the kids you mention, it got her at 13.

Edited January 29, 2007 by markk (log)

[SuzySushi]

I find this site: An Anthropologic Perspective on Food and Eating to be interesting reading.

Now sushi is a fad, raw fish is praised as a "high-protein, low-fat" source, ignoring the high rates of stomach cancer in Japan.

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I'm not ready to criticize Michael Pollan's essay since I haven't digested it yet... but I did want to note that the association in Robin Fox's essay Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective is a misconclusion.

The high rate of stomach cancer in Japan is not from eating sushi or raw fish. It is associated with a high consumption of heavily salted foods (such as pickled vegetables and dried salted/preserved fish), low consumption of vitamin C, and heavy smoking. As the Japanese diet has become increasingly westernized, the rate of stomach cancer has decreased notably. Source: British Journal of Cancer, Volume 90, Issue 1

Edited January 29, 2007 by SuzySushi (log)

[hjshorter]

I thought about this as well, and I think that he is picking his battle.  He gets enough flak for being "the food police."  Exercise too?  That's crazy talk.

He mentions exercise when he talks about the studies on the Mediterranean diet years ago, that the people studied did much more physical labor than we do now. And it wasn't "exercise" that needed to be planned, it was just what needed to be done. Big difference, I think.

This struck me:

5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils — whether certified organic or not — will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown.

(My emphasis) I've used cost as a reason not to buy organic, but confess to not giving the last part much thought. And the cost excuse breaks down after analysis - except for meat, the stuff available at our local (all organic, farmers only) farmer's market is no more costly than our local grocery chain, and less expensive than Whole Foods for many items. Many of Pollan's recommendation are pie-in-the-sky, but this is achievable. January isn't the greatest month to try this experiment, but the article has inspired me to give up the grocery store for a month or two, except for non-food items, and see what it does to our budget.

This was another excellent point:

It might be argued that, at this point in history, we should simply accept that fast food is our food culture. Over time, people will get used to eating this way and our health will improve. But for natural selection to help populations adapt to the Western diet, we’d have to be prepared to let those whom it sickens die. That’s not what we’re doing. Rather, we’re turning to the health-care industry to help us “adapt.” Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick.

but not one that most people want to hear. Edited January 29, 2007 by hjshorter (log)

[hjshorter]

I just don't believe that the nuggets supply any of the nutrition that growing kids (or people, for that matter) need.  And I do believe that the corn sweetner in a daily glass of Coke (not that I think for a minute that a kid today who's being fed fast food is even limited in how much soda he drinks) is going to kill him.

Yet there are millions of strong, healthy young adults who grew up eating just that. I know plenty of families -- I mean, middle class people I went to law school with -- whose kids eat almost exclusively processed foods, starting with things like Pop Tarts in the morning, moving on to awful public school lunches, to various convenience foods for dinner, with chips, cookies and other snacks in between. They rarely eat a piece of fruit or a salad. And they're in great shape. Is it the best way to eat?

In great shape as kids, probably due to the vitamin fortified pop tarts. But are they gaining weight later in life because they never learned to eat good foods? Are they getting type II diabetes later in life? Needing heart surgery? I think there's a tradeoff. Lucky for them the medical industry has developed pills and techniques that enable them to stay alive without making any lifestyle changes. Or if they do decide they need a change there are various diet products to consume. Vitamin fortified processed foods, like vitamin D-added milk, have elimated most of the diseases of deficiency. Pollan might not agree, but that's been to our net good. But the vitamin enriched pop tart, or fiber-added chicken nuggets, are innovations we could do without.

High fructose corn syrup is in almost everything these days. That shit is just not good for you in the quantities consumed by the average American, and there's nothing anyone can say that will convince me otherwise .

Edited January 29, 2007 by hjshorter (log)

[Carrot Top]

I'm not ready to criticize Michael Pollan's essay since I haven't digested it yet... but I did want to note that the association in Robin Fox's essay Food and Eating: An Anthropological Perspective is a misconclusion.

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I'm *never* ready to criticize *any* essay built on medical facts within a rhetorical argument, Suzi. I thought of putting in that disclaimer when I posted the link, but then thought that probably not too many people would bother reading Fox when Pollan was on the pulpit anyway.

