Mar 21 2010
Silence of the Yams
I got that line from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. It cracked me up.
Just as I was agonizing over the Diet Wars–in which the low-fat gurus battle the low-carb gurus, and neither side has yet emerged victorious–Pollan makes an excellent case that we need not to fight for carbs, fats, vitamins, antioxidants, or any other subset of our nutrition needs. We need to fight for food.
Pollan carefully defines, and defends, food: he means actual plant and animal substances, not processed or refined into foodlike substances. He even suggests that if a product has to make health claims, it is probably not food, but a foodlike substance derived from parts of nutritious substances that came from food.
Foodlike substances shout wildly for our attention.
Now fortified with 10 vitamins and minerals!
No artificial preservatives!
A heart-healthy food!
And the yams, alas, are silent.
In Defense of Food is a couple years old, but the ideas are still cutting edge. One of my next reads will be Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.
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