That Sugar Film

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Damon Gameau, Documentary Film, Film review, Food Industry, Health and wellbeing, Sugar, That Sugar Film

Sweet and deadly

Now this is a film which is right up my street, as I am enormously interested in the politics of the food industry and how it deliberately dupes us and deceives us – and even more interested in matters related to health and wellbeing.

Damon Gameau, an Australian actor and film-maker did not really tell me anything I didn’t already know (because I read a lot of books about the subject) but, my did he tell it entertainingly!

It is because this film is not just talking heads stuff by the prophets of doom that I rate it so highly. Neither does it fall into the other side trap of being all pizazz and flashy dumbed down soundbites without any reference and substance.

Instead, there is a very assured tightrope walked between giving lots of facts, having various experts talk through the science of how the body metabolises sugar, in its different forms, all accompanied by `turns’ by various luminaries, including Stephen Fry, giving us some of the scientific information in a more engaging and witty way.

There is even, I kid you not, a star turn rock star number with Gameau as a kind of Presley/Alvin Stardust/Rocky Horror combo sugar devil in an outrageous pink jumpsuit leering seductively at a group of babes dunking themselves in chocolate mousse! This by the way is Gameau at the end of his 60 day 40 teaspoons of the stuff ‘normal Australian sugar consumption’.

Behind all the fun `sweeteners’ though, is a shocking story (one we DO know, though, it seems, ignore) Gameau engages in a particularly shocking experiment to show the devastating effects of sugar.

Gameau’s diet had been completely sugar free for three years, and he had not drunk alcohol for about ten years. He ate a particularly healthy, wholefood diet. At the start of the film he is clearly someone glowing with vitality and energy, and when tested by nutritionists and medics, was pronounced extremely healthy, with no markers for fatty liver, heart problems, or raised blood lipid levels and the like.

The `experiment’ was that for 60 days he would keep to the same calorific intake, – normally most of his calories came from healthy fats, protein and complex carbohydrates – but would consume the amount of sugar and hidden sugar (processed foods) eaten and drunk by the average Australian – 40 teaspoons a day. But he would not do this by consuming junk food, instead, it would be by the consumption of food wrongly supposed to be `healthy’ – for example, fruit juice, smoothies, `high energy’ muesli bars and the like.

Part of the lie we have been fed is that ‘calorie control’ is where it’s at – but calories from different food sources do not metabolise the same way – the calories in sugar behave differently in the body than the calories in fat and protein

By 18 days in, this vibrant trim man was looking more than a little pasty and jaded, puffy around the eyes, which had lost their sparkle. His skin and hair looked dull, he was visibly developing a paunch. He was also suffering mood swings. Part of the brief for the experiment was that he would keep up his normal good exercise patterns. The `normal sugar consumption of the average Australian’ diet was eating into his energy, creating those sugar rush manic surges followed quickly by listless slumps and the inevitable (cocaine like) cravings for more of that white death stuff. He was finding it hard to exercise, as he lacked the energy.

Even more alarmingly his liver was showing signs of damage after 18 days – liver cells dying, releasing their contents, becoming cirrhotic, the signs of fatty liver disease. Fortunately, at the end of the 60 days, and the resumption of his old, healthy diet, all the bad effects had gone after a couple of months, though Gameau did say that the first week of cutting out the addictive sugar (it affects brain chemistry and hits the `reward’ centre of the brain and its neurochemistry exactly like cocaine) was pretty tough, and he certainly had `cold turkey’ symptoms

If Gameau and the visible evidence of the shocking changes sugar produced on him are not enough to make spoon on its way to sugar dish pause, there is the heartbreaking 26 tooth extraction on a Kentucky boy, just shy of his 18th birthday, caused primarily by a variant of Pepsi called Mountain Dew, which he had imbibed since he was 3.

Also explored tellingly in this film are the obvious parallels between big tobacco and the sugar industry. Just as the tobacco companies leaned muscle and spurious science funding scientists to do research to deliver skewed results to disprove links between smoking and disease, so the sugar industry does exactly the same.

This is a wonderful, hard hitting film, delivering its punches of fact wrapped nicely in a ….lethal candy coating. `Sweet,’ being so much linked to pleasure and reward, is hard wired in our brains BECAUSE in nature readily available fructose , is RARE, so we are programmed to want it, and respond to it, as a useful source of energy which can be stored as a long term energy resource, as fat. The problem for us of course being that now, fructose is readily available and what was an evolutionary advantage is now the sweet kiss of death.

I have one disappointment – little mention is made about artificial sweeteners, which carry as many, and in some cases, MORE problems associated with their use. Sweeteners, and the perfidious ubiquitousness of THEIR presence, as food manufacturers respond to and create new possibilities for our desire for that sweet taste, are every bit as dangerous. Many, for reasons of weight control, have got as far as checking the labels and avoiding sugar in their processed food and drink, but are surrendering to the hugely profitable diet industry and ‘going diet food’. There have been plenty of studies about the artificials, but, again, these are not hugely funded because the funders are those big, powerful, vested interest concerns who of course are not going to be giving money to researchers to prove that their products are dangerous! A little mention is made of sweeteners in the Extras section of the DVD, but the lack of much information is likely to just see the sugarholics switch to sacchaholic behaviour, in the belief they might be sparing themselves from the dangers of fructose consumption. Not so

Bravo to Gameau, making such a brilliant documentary

He also authored a companion book, That Sugar Book, where a lot of the research studies are cited
That Sugar Book Amazon UK
That Sugar Book Amazon USA

I received the DVD as a review copy, from the Amazon Vine programme, UK. It will be released for sale on 27th July in the UK. A visit to Amazon USA site shows it is unavailable to view/buy. It probably just means that video rights have not yet been negotiated, but I smelt a conspiracy around the evil empire of sugar. Well, they suppressed studies showing the perfidