Questioning the New Thinking

Michael Pollen and Mark Bittman have shaped a lot of my thinking in my search to reimagine my food consumption. They've done that by exposing the larger food world I live in, the interconnectedness of it all. So it was with a little partisanship that I read a rather lengthy screed in the Atlantic which basically proclaims Mr. Pollen and Mr. Bittman are all wrong. It's quite lengthy, but here are the basic points. The first few I've heard before, and I feel comfortable dismissing them.

1. Eating only whole, fresh produce and meats are only for the rich. I agree eating this way is more expensive, but food should be more expensive. There will be less waste, less over-eating and more appreciation for this resource. Not to mention paying our food producers properly so they can afford to use more sustainable methods and pay the bottom of the work force better.
2. People eat what they want to eat, and the industry only supplies what the market demands. It's not that simple. People desire what is available, and industry is adept at creating demand. If we wanted a purely demand-driven economy, we should ban all advertising. While private industry may exist only to make money, government and regulation exists to protect the consumer, and should use every power at its disposal to manipulate both supply and demand for the sake of the public health.

These are big topics obviously, each worthy of multiple posts to. However, there is a third argument presented in Freedman's piece that I can not so easily shrug off.

1. The infrastructure does not exist to deliver the ideal fresh, wholesome diet to all people. However, using food processing and food science for good instead of evil can make small, incremental changes that on a large scale can make a real public health difference.

When it's reported that McDonalds is introducing an egg-white McMuffin or Arby's putting out a baked fish sandwich, it can easily be dismissed as PR hoo-ha because we've been lied to so many times before. However, Freedman points out the 100 calories potentially saved can be the difference for a lot of people between gaining weight on a day or losing it. McD's and Arby's are not small upstart outfits looking to change the world....they ARE the world for a majority of people.

Pollan has popularized contempt for “nutritionism,” the idea behind packing healthier ingredients into processed foods. In his view, the quest to add healthier ingredients to food isn’t a potential solution, it’s part of the problem. Food is healthy not when it contains healthy ingredients, he argues, but when it can be traced simply and directly to (preferably local) farms. As he resonantly put it in The Times in 2007: “If you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat.”

If your a fat-ass, swapping out your Egg McMuffin for an Eggwhite McMuffin is probably not going to transform your life. But looking at the broader sweep, if pressure is kept on the corporations to align their food products with health goals, things could change for real. There is already a ton of pressure on corporations: our obesity crisis, the Pollan movement, and the recurring threat of regulation that's expensive to fight regardless of success (hello, Bloomberg!).  These are real pressures.

100% taste free

And Freedman correctly points out that places like McDonalds are not really pushing the PR on these issues. They found out the hard way with things like the McLean Deluxe that people don't buy their burgers for health reasons, and if you change things up in ways that don't appeal, they don't buy. The changes they are making to their core product lines are going unnoticed, and that's the way they want it. Perhaps in the future they'll use their slight health improvements for PR, but for now, they don't want you to know that the standard McMuffin has whole grains in it all of a sudden.

As much  as I've pushed myself towards "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" and have reaped many benefits from it, when you think of what can be done with what we have, perhaps revising processed foods instead of dismissing them might be a tactic more grounded in the realities of what we have to work with.

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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2029
Hard week. Crunch week at work, crunch week at home. Definitely affected my eating - a few times I had to catch myself from eating too little, which is a first! Bad enough being an over-eater, last thing I need is to swap that problem out with an equally disastrous habit.
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MONDAY COUNT: 1935

AM SNACK: 4:45am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, Fage whole yogurt with agave, vanilla and almonds, 310 cal

LUNCH: 1:15pm, almond butter & grape jelly on whole wheat, health salad, 540 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm,two organic Fuji apples, +/- 100 cal
Damn it, forgot to pack my momma salad again! Good thing I've been around here long enough to know of the Wholefoods around the corner. I skulked into the nearest drug store and all the packaged, seemingly reasonable "quick snacks" all had 400-500 calories per package.

Huh. I really enjoyed the apples. Hmmmm, perhaps my daily diet is about to mutate a little....

PM SNACK: 8:30pm, poppa salad with miso tahini, 100 cal

DINNER: 9pm, shrimp & shirataki noodles in homemade tomato sauce with roasted asparagus, 385 cal

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, Fritos AND cheetos, 600 cal

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TUESDAY COUNT: 2235

AM SNACK: 5:30am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, steel cut oatmeal, 350 cal

LUNCH: 1pm,sauteed chicken breast, roasted broccoli, onions & mushrooms, sofrito black beans, 595 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm,momma salad, 100


PM SNACK: 7:30pm, apple/carrot/beet/cucumber/celery/ginger/kale/cayenne juice, 150 cal

PM SNACK: 8pm, poppa salad with miso tahini, 100 cal

DINNER: 8:30pm, Stouffer's French Bread Pizzas, 940 cal

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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 1780
Long day in the office, but it was intense and fast. Unfortunately, my eating had to bend to it's will. Fortuntately, I had a bag of snap pea crisps as a back up in my desk, which makes me wonder -- they tasted pretty good, they must be unhealthy, right? Gotta read the label closer or do a search tomorrow.

AM SNACK: 6:15am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 7:15am, Fruit smoothie, 410 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, chicken meatballs, madras lentils, roasted broccoli & mushrooms, 700 cal

PM SNACK:4pm, momma salad, 100 cal

PM SNACK: 6:30pm, snap pea crisps, 120 cal
Late day at work, healthy snack to keep going.

DINNER: 9:30pm, poppa salad with tahini miso, cheetos, 450 cal

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THURSDAY COUNT: 2145
Long hard day. Indulged in comfort pizza for dinner, easy to skip Fritos for sleep.

AM SNACK: 5am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST 1: 7:15am, apple/carrot/beet/cucumber/celery/ginger/kale/cayenne juice, 145 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 9:30am, steel cut oatmeal, 350 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, chicken sausage, steamed string beans, jodhpur lentils, 530 cal

PM SNACK:4pm, momma salad, 100 cal

PM SNACK: 6pm, 12oz diet coke  & snap pea crisps, 220 cal

DINNER: 10:15pm, 2 slices of streetza, poppa salad with miso tahini, +/-800 cal

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FRIDAY COUNT: 2050
Decent end to a tough week

AM SNACK: 6:15am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 9am,Fage whole yogurt with agave, vanilla and almonds, 310 cal

LUNCH: 1pm, Quarter Pounder Deluxe, 12oz Cherry Diet Coke. 540 cal

PM SNACK: 4pm, momma salad, 100 cal

DINNER: 7pm, 2 hot dogs,  risotto, +/- 800 cal

EVENING SNACK: 9pm, Frito's, 300 cal