Everyone wants to be fit and slim. However it seems so unattainable. Everyone is throwing in their two cents until it is impossible to see straight. It is a mess that is being avoided instead of being fixed. When Pollen wrote his article “Escape from the Western Diet” he claimed he was trying to cut through all the clutter surrounding obesity. He even describes it as cult like, foolish, and excessive. However as he begins to talk about what he thinks he emits that same vibe. He openly ridicules most other ways of thinking about food. He ridicules other diet trend like eating more omega3s and cutting carbs; he even goes as far as to ridicule the health care system. He simplifies food into two groups, whole food and industrial food. He claims that as much as possible we need to get all our food from the first category, and that the second is inherently bad. He seems to think he knows best. He seems to think he is making it better however, all he did was add to the ridiculousness by giving people near impossible goals, unhealthy goals, and unrealistic expectations. First he sets near impossible goals. …show more content…
It over simplifies the ides of eating healthy to a degree at which it seems that anyone can do it just with these simple steps. He basically say put in this and you will get this. That does not take into account the outside factors. The health issues, like diabetes and hyperthyroidism that can cause and be affected by being overweight have no baring in his view. The exercise you do seems to have part in how health you are. Even the body’s natural predisposition and genes seem to be irrelevant to someone’s overall health. A person’s metabolism is not taken into effect. All these things make up the idiosyncrasies and nuances of nutrition, however he thinks that they can easily be simplified into simply escaping the diet of the western world. And that is a bad thing to do in such a complex and intricate thing such as
“Food as thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating,” is an article written by Mary Maxfield in response or reaction to Michael Pollan’s “Escape from the Western Diet”. Michael Pollan tried to enlighten the readers about what they should eat or not in order to stay healthy by offering and proposing a simple theory: “the elimination of processed foods” (443).
Michael Pollan, an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism (Michael Pollan), writes in his book In Defense of Food, the dangers of nutritionism and how to escape the Western diet and subsequently most of the chronic diseases the diet imparts. In the chapter “Nutritionism Defined” Pollan defines the term nutritionism. Pollan’s main assertion being how the ideology of nutritionism defines food as the sum of its nutrients, and from this viewpoint Pollan goes on to write how nutritionism divides food into two categories, with each macronutrient divided against each other as either bad or good nutrients, in a bid for focus of our food fears and enthusiasms. Finally, Pollan concludes that with the relentless focus nutritionism places on nutrients and their interplay distinctions between foods become irrelevant and abandoned.
He is trying to get the Pollanites to realize that the majority of people will spend three dollars before they spend “If the most influential-voices in our food culture today get their way we will achieve a genuine food revolution. Too bad it would be one tailored to the dubious health fantasies of a small, elite minority.” (934) said Freedman. All the people who believe that wholefoods is the answer to obesity do not realize it is helping no one but themselves. The word Elite shows that this group of people believes that they are on top and that they are better than everyone.
The film starts with what the government and many food companies say: that people become obese because do not exercise as much as they eat, and that obesity is caused by lack of effort. As the film suggest, exercise can moderate
These few sentences are the most effective in contradicting everything that the author has said previously in the article. The text states, “These study’s findings will not persuade everyone where low-fat diets are concerned. Some people may continue on these diets because they have lost weight or feel their health has improved.” Although right after these sentences the author continues to discuss why low-fat diets are bad, these sentences show us that the author understands other people’s point of
As obesity and medical problems due to diet become a larger issue within society, it is imperative to educate humans on the importance of maintaining a healthy diet. This is exactly what Hungry for Change does. One of the key points made in the documentary is that humans no longer eat a natural diet like their ancestors did; when humans first began to inhabit the Earth they lived off a diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, grains, and meats. During these periods famine and disease was rampant, so humans adapted to store nutrition more productively. Now that humans live in a more developed society, they have a (practically) unlimited supply of food. However, much of this food is processed and manipulated to have a better flavour and a longer shelf life, and though this sounds like a positive situation, it has become a huge problem. According to best-selling women’s health author Dr. Christine Northrup, “We’ve lived on Earth for a millennium where there was a food shortage. You’re programmed to put on fat whenever there is food available. Now there’s a lot of food available, but it’s the wrong kind.” (Northrup, as cited in Colquhoun et al., 2012). This is a logical and widely accepted theory as to why humans continue to overindulge on foods despi...
The Western Diet mainly consists of fried foods, refined grains, sugar, high carbohydrate and fats, and meats (3). It has been hypothesized that having a Western Diet increases one’s chances for developing depression. There has been a great deal of research into why the western diet increase’s one chance of having depression. A common sense reason maybe that the Western Diet consisted of large amounts carbohydrates, fats and sugars which promotes obesity and then causes depression (1). More scientific evidence suggest that having a improper diet like the Western Diet negatively affects peripheral and central dopamine, which are neurotransmitters (chemical which transmit signals across the synapse from the nerve cell to the target cell) directly linked to the mental health of the brain and are negatively affected by high fat diets (4). Research has also suggested that having a poor nutrition status such as lacking folate (a natural water form of vitamin bg which is crucial for many of the bodies processes) and key vitamins like vitamin b12 significantly increases the risk of depression in elderly people (5). Research into the topic of dietary habits and mental health is very crucial with the growing rates of obesity and depression in the United States compared to the rest of the world. Thus, does having poor dietary habits increase the likelihood of having depression? The likelihood of developing depression has been linked to the type of diet one consumes such as the Western Diet, Diets Low in Fat and Carbohydrates and weight control diets like binge eating.
