In Defense of Food - an attack on Nutritionism

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the spokeswoman for Healthy Choice frozen dinners, is shown in the above commercial debating over whether to promote the product. Kerry Trueman references this commercial in her article “Nutritionsim: The Numbers Game That Doesn’t Add Up to Good Health” as she echoes the sentiments of Michael Pollan: perhaps we should all take such a weary stance of processed foods.

In his book In Defense of Food, Pollan propigates the age-old tradition of eating food to remain healthy. While this seems like an obvious statement, he argues it is surprisingly difficult for consumers of the “Western diet” to find food on their grocery shelves today. He claims food has been replaced by a process where nutritionism, which reduces foods to their nutrient parts, has been used by the food industry as a justification for touting highly processed foods as better than the whole foods that have kept our species alive for hundreds of thousands of years. Further, argues Pollan, the line between what’s “real” and what’s “processed” in our grocery stores is so ambiguous that most people have no clue what they’re consuming.

While Trueman doesn’t completely discount nutritionists, she suggests that with all the new “food-like substances” out there it’s nearly impossible for nutritionists to keep up. But, she says, it’s important that nutritionists quit obsessing about nutrients and concentrate on whole foods. She references nutritionist Joan Dye Gussow who says it’s silly to focus on one nutrient when there are so many in each food item that it’s nearly impossible to pin a health benefit or risk down just one of them.

In Trueman’s article, Gassow also supports Pollan’s claim that the food industry is at fault. She calls the food industry “our most determined enemies in the attempt to improve diets” because they are more worried about profits than the health of consumers.

The moral? Don’t sweat the nutrients. Eat food – especially fruits and vegetables.

*video taken from youtube.com and listed on the Huffington Post website along with Trueman's atricle, "Nutritionism: The Numbers Game that Doesn't Add Up to Good Health"