Synthesis Essay There are many different beliefs about the proper way to eat healthy. People are often mislead and live unhealthy lifestyles as a result. Both Mary Maxfield and Michael Pollan explain their own beliefs on what a healthy diet is and how to live a healthy lifestyle. In the essay, “Escape from the Western diet” Michael Pollan writes about the flaws of the western diet and how we can correct these problems to become healthier. In the essay, “Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating”, Mary Maxfield criticizes Michael Pollan’s essay about eating healthy, and explains her own theory on how to be healthy. She believes that Pollan is contradicting himself and that what he is stating is false. Mary Maxfield ponders the …show more content…
The western diet consists of foods high in sugar and fat, as well as a large consumption of red meats and refined grains. As a result, people who consume a western diet face problems with their weight and often have many diseases related to poor dieting. Pollan believes that the food industry and medical community take advantage of this. Pollan claims that the food industry will change their processed food and sell it back to the consumer rather than removing the process food all together. The medical community will treat people’s diseases instead of helping to prevent theses disease by educating people on how to make healthier life style choices. Mary Maxfield believes that these points made by Michael Pollan are hypocritical. She states that Michael Pollan is taking advantage of the consumer the same way he claims that the food industry and medical community are. Pollan would criticize the food industry and medical community but at the same time publish and sell his theories on how to eat …show more content…
Michael Pollan has develop his own algorithm on proper eating. His algorithm is to “Eat Food, Not too much, Mostly Plants”. His explanation of eat food is to consume real food and to avoid the fake processed foods. His meaning of not too much is to be aware of how we eat our food and to have portion control. Lastly, Pollans explanation of mostly plants is to choose the best types of foods, rather than focusing on nutritional value. Unlike Pollan, Mary Maxfields theory on how to eat healthy is to “Trust Yourself. Trust you body. Meet your needs.” You can eat whatever you want or need and have to trust that your body will tell you what it needs. A flaw with both Pollan and Maxfield is the fact that they both want to dismiss the fact that our bodies needs nutrition. Pollan claims that in his formula under mostly plants that we should focus on the best type of foods and not the nutritional value in the foods. Maxfield believes we should disregard nutrition and healthy food altogether. However, multiple studies state that getting the proper nutrition is a crucial part of are overall health. For example, a lack of calcium can cause weak bones resulting in higher risk of bone
Pollan is against trusting your body with virtually everything you eat and digest. He thinks that the human body cannot always be trusted with the ability to accept different kinds of foods and nutrients. Maxfield on the other hand tried to counter Pollan’s idea as she mentioned in her article, “Trust yourself. Trust your body. Meet your needs” (446). I totally agree with Maxfield’s idea of trusting our body because we know the needs of our body and how to satisfy those needs better than anyone else. However, it is not everything we eat that we can trust at all
In “Bad Food” – What’s the Best Food? Tax it, and Subsidize Vegetables”, Mark Bittman suggests that the people of America should stop eating unhealthy foods so often. In the article, Bittman tells his audience that people with “heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all in large part caused by the standard American Diet” (page 35). He also states that eating healthy can result in a better health care system, saving millions of lives. The big issue is Americans eating unhealthy every day, but proposing a plan to help stop it from happening.
Michael pollan is an American journalist, author and activist, and he is currently working as a professor of Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate school of Journalism. He completed his B.A. in English from Bennington in 1977 and an M.A. in English from Colombia in 1981. Michael pollen is author of many food and eating related books For Example, The omnivore’s dilemma, A natural history of four meals, Food rules, In defense of food and many others. In 2010, Michael pollan was named one of the top magazines top 100 most influential people. As we know obesity is common in Unites States and its rate is increasing day by day, this is the reason pollan made this argument to make people aware regarding this issue that what are the causes of obesity and many other
He claims that a better diet requires spending more time and resources on food, just like the people of the past did. Pollan attributes their surpassing health to this practice, but in his article “How Junk Food Can End Obesity”, David Freedman paints a different story. Freedman describes how examinations of ancient non-Western remains revealed “hardened arteries, suggesting that pre-industrial diets…may not have been the epitome of healthy eating” (514). This discovery seriously undermines Pollan’s assumption that we should follow the lead of our ancestors because even though they spent a greater amount of resources on food and ate absolutely no processed foods, they still suffered from some of the same diseases which Pollan claims his eating habits will curb. As an opponent of processed foods, or “foodlike products” (Pollan 426), Pollan advocates eating whole foods. As many people have a similar opinion, he is not alone in this, but he is misinformed. Freedman reveals that after examining the nutrition labels on various unprocessed, whole foods, he found that many contained more fat, sugar, and sodium than processed foods (512). If unprocessed foods underwent the same scrutiny as processed foods, perhaps this common misconception could be prevented. The basic premise of Pollan’s essay is that a better diet will lead to better health. While we could all benefit from a better diet, “findings linking food type and health are considered highly unreliable (Freedman 518). Freedman discusses the multitude of nondietary factors such as air quality and exercise that render such studies untrustworthy. Pollan might be a well-respected author of nutrition books, but this does not mean that his theories are free of
Michael Pollan and David Freedman are two reputable authors who have written about different types of food and why they are healthy or why they are damaging to our health. Michael Pollan wrote “Escape from the Western Diet” and David Freedman wrote “How Junk Food Can End Obesity”. Imagine Pollan’s idea of a perfect world. Everything is organic. McDonald’s is serving spinach smoothies and Walmart is supplying consumers with raw milk. The vast majority of food in this world consists of plants grown locally, because almost everyone is a farmer in order to keep up with supply and demand. How much does all this cost? What happened to all the food that is loved just because it tastes good?