In “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating” by, Mary Maxfield (pp.442-447), she affirms a bright argument about how food is not moral or immoral. Therefore, you can eat whatever you desire and not suffer any negative side effects, which she ignores. Her key points including stated facts such as “Culturally,we resist these scientific findings,” that people can be fat and healthy, “in favor of a perspective that considers fatness fatal and thinness immortal.”(pp.445) The main point to Maxfield’s claim in healthy eating, is being active and living a fit lifestyle. In “Escape From The Western Diet” (pp.420-427)by Michael Pollan, his argument is to help the American community be enlightened with
When it comes to the topic of eating healthy, most of us will readily agree that we all need to. Where this argument usually ends, however, is on the question of how and why. Whereas some are convinced that we don’t need to all be eating healthy foods that are over priced to stay healthy, and others maintain that there is no other way. Bill Gifford talks about a proper diet throughout the book, but one chapter in particular really stands out when it comes to how diet affects our bodies and ultimately our heath. In the chapter Phil Vs. Fat, Gifford tells a story about a man who beats all odds when it comes to changing his life. Our new friend Phil was morbidly obese and had become highly diabetic. Through exercise and eating a more refined diet, he was able to completely reverse his body and his health. Gifford continues to emphasis on Phil’s great feat when he writes, “The doctor was astonished: Bruno’s insulin resistance was gone, his blood values
When we think of our national health we wonder why Americans end up obese, heart disease filled, and diabetic. Michael Pollan’s “ Escape from the Western Diet” suggest that everything we eat has been processed some food to the point where most of could not tell what went into what we ate. Pollan thinks that if America thought more about our “Western diets” of constantly modified foods and begin to shift away from it to a more home grown of mostly plant based diet it could create a more pleasing eating culture. He calls for us to “Eat food, Not too much, Mostly plants.” However, Mary Maxfield’s “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating”, argues differently she has the point of view that people simply eat in the wrong amounts. She recommends for others to “Trust yourself. Trust your body. Meet your needs.” The skewed perception of eating will cause you all kinds of health issues, while not eating at all and going skinny will mean that you will remain healthy rather than be anorexic. Then, as Maxfield points out, “We hear go out and Cram your face with Twinkies!”(Maxfield 446) when all that was said was eating as much as you need.
Michael Pollan states in his article “Escape from the Western diet”, three simple rules to follow to obtain a healthy lifestyle, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” (426). The food industry and medical community manipulate us to believe we are escaping the Western diet but to only find out that we are right back to where we started. Pollan provides some easy rules of thumb so that we aren’t caught up in the latest trends or diets but instead develop some eating boundaries that seem simple to follow on an everyday basis. Personally for me, following these rules can seem hard in some aspects but also easy in others because factors like role models when I was a kid, living situation and cooking skills effect my ability to follow the three
... and taking into account people’s lifestyles today, it seems that achieving the same kind of health is quite difficult, if not absolutely impossible. With all the fast food chains lurking right outside our doorsteps, with all of the restaurants tempting us to take a bite, it is really quite difficult to achieve and eventually maintain a much improved lifestyle.
Most Americans do not care enough to take a look at the nutritional values of the food that he or she is consuming. That is why America has the highest percentage of obesity in the world. This is a serious problem because one in every three adults is obese, and one in every six children is obese. There are many factors that go into the regular American diet, but most of those factors are not appealing nor is it healthy. Americans put way too much processed food into their daily diet. Some would say that other countries diets superior the American diet because of nutritional values that it carries. Other countries have proven that an active lifestyle is a huge element in the average weight of the country. There are many things that Americans could change about their diets and lifestyle that would help them to become healthier.
Somerset Maugham says that “To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day”. I think that to live well anywhere in the world you should eat at least three times a day. Some of you may have thought of a Mediterranean diet, but when I talked about eating, the first thing I thought about is my region’s diet. And if I have to compare those to other diets, I would say that a typical diet from the south of Benin is equivalent to the Mediterranean Diet because although the nutritional values are lower in the Beninois diet, it is cheaper and easier to find than the Mediterranean diet in the southern region of Benin.
A sad fact in American society is that thousands of people search for the elusive dream of being thin. On any given day, one finds neighbors, friends, and relatives on some kind of diet. Dieters assume various disguises, but the noteworthy ones are the "bandwagoneer," the "promiser" and the "lethal loser."