The real experts (medical doctors, specialists in all sorts of diseases in each and every part of the body) argue among themselves to such a huge extent on the subject of food and health that far be it from me to try to put my two cents in. If they can't come to a conclusion, who I am to think that I have the answer?!

I only know what works for me, and that's about as far as I'll take my own conclusions.

(But I am always happy to hear informed comment, particularly from a charming person such as a SuziSushi! )

My points in my posts in this thread have been two, one for each post:

For the first post on chicken-fried bacon, the point was to say "Not all the old-fashioned natural food might have been excellent for one's health if not balanced. . .therefore the original study of "nutrients" that might be in our faces a bit too much now was an idea that was quite useful at the time it started. . .and as all things go around, probably this will too. . . ." (baby with bathwater idea)

and two:

There's more to the reasons we eat what we eat than we think it "healthy" for us or simply do not care if it is healthy for us. It is a complex and tangled web that to my mind can not be reduced to any simple argument, whether that argument includes or does not include the idea of "exercise" within it while leaving out big swaths of sociological stuff. If the cure must suit the dis-ease for a lasting ease, then the whole dis-ease must be taken into account or the fix will falter.

But again, I feel no urge to argue what is best for the world. Those that do might think a simplified argument with a focus on one area that strikes a common chord the best way to go about it.

Edited January 29, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)

[lperry]

  But again, I feel no urge to argue what is best for the world. Those that do might think a simplified argument with a focus on one area that strikes a common chord the best way to go about it.

I think he was deliberate in his "simplified argument" so that it would be in contrast to the thousands of contrary and confusing health claims that bombard us every day. I also find his arguments both sensible and doable, and I don't often see that in other proposals.

I also commend him for taking the light a candle approach while so many just curse the darkness. It's too complicated, food culture is so ingrained, he didn't address this topic or this one or this one. Are some of the comments meant to be ironic, or do people genuinely expect a single article in the NYT magazine to answer all our health problems in one go? Here's my two cents - Kudos to Mr. Pollan for starting the discussion with a few sensible suggestions.

[Fat Guy]

The claim that we're only living longer because medical science has figured out ways to cure the diseases we're giving ourselves by eating badly is not supported by statistical analysis. Again, from the Kolata piece: "Common chronic diseases — respiratory problems, valvular heart disease, arteriosclerosis, and joint and back problems — have been declining by about 0.7 percent a year since the turn of the 20th century. And when they do occur, they emerge at older ages and are less severe." It may very well be that even if we eliminated all cardiac surgery, diabetes medications and things along those lines, people would still be living much, much longer. Indeed, many of those medical procedures, like bypass surgery and the stent procedure, have been called into question -- there's plenty of information arguing that they may be overused and in many or most cases unnecessary or counterproductive.

[docsconz]

However, the incidence, no the explosion of physiologic disease seen at the last quarter of the past century continuing today is no figment of the imagination.

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There are a lot of factors that can explain increases in disease. A big one is that when people live longer they get more diseases. Another is the "epidemic of diagnosis," which identifies diseases earlier and at lower thresholds than ever before. And I'm not ready to pin the puniness of 19th Century man entirely on malnutrition -- unless you want to define malnutrition as the diet Pollan recommends. Middle class people were also smaller and weaker well into the 20th Century. As long as we're making lists of required reading, let's ass Gina Kolata's July 2006 New York Times piece, "So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You."

There are indeed many factors that can influence an increase in disease, but in the diseases that we are talking about - namely diabetes - I can assure you that the disease is occurring (Type II) earlier in life than ever and to more and more people who do not fit the classic profile. Along with the earlier incidence of this disease comes earlier sequelae.

Common chronic diseases — respiratory problems, valvular heart disease, arteriosclerosis, and joint and back problems — have been declining by about 0.7 percent a year since the turn of the 20th century. And when they do occur, they emerge at older ages and are less severe.

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Let's not forget the advances that have been made by modern medicine that have increased people's lifespans and reduced the effects of certain chronic diseases - namely the effects antibiotics have had in reducing respiratory problems by reducing the incidence and severity of tuberculosis, a disease that had been quite common and unfortunately is regaining steam in a frightening way due to a combination of antibiotic resistance and the prevalence of HIV in certain parts of the world; the incidence of chronic respiratory problems like asthma do not appear to be declining, but increasing in a similar fashion to diabetes; valvular heart disease's lowered incidence can be attributed to antibiotic related reduction of rheumatic fever; arteriosclerosis due to the emergence of statins; and back and joint problems due to less hard physical activity, more rest when injuries do occur and better treatment. Most of these advances have little or nothing to do with nutrition. The argument can be made, as to how much better we might be doing with a better diet. I think one of Pollan's most salient points is that none of this occurs in a vacuum. It is all inter-related and difficult to reduce to independent variables. Many of the "improvements" that we think we are making by taking a "nutritionism" approach appear to not be improvements at all. Of course the irony here is that the very same nutritionism techniques are used to demonstrate that they don't work as those that demonstrate that they do.The bottom line is that there is no clear cut answer from a nutritionism perspective - at least not with the science in its infancy.

[markk]

It may very well be that even if we eliminated all cardiac surgery, diabetes medications and things along those lines, people would still be living much, much longer. Indeed, many of those medical procedures, like bypass surgery and the stent procedure, have been called into question -- there's plenty of information arguing that they may be overused and in many or most cases unnecessary or counterproductive.

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But with all due respect, Counselor (and I think much is due), you didn't answer my question - since you brought your "kid" into the discussion, are you going to raise him on a steady diet of Pop Tarts and Coke for breakfast, and McDonald's Value Meals for dinner, with rarely a piece of fruit or a salad? Are you going to set the example for him that food is something that comes from a box with a list of ingredients longer than his arm, or will he grow up eating foods that your great grandparents would have recognized as food?

[annecros]

heh

Everyone lives, they eat, and then they die.

We are living longer, healthier lives, and that is just a fact. We get out of life what we put into it. That is also a fact. My Grandmother who bore 13 children, was married to a drunk and boiled the laundry once a week would no more want her life for me, than I would. But she got lots of exercise. She also had a massive stroke and died at 41.

In the words of Dr. Cox from Scrubs:

(In mock crying voice) But what about our duty as doctors? (Back to normal voice) Look. This is not about Mrs. Tanner's dialysis, this is about you. You're scared of death, and you can't be; you're in medicine for chrissakes. Sooner or later, you're going to realize that everything we do around here, everything is a stall. We're just trying to keep the game going, that's all. But, ultimately, it always ends up the same way.

Edited January 29, 2007 by annecros (log)

[lperry]

Well, you have to make a distinction between "processed" and "convenience" foods.

To me, processed food refers to the process of taking from the food any ingredients of nutritional value, which of course they do to improve the product's shelf life, and in which process they add unnatural ingredients for the same purpose (and for a while, they were subjecting so many poor things to hydrogenation as well).  I haven't actually looked completely into what WF-like stores are selling in the way of 'processed' foods (I must do that next time), but the ones I buy are simply labor-saving as far as I can tell (hope).

I think this is my personal bias with terminology. I study ancient foodways, and "processing" in the archaeological record is an activity that brings a tool in contact with an animal or plant food. Cutting an apple is "processing" it with a knife. Cooking is also "processing." I think of foods with things removed and replaced as "refined" which denotes a different sort of processing. I have not been using my own terminology consistently here, and I apologize for that.

So to summarize, very little food is eaten "unprocessed" by human activity, but the change to refined foods is quite new in our history. I was particularly struck by the quotes "mainlining glucose" and the assertion that our food is essentially "predigested." I couldn't help but remember an old Saturday Night Live where a skit portrayed a restaurant where the servers chewed the diners' food for them.

[docsconz]

I couldn't help but remember an old Saturday Night Live where a skit  portrayed a restaurant where the servers chewed the diners' food for them.

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That would be a situation in which the quality of the service was particularly important!

In all seriousness, I think your distinction between processed and refined is valid.

[Fat Guy]

Examples of processed, refined foods include white flour and white rice. Surely those are sufficiently traditional as to be accepted parts of respectable foodways or whatever. You know, bread, the cuisine of China, stuff like that.

[Darcie B]

The claim that we're only living longer because medical science has figured out ways to cure the diseases we're giving ourselves by eating badly is not supported by statistical analysis. Again, from the Kolata piece: "Common chronic diseases — respiratory problems, valvular heart disease, arteriosclerosis, and joint and back problems — have been declining by about 0.7 percent a year since the turn of the 20th century. And when they do occur, they emerge at older ages and are less severe." It may very well be that even if we eliminated all cardiac surgery, diabetes medications and things along those lines, people would still be living much, much longer. Indeed, many of those medical procedures, like bypass surgery and the stent procedure, have been called into question -- there's plenty of information arguing that they may be overused and in many or most cases unnecessary or counterproductive.

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I agree with most of what you are saying, and would like to add that a doctor friend once told me that all of the intervention-type medical care has only added something like 6 days (weeks? I can't remember - must need ginkgo biloba...) to the overall life expectancy. The two things that added tremendously to our life spans in the late 19th and 20th centuries were improved sanitation and vaccinations.

Edited January 29, 2007 by Darcie B (log)

[Fat Guy]

It may very well be that even if we eliminated all cardiac surgery, diabetes medications and things along those lines, people would still be living much, much longer. Indeed, many of those medical procedures, like bypass surgery and the stent procedure, have been called into question -- there's plenty of information arguing that they may be overused and in many or most cases unnecessary or counterproductive.

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But with all due respect, Counselor (and I think much is due), you didn't answer my question - since you brought your "kid" into the discussion, are you going to raise him on a steady diet of Pop Tarts and Coke for breakfast, and McDonald's Value Meals for dinner, with rarely a piece of fruit or a salad? Are you going to set the example for him that food is something that comes from a box with a list of ingredients longer than his arm, or will he grow up eating foods that your great grandparents would have recognized as food?

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I wouldn't want to inflict any aspect of my great grandparents' life on my child, certainly not the poor quality of food available to them as East European peasants. If I could ship them Pop Tarts in a time machine, I'm sure they'd be better for it.

We feed our kid a politically correct upper middle class Manhattan diet, but I don't judge those who let their kids eat Pop Tarts. And if it turns out we have a genetically picky eater on our hands, I'm not going to create some insane, dysfunctional, forbidden fruit dynamic where we refuse Pop Tarts only to find out that our son uses his lunch money to buy a box of them at Associated Foods every day. Moreover, as between "sweets" I don't make a huge moral distinction.

I suppose a homemade chocolate cake is more "natural" than a Pop Tart, but I don't really care if my kid chooses one over the other. I don't think there's any convincing evidence that, for example, high fructose corn syrup is less healthful than white sugar. You could ban high fructose corn syrup tomorrow and it would just be replaced by white sugar from cane and beet sources, and nothing would change except the price of sweets by a few percent.

[docsconz]

Examples of processed, refined foods include white flour and white rice. Surely those are sufficiently traditional as to be accepted parts of respectable foodways or whatever. You know, bread, the cuisine of China, stuff like that.

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They are certainly processed. They may or may not be refined. Besides the question is not really whether some of this is an issue. The question is whether the predominance of refined foods is an issue and how much. Deny it as much as you want, but there is clearly an epidemic of diabetes in this country along with all the ills that go along with it. Maybe diet is not the culprit, but then again maybe it is. Unfortunately, nutritional science really isn't mature enough to make any real determinations though elements are strongly suggestive.

[docsconz]

The claim that we're only living longer because medical science has figured out ways to cure the diseases we're giving ourselves by eating badly is not supported by statistical analysis. Again, from the Kolata piece: "Common chronic diseases — respiratory problems, valvular heart disease, arteriosclerosis, and joint and back problems — have been declining by about 0.7 percent a year since the turn of the 20th century. And when they do occur, they emerge at older ages and are less severe." It may very well be that even if we eliminated all cardiac surgery, diabetes medications and things along those lines, people would still be living much, much longer. Indeed, many of those medical procedures, like bypass surgery and the stent procedure, have been called into question -- there's plenty of information arguing that they may be overused and in many or most cases unnecessary or counterproductive.

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I'd like to see good information where coronary bypass and stents have been "in many or most cases unnecessary or counterproductive. Certainly, there are instances where it has been so and the technology and knowledge continues to be honed, but I know of no-one in the medical field who feels that these procedures have not been an overall huge advance.

As for eliminating diabetes medications - I know that if I had not had access to those medications and I were still alive, my life and the quality thereof would be markedly different than it currently is. Of course, if I did not prematurely develop diabetes in the first place it would likely be a moot point.

Of course, it may very well be the case that if all those elements of health care were removed "people would still be living much, much longer," but I doubt it.

[lperry]

Examples of processed, refined foods include white flour and white rice. Surely those are sufficiently traditional as to be accepted parts of respectable foodways or whatever. You know, bread, the cuisine of China, stuff like that.

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Here's a brief and highly generalized explanation of my point of view. If we use the Omo remains from Ethiopia as a benchmark, modern humans have been around about 190,000 years. Agriculture began in various regions of the globe around 10,000 years ago. Depending on how you view time, this date is a long time ago, or relatively recent in our history. For the next few thousand years, people processed their food, but did not refine it. Think stone-ground corn and wheat.

Skipping ahead, in about the past 100 years we began to produce highly refined foods like white rice and white flour from wheat. Initially, these products were prohibitively expensive, so were used mostly by the wealthy few. White foods even became status symbols. The widespread use of highly refined foods by the general public, however, is very recent in our evolutionary history - we're talking decades. From this point of view, we are experimenting with something new. Whether or not it is going to be our downfall, well, that's the debatable part, isn't it.

Edited to say: What Doc said.

Edited January 29, 2007 by lperry (log)

[docsconz]

The claim that we're only living longer because medical science has figured out ways to cure the diseases we're giving ourselves by eating badly is not supported by statistical analysis. Again, from the Kolata piece: "Common chronic diseases — respiratory problems, valvular heart disease, arteriosclerosis, and joint and back problems — have been declining by about 0.7 percent a year since the turn of the 20th century. And when they do occur, they emerge at older ages and are less severe." It may very well be that even if we eliminated all cardiac surgery, diabetes medications and things along those lines, people would still be living much, much longer. Indeed, many of those medical procedures, like bypass surgery and the stent procedure, have been called into question -- there's plenty of information arguing that they may be overused and in many or most cases unnecessary or counterproductive.

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I agree with most of what you are saying, and would like to add that a doctor friend once told me that all of the intervention-type medical care has only added something like 6 days (weeks? I can't remember - must need ginkgo biloba...) to the overall life expectancy. The two things that added tremendously to our life spans in the late 19th and 20th centuries were improved sanitation and vaccinations.

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While it is true that much "interventional" health care does indeed get utilized at the end of life, extending life for limited periods and at questionable quality of life, I believe that you took his staement out of context. Where do you think improved sanitation and vaccinations came from? There are also plenty of day to day examples of interventional health care that save lives routinely. An appendectomy, now considered routine, was once a routine killer of otherwise healthy people - the one death on Lewis and Clark's expedition resulted from appendicitis. As deadly as cancer often still is, many more people now live significantly longer and with much improved quality of life thaan they used to. That more people are in fact getting cancer is another question, which may actually be pertinent to this discussion of nutritionism.

[Carrot Top]

I also commend him for taking the light a candle approach while so many just curse the darkness.  It's too complicated, food culture is so ingrained, he didn't address this topic or this one or this one.  Are some of the comments meant to be ironic, or do people genuinely expect a single article in the NYT magazine to answer all our health problems in one go?  Here's my two cents - Kudos to Mr. Pollan for starting the discussion with a few sensible suggestions.

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Yes, kudos to Mr. Pollan. He's done an excellent job as a journalist in gathering facts in unprecedented ways then presenting them in forms more than palatable to the public.

He is raising an argument raised before though, throughout history in differing ways, and probably with the same levels of success rates.

Kellogg's and all that gang pop into mind at the moment.

And just look at a box of Kellogg's cereal *now*. Far from unprocessed whole-grain healthiness.

But I guess it's worthwhile to keep raising the flag of commonsense (in the form of sensible suggestions by knowledgeable persons) in any case.That flag certainly gets trampled on often enough.

It's just when the flag is picked up by True Believers and used as ammunition against others that might not hold the same views that I start to feel more than a little bit uncomfortable. . .and I must say that if there *were* actual "sides" (like there's not?) when I see ammunition gathered ready to be thrown against the other (obviously more intellectually-stricken side, according to the flag-carriers, obviously those who *need better guidance*) side, it comes upon me to want to wander immediately over to the other side, for I just plain don't like flags used as ammunition.

Edited January 29, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)

[JohnL]

Examples of processed, refined foods include white flour and white rice. Surely those are sufficiently traditional as to be accepted parts of respectable foodways or whatever. You know, bread, the cuisine of China, stuff like that.

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I am 100 per cent in agreement with FG on this.

This entire issue has been politicized.

The discussion has become rife with ill supported conventional wisdom.

It has been corrupted and confused by various groups with political agendas--so called movements.

There is also a nasty thread of anti capitalism, anti big business running through a lot of it that appeals to self loathing and self obsessed Americans.

I find it interesting that these discussions invariably turn from processed foods to corporate America and MacDonald's a linkage that always seems to be bubbling just below the surface.

The debate and discussion of interesting and important topics has become poisoned by a good vs evil mentality that has made rational thought something that just gets in the way of the cause.

For example the term "processed." Most every food is processed as has been noted here. yet we can't have the discussion because to many this is not really about what we eat etc it is about polemics--" processed" is a code word for MacDonald's et al. it really means "processed our way vs processed their way."

I also agree that leaving out a critical element like exercise renders most of these discussions about health and nutrition moot. Same for ignoring the reality of our overall health today vs the our health in the past.

Another factor often left out is taste and the pleasure of eating. Eating is about a lot more than nutrition, and health. I find the current selling of wine as a healthy product with claims of disease prevention obnoxious. How about we like it with our food and enjoy the effects of alcohol! That's good enough for me!

How about process with the goal of producing food that tastes good! Then we can talk about process in terms of saving the planet or the animals or the whatever.

All the agonizing over statistics and dire warnings of we're killing ourselves, processed food is killing us, we gotta join a movement --healthfood, slow food, organic food, no food, yadda yadda yadda.

Eating and health?

The answer may be all too simple. Moderation and exercise!

But hey--that's too easy. One can't sell many books based on advice that obvious.

[ludja]

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

My head is truly spinning reading many of the responses to this article. I am truly surprised by the fierce defense of ultraprocessed foods by so many people, but I think I will reserve comment on this until I absorb and think more about what I think is motivating these responses. It is truly bewildering at a certain level although I think that Pollan brilliantly exposes how "nutritionism" and marketing have trained people to eat this way nearly as easily as one trains a circus seal to do tricks by feeding it fish. (I see that there is now a discussion on what "processed" means, suffice it to say for now that I don't mean "white bread".)

One of the many things that I think has been misinterpreted (willfully?) in the article is his suggestion to eat food that ones great-grandparents would recognize. The suggestion is *not* to eat the diet that one’s great-grandparents did but rather to use this as one helpful and practical metric in limiting the amount of ‘modern’ (post 1970, say) ultra-processed foods ones eats. As someone pointed out, for example, it doesn’t mean not to eat kiwi’s if one grandparents or great-grandparents had not seen that particular fruit. It also doesn't mean to eat the same portion sizes they did. It also needn’t mean that one should abolish ALL processed food from ones diet. The suggestion is to limit these items that, for many, have formed an exponentially increasing percentage of their diet. Do some people really think this is a bad suggestion? (This question is not for those whose livelihood depends on a company that produces this type of food product or for those that own stock in companies that do!)*

And regarding the discussions about how healthy or not we are now compared to previous generations, the real “experiment” will come to fruition when the people born after 1975 become older. This group, as a whole, has been the one who has truly been saturated with high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, etc and excessive portion sizes to a degree that has not ever been seen before. And also to address one of Pollan's points, by eating so many processed artificial foods we may not yet even understand what has been "bad" or missing from this type of diet. The case of transfats and margarine is one example.

The experimental input into the experiment on the lives and long term health of this generation has resulted not only from the choices made at the supermarket but also from the choices to eat out at restaurants and fast food restaurants at a pace very different from a generation or two before. The latter choice also has significantly increased the amount of HFCS, transfats and just the plain old amount of food people have eaten in the last 25 years. The first part of the experiment is already yielding easily observable results as evidenced by the much larger proportion of overweight and obese people in the population. Is this a disputed fact? I suspect that the remaining experimental results will start appearing soon.

*and journalists with a stake and makers of anti-statins and weight loss companies and ...well, anyone who has a stake in maintaining the status quo. The question is, though, for some who may at least intiially find themselves virulently opposed to the straightforward suggestions made in the article. One might ask oneself, why am I having this response?

Edited January 29, 2007 by ludja (log)

[Darcie B]

While it is true that much "interventional" health care does indeed get utilized at the end of life, extending life for limited periods and at questionable quality of life, I believe that you took his staement out of context. Where do you think improved sanitation and vaccinations came from? There are also plenty of day to day examples of interventional health care that save lives routinely. ... That more people are in fact getting cancer is another question, which may actually be pertinent to this discussion of nutritionism.

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I never said that 'interventional' health care doesn't save lives! I just said that overall our life expectancy hasn't been greatly changed by it, because much of it comes at the end of life, and as you said sometimes with questionable results. It was my understanding that my friend was alluding to public health measures rather than individual medical procedures.

I'm not trying to take anything away from the medical community... in fact, I am set for some 'interventional' medicine myself, that (I hope) will greatly extend my life expectancy (I have a thyroid problem, possibly cancer, ironically even though I eat what nearly everyone would consider a very healthy diet, which goes to the argument that far more than diet goes into the equation). I just wanted to state that my friend said that the research he studied showed sanitation and vaccination as being far more important than surgeries and the like. I'm certainly not suggesting we should give up our medical practices!

edit to fix subject/verb agreement

Edited January 29, 2007 by Darcie B (log)

[Fat Guy]

I'd like to see good information where coronary bypass and stents have been "in many or most cases unnecessary or counterproductive.

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The stent story has been all over the news lately. This story, "Doctors Rethink Widespread Use of Heart Stents," from the New York Times, is typical:

The evidence indicates that overuse of stents may be leading to thousands of heart attacks and deaths each year, whether because stents are being used in relatively mild cases where drugs should be prescribed instead, or because patients are receiving drug-coated versions where simpler, cheaper bare-metal devices might work just as well.

There is no question that stents have saved countless lives in the short term by preventing impending heart attacks or opening arteries while an attack is being treated. But neither type of stent, no matter how much better it may make a patient feel, has been shown in rigorous clinical trials to improve long-term survival compared with other forms of treatment.

Another Times story, "New Heart Studies Question the Value Of Opening Arteries," reports:

A new and emerging understanding of how heart attacks occur indicates that increasingly popular aggressive treatments may be doing little or nothing to prevent them.

The artery-opening methods, like bypass surgery and stents, the widely used wire cages that hold plaque against an artery wall, can alleviate crushing chest pain. Stents can also rescue someone in the midst of a heart attack by destroying an obstruction and holding the closed artery open.

But the new model of heart disease shows that the vast majority of heart attacks do not originate with obstructions that narrow arteries.

Likewise, the oft-repeated claim of a diabetes epidemic is not necessarily accepted by all observers, as noted in the Times in an essay titled "Well-Intentioned Food Police May Create Havoc With Children's Diets."

We often hear, for instance, of a rising tide of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, especially in children. But the science behind such pronouncements is shaky. A study of nearly 3,000 children presented at the American Diabetes Association's 2005 conference suggested that a third of the children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with being overweight, were later found to have Type 1 diabetes, linked to genetics.

Abigail C. Saguy, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies media framing of obesity, says it's hard to know if rates are truly rising, since no nationally representative data are available.

One study of teenagers in the Cincinnati area found that the diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes went from 7 per 100,000 teenagers per year in 1982 to 7.2 per 100,000 teenagers per year in 1994 — a difference that could easily be a result of better diagnostics.

I think a good piece to add to the mandatory reading list is the recent essay in the Times, "What’s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses."

Expert panels constantly expand what constitutes disease: thresholds for diagnosing diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis and obesity have all fallen in the last few years. The criterion for normal cholesterol has dropped multiple times. With these changes, disease can now be diagnosed in more than half the population.

Most of us assume that all this additional diagnosis can only be beneficial. And some of it is. But at the extreme, the logic of early detection is absurd. If more than half of us are sick, what does it mean to be normal? Many more of us harbor “pre-disease” than will ever get disease, and all of us are “at risk.” The medicalization of everyday life is no less problematic. Exactly what are we doing to our children when 40 percent of summer campers are on one or more chronic prescription medications?

For each of the above reports, there are hundreds of others that make similar points. I've simply chosen the Times for its relatively strict journalistic standards and web accessibility.

It's important to remember that large food corporations aren't the only companies with a stake in the nutrition debate. The pharmaceutical and medical products industries (not to mention doctors themselves) benefit from alarmism concerning public health. The weight loss industry is a multi-billion-dollar venture that includes products, publishing, classes, clinics and resorts. Following the money doesn't always lead to ConAgra. Sometimes it leads to your pediatrician.