Unhappy Meals By Michael Pollan Summary

Why are the chronic diseases and obesity rates of America rising? Supposedly, we have a great control of what goes in our foods. We can pick what to exclude or include in our foods and in addition, create or alter compounds from foods. Because of that, what was supposedly created to alleviate the obesity issue actually worsened it. “How?” you may ask. Unlike other aspects in science, the data was the problem. The data was unreliable and inconsistent due to the poorly conducted studies (Pollan, "Unhappy Meals"). The debate between Michael Pollan, the author of “Unhappy Meals” and a lover of whole foods, and David H. Freedman, the author of “How Junk Food Can End Obesity,” raises the question whether processed foods or whole foods are the solution to obesity. Pollan

Surprisingly, both opposing parties agrees. Pollan criticized the way data was gathered in the Women’s Health Initiative’s experiment, where the participants were asked numerous questions that used poor diction, making the women feel more self-conscious, and therefore, giving false answers. Despite that, there were errors even before the trial had started. Before the dietary trial, the women were to give their weight and calories consumption per day, which were inconsistent with each other (“Unhappy Foods”). Even the opposing side concurs with Pollan complaints of the poorly conducted experiments. Freedman rejected other experimental studies that, according to him, have proved nothing because the controlled group was too similar to the population to compare ("How Junk Food Can End Obesity"). Additionally, they held “confounding factors” (Pollan, "Unhappy Meals") ranging from “non-dietary differences” like smoking and exercising to “dietary differences” like the level of processing in foods (Freedman, "How Junk Food Can End