Eat Food
Michæl Pollan has some nontraditional advice on how to be healthy: eat food; not too much; mostly plants.
The full article is actually a wonderful examination of how nutritionism has damaged the American diet. Instead of eating healthy food, we flock to unhealthy food with a few extra nutrients added. Believe it or not, removing fat or adding oat bran or fibre does not a healthy product make.
Our own public servants are of no use, for they are to beholden to
the producers. Pollan details how back in 1977 the federal government
was to have released a recommendation to reduce consumption of
meat
; due to pressure from the cattle industry, the recommendation
was instead choose meats, poultry and fish that will reduce
saturated-fat intake,
which is not at all the same thing.
It’s much like advising choose a method of driving which
maximises leg and arm motion
instead of just saying exercise
more.
Fortunately, Pollan also offers some good advice: eat food; not too much; mostly plants. Eat real food, not manufactured food products. Processed food-like substances trigger our taste sensors, but there’s no there there: they don’t actually contain the substances we need to survive. Avoid them, and you’ll be better off. Don’t eat too much food; gluttony is a sin for a reason (actually, all sins are sins for a reason, but that’s another blog entry). Eat mostly plants: they are chock-full of nutritious goodness. Meat’s good stuff too; you should have meat in your diet. It’s tasty, and it’s a good way of getting certain proteins in a hassle-free manner. Livestock can be an excellent way of eking out subsistence from barren grassland; some animals, pigs in particular, are excellent mechanisms for turning garbage into food. But too much meat is most definitely not what the doctor ordered. If you want my advice, do as the Church teaches and abstain from meat Wednesdays, Fridays, during Lent and Advent (there are several other fasts, but those are the big ones): you’ll cut your meat consumption down considerably, but you’ll still get what you want and what you need. Plus, self-discipline is a virtue.
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
