Real food versus "nutritionism" (Column: 2/6/07)

Partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, hydrolyzed vegetable proteins, monosodium glutamate, sodium alginate, disodium guanylate, sodium tripolyphosphate, tocopherols.

What am I listing? These are just a sampling of the more than fifty ingredients in a convenience food product called "Hearty Cup o' Noodles" (source: "Know Your Ingredients," in Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon).

Such mind-boggling, and tongue-twisting, ingredient lists are the rule rather than the exception among the brightly-colored packages of processed and prepared foods that line our grocery shelves these days. Convenient, yes; attractive, certainly. But healthy? That's a whole 'nother story. It's a story that is told by, among others, Michael Pollan -- author of the highly acclaimed The Omnivore's Dilemma -- in a New York Times article entitled "Unhappy Meals."

The problem, as Pollan sees it -- and I heartily agree -- is that the whole eating experience has been taken over by a worldview that he calls "nutritionism": a paradigm that takes nutrients out of the context of food, food out of the context of meals, and meals out of the context of culture.

Not all cultures share this view, however, and some of them who consider such things as pleasure and socializing, rather than health, to be the centerpiece of eating are actually healthier than we are. The French are a popular case in point.

My own suspicion is that by taking the emphasis away from flavor, enjoyment, and communal bonding, nutritionism probably has a negative effect on overall health, if only because it makes eating yet another source of stress, rather than pleasure and relaxation. As Pollan notes, "Worrying about eating can't possibly be good for you."

Still, what you eat does matter. The challenge, nowadays, is discerning authentic food from laboratory-created imitations.

Once, Pollan points out, food was all you could eat. But now, he notes, there are "lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket." Some of them even make health claims. However, he notes, "if you're concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it's not really food, and food is what you want to eat."

So what counts as food? According to Pollan, eat food your great-grandmother would recognize as food. Get out of the supermarket, and buy local and seasonal foods. Pay more (for high-quality food); eat less (of everything). Avoid food products that make health claims, have ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, or more than five in number, or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.

Pollan further recommends, "Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren't a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn't still be around."

This is an important point, also made by Sally Fallon and the Weston A. Price Foundation: fad diets based on theories and short-term studies are untrustworthy. Traditional diets that have kept traditional peoples healthy for hundreds or even thousands of years are vastly more likely to be healthy for modern people, even if some of their contents seem to go against the grain of contemporary nutritional orthodoxy.

Pollan and Nina Planck, author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why and The Farmers Market Cookbook, both agree that Mom was right: fruits and vegetables should make up the majority of a healthy diet. Pollan emphasizes leafy vegetables, and acknowledges that meat is okay, though more as a side dish than the main course. Planck flatly asserts, on her realfood.com website, that "meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and milk are some of the best foods you can eat. Most traditional diets contain plenty of all of them, and even traditional vegetarian diets all rely on milk and eggs for complete protein, B vitamins, and essential fats. There are no traditional vegan societies."

Finally, Pollan recommends, do your own cooking, and ideally, plant a garden. Don't be a passive recipient of prepackaged nutrients; rather, "take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance." Do your part to combat the corrosive idea that "food is fuel, and not communion. The culture of the kitchen," he notes, "contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism."

The bottom line is this: want real health? Eat real food. Bon appetit!