Published In his article “How Junk Food Can End Obesity”, David Freedman begins by talking about how misinformed people are about wholefood restaurants and stores. These stores are run by so-called health food experts. Freedman makes himself distinguishable himself from the position of Michael Pollan and his adherents. His adherents are known as Pollanites. They are the people who believe that processed food is the reason we have health and obesity issues.
This basically means Maxfiled believes obesity and what you eat has nothing to do with your human body system. She also mentions that there is no correlation between health, diet and weight. However, there are many tests and research that shows a poor diet and weight gain can lead to many other problems. Throughout this article Maxfield contradicts herself. On one hand she argues that Michael Pollan doesn’t support his arguments with facts, but then she makes statements without backing them up with facts herself. For example, she says that being fat is not necessarily a bad thing and that being fat can be a healthy thing, but gives no evidence to support such an foolish statement. There are those people who will agree with Maxfield and do not want agencies or anyone else telling them how they should live their lives. Maxfield’s formula of trusting our body, ourselves, and meeting our needs is completely wrong because Americans need to eat healthy, be active, and live healthy. Today Americans have a lot of health issues and have the highest obesity level which Maxfiled did not state. In conclusion Americans need much more reliable information especially on such an important issue
Americans are viewed by Pollan as “a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthy”(Our National Eating Disorder). An example of this obsession is the current epidemic of carbophobia.
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 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
According to Pollan the question “what to eat” is complicated but “to guide us we have culture” (The American Paradox). Culture influences food likes and dislikes. Culture creates food preferences which make patterns of food choices, making everyone 's selection different. Whoever the influence of our culture has been changing throughout the years, with the food industry taking over the markets. Now we do not necessarily eat what our grandparents or even what our parents used to eat, instead we have this new massive produced packaged products. This is the reason why Americans food habits are changing, now more than ver we see people consuming products not because hey are part of their culture but because is what the media tells you to consume. The 21st century has a new obsession which is body image, now more than ever people is caring about the way they look due to all the advertisement about having a perfect body. Now America is obsess with making every product beneficial to your body but how many chemicals do they use to make that diet yogurt so it can be fat free, sugar free and still have some natural ingredients in it. This is the exact point pollan is trying to make in his article we are obsess with being healthy that we forget to check what are we really eating and where ir comes
Nutrition is a very controversial and confusing topic. One day coffee is bad for you, but the next day it is good. Alcohol is detrimental for our health one day, but the next day red wine is the elixir of life. There are dozens of diet plans and they promise a leaner and healthier body. There is the 3-Hour Diet that involves constantly eating small portions of anything we want to eat. The latest diet craze, the Paleo Diet, is based upon eating foods that our “hunter-gatherer ancestors” would have thrived on during the Paleolithic era. And there is the Blood Type Diet, the South Beach Diet, the Macrobiotic Diet, the Mediterranean Diet, and the list goes on. But who and what should we believe? Well, there is an optimal diet for humans and the answer might surprise many.
Many people in America, from toddlers to the elderly, have shown numerous signs of bad health. People have the desire to keep on eating due to more, new things being merchandised as “new and improved items” from the producers. For example, nowadays, people are eating pure junk that they find satisfying on the grocery food shelf. As, stated by Michael Pollan, in his article, “Eat Food: Food Defined” he affirmed that “real food is the type of things that our
In the book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan explores the relationship between nutrition and the Western diet, claiming that the answer to healthy eating is simply to “eat food”.