In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

by Michael Pollan

Wild animals too are worth adding to your diet when you have the opportunity. Wild game generally has less saturated fat and more omega-3 fatty acids than domesticated animals, because most of the wild animals we eat themselves eat a diverse diet of plants rather than grain.

BE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO TAKES SUPPLEMENTS. We know that people who take supplements are generally healthier than the rest of us, and we also know that, in controlled studies, most of the supplements they take don’t appear to work. Probably the supplement takers are healthier for reasons having nothing to do with the pills: They’re typically more health conscious, better educated, and more affluent. So to the extent you can, be the kind of person who would take supplements, and then save your money.

EAT MORE LIKE THE FRENCH. OR THE ITALIANS. OR THE JAPANESE. OR THE INDIANS. OR THE GREEKS. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally much healthier than people eating a contemporary Western diet.

REGARD NONTRADITIONAL FOODS WITH SKEPTICISM. Innovation is interesting, but when it comes to something like food, it pays to approach novelties with caution.

DON’T LOOK FOR THE MAGIC BULLET IN THE TRADITIONAL DIET. In the same way that foods are more than the sum of their nutrient parts, dietary patterns seem to be more than the sum of the foods that comprise them.

HAVE A GLASS OF WINE WITH DINNER. Wine may not be the X factor in the French or Mediterranean diet, but it does seem to be an integral part of those dietary patterns. There is now abundant scientific evidence for the health benefits of alcohol to go with a few centuries of traditional belief and anecdotal evidence.

How a culture eats may have just as much of a bearing on health as what a culture eats. The foodstuffs of another people are often easier to borrow than their food habits, it’s true, but to adopt some of these habits would do at least as much for our health and happiness as eaters.

the French gift for extracting more food experience from fewer calories may help explain why the French are slimmer and healthier than we are.

PAY MORE, EAT LESS. What the French case suggests is that there is a trade-off in eating between quantity and quality.

Not everyone can afford to eat high-quality food in America, and that is shameful; however, those of us who can, should. Doing so benefits not only your health (by, among other things, reducing your exposure to pesticides and pharmaceuticals), but also the health of the people who grow the food as well as the people who live downstream and downwind of the farms where it is grown.

Is it just a coincidence that as the portion of our income spent on food has declined, spending on health care has soared? In 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent of national income on health care. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on health care has climbed to 16 percent of national income. I have to think that by spending a little more on healthier food we could reduce the amount we have to spend on health care.

EAT MEALS. This recommendation sounds almost as ridiculous as “eat food,” but in America at least, it no longer goes without saying. We are snacking more and eating fewer meals together.

According to the Harvard economists’ calculations, the bulk of the calories we’ve added to our diet over the past twenty years has come in the form of snacks.

DO ALL YOUR EATING AT A TABLE. No, a desk is not a table.

DON’T GET YOUR FUEL FROM THE SAME PLACE YOUR CAR DOES.

TRY NOT TO EAT ALONE. Americans are increasingly eating in solitude. Though there is research suggesting that light eaters will eat more when they dine with others (probably because they spend more time at the table), for people prone to overeating, communal meals tend to limit consumption, if only because we’re less likely to stuff ourselves when others are watching.

CONSULT YOUR GUT. As the psychologists have demonstrated, most of us allow external, and mostly visual, cues to determine how much we eat.

Supposedly it takes twenty minutes before the brain gets the word that the belly is full; unfortunately most of us take considerably less than twenty minutes to finish a meal, with the result that the sensation of feeling full exerts little if any influence on how much we eat. What this suggests is that eating more slowly, and then consulting our sense of satiety, might help us to eat less.

EAT SLOWLY. Not just so you’ll be more likely to know when to stop. I mean “slow” in the sense of deliberate and knowledgeable eating promoted by Slow Food, the Italian-born movement dedicated to the principle that “a firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life.”

you have to wonder whether it’s realistic to think the American way of eating can be reformed without also reforming the whole American way of life.

COOK AND, IF YOU CAN, PLANT A GARDEN. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be fast, cheap, and easy; that food is a product of industry, not nature; that food is fuel, and not a form of communion, with other people as well as with other species—with nature.

Free range” doesn’t necessarily mean the chicken has had access to grass; many egg and broiler producers offer their chickens little more than a dirt yard where nothing grows. Look for the word “pastured.” And in the case of beef, keep in mind that all cattle are grass fed until they get to the feedlot; “grass finished” or “100% grass fed” is what you want. For more on the nutritional benefits of pastured food and where to find it, go to eatwild.com.