Book Review:
I've just finished reading In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan and I have to say this is a REALLY important book.
Since I commenced my training in Naturopathic Medicine back in the '80s the links between 'the epidemic of chronic diseases' and poor nutrition have always fascinated me. Heavens, back then there wasn't even half the range of manufactured 'foods' there are now so the incidences of preventable diseases has grown exponentially since then. I have to admit some wry amusement at the naming of the respective state and federal departments of 'Health'. For we healthy people, we have no need for them whatsoever so they really ought to be named truthfully as The Departments of Illness and Accident.

Anyway, looping back to the original tenet of the book, Mr Pollan chronicles the rise of Western-diet-created diseases really commencing in the early 1970s with foods being dismantled into nutrients with various villains identified, such as saturated fats from animal proteins. In spite of very little evidence to support the hypothesis, the American Heart Association recommended a 'prudent diet' of less cholesterol and saturated fats from animal sources to reduce the rate of heart disease. Well - what a furore that caused from the red meat and dairy industries! Now, this is where some important linkages between the power-of-the-lobby and development -of-policies starts to become interesting. Pollan includes an example of the power of the sugar lobby in Washington and, I quote:

Only the power of the sugar lobby in Washington can explain the fact that the official
U.S. recommendation for the maximum permissible level of free-sugars in the diet
is an eye-popping 25% of daily calories. To give you some idea just how permissive
that is, the World Health Organisation recommends that no more than 10% of
daily calories come from added sugars, a benchmark that the U.S.
sugar lobby has worked furiously to dismantle. In 2004 it enlisted the
Bush State Department in a campaign to get the recommendation changed
and has threatened to lobby Congress to cut WHO
funding unless the organisation recants.

Pollan also identifies the rise of 'nutritionism' from food 'scientists' and extended in the popular press, waxing lyrical about selected pockets of components as either ideal, useful, deleterious or dangerous. Think of the proliferation of (often conflicting) Low GI, low-fat, high-fibre, high-protein, low-carb, high-calcium and high-antioxidant regimes purported to deliver a myriad of health benefits. Whole, naturally-grown-in-healthy-soils, unwaxed, unprocessed and with Low HI (Human Interference) objects are rarely spoken about in their complete form - it is all about the component macronutrients instead. This reductionist science misses the importance of the life-vitality - that mystery which is peculiar to Nature and cannot be put back together after dismantling. Why are so many technical-based scientists so fearful of Nature? The advice provided In Defence of Food is to shun any foods your grandmother wouldn't recognise, ignore any products with more than five ingredients and especially if they are unpronounceable and even more so if products contain high-fructose corn syrup. Eat more leaves - fresh, green leaves and eat meals - at the table, similar to the French and Italians and embrace the food culture. Wisdom from Wendell Berry on the problems of monoculture from his essay "The Pleasures of Eating" -

"But as scale increases, diversity declines; as diversity declines, so does health;
as health declines, the dependence on drugs and chemicals (necessarily) increases."

More on this point -

"Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend."

In Western cultures, the past two generations have been encouraged to ignore intuition and instincts and instead, rely on 'scientific' sources for information on health and food manufacturing industries for 'nutritionally enhanced foods'. However, the evidence of ever-increasing incidences in asthma, obesity, cardio-vascular diseases, behavioural disorders, chronic fatigue and cancer and year-by-year increases in Department of 'Health' budgets to combat them suggests something is awry.


It is time to reawaken and TRUST our instincts to educate and nourish us and to encourage our intuition to provide the wisdom to guides us to what is perfect for our bodies. This is about reclaiming control over food science and manufacturing industries, learning about healthy soils and how they are vital to human and planetary health and growing our own foods......even on a minute basis.

Cooking from scratch is a survival technique...almost a subversive act.....an experience with the sensuous, perfect, luscious, voluptuous, delicious and simply beautiful creations we call whole foods.....and we are the artisans in our own kitchen-studios......producing works of nourishment and love.