The food we eat

Could we solve our health care crisis by taking a hard line with our food supply?

When did the obesity epidemic start? About the same time we were given easy access to inexpensive snack foods loaded with salt, fat, and sugar - 1980.

Michael Pollan is widely known for his advice to "Eat food. Mostly

plants. Not too much." Pollan has written a friendly, handy little book called "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual," gently offering 64 simple rules to guide a person's eating.

The growth of the snack food industry brought us factory made versions of previously time-consuming foods. They were foods we loved and we wanted more of.

Rule #56: "Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods." What did people eat before we had bags of chips and boxes of crackers? They might have eaten fruits, vegetables and nuts, or they may have waited for the next meal. Between meal snacks used to be frowned upon.

French fries, doughnuts and ice cream are have become too easy to access.

Back in the days when they were made at home, they took a lot of time and effort - especially cleaning up afterward. It was a special occasion when they were on the menu. Suddenly the food industry made it possible for us to buy them at any time, even if they weren't nearly as good as the originals.

Pollan's recommendation is to return these foods to their special occasion status, and treat them as treats. (Rule #60)

The companion to that treat rule is the junk food rule: "Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself."

(Rule #39) You might buy ice cream to eat every day, but chances are you won't make it that often.

"Pay more; eat less" - rule #44

If we put a value on the nutrition in the foods we buy, then we will find ourselves paying more. But we will also have the option of eating less to get what we need.

There was a time when even the bargain foods were valuable choices. Now, the cheap foods are the processed foods. Pollan would say they are not really food; they are edible synthetics made to look like food. They give us calories, but not much else.

Rule #19 says: "If it comes from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don't."

"Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does" - rule #57. American gas stations now make more money from selling food and cigarettes than they do from selling gas. Much of that food falls into Pollan's "edible synthetics" category.

("We're changing from gas stations that happen to sell food, to restaurants that happen to sell gas," says Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the US National Association of Convenience Stores, whose members sell about 80 per cent of that nation's gasoline.)

Pollan developed these ideas - and more - after he spent some time trying to answer a basic question: "What should I eat?"

He is not inclined to rely on getting the answer from nutrition science.

From his research, he has this to say about nutrition science. "Nutrition science, which after all only got started less than 200 years ago, is today approximately where surgery was in the year 1650 - very promising, and very interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate on you? I think I'll wait awhile."

Our modern Western diet consists of processed foods and meat, with added fat and sugars, and refined grains. It is very low in vegetables, fruits and whole grains. Those of us who eat this diet tend to get the Western diseases of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Pollan says, "Four of the top 10 killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet."

Meanwhile, other cultures that do not eat this diet do not have these health issues. That might be enough information to help us decide what to eat and what not to eat.

Pollan quotes a transplant cardiologist who wrote to him saying, "you can't imagine what I see on the insides of people these days wrecked by eating food products instead of food."

So here we are as individuals and as a society, facing a seemingly inevitable health care crisis. Doing something about our food supply and our eating habits just might make a considerable difference.

by: nickiepolson@shaw.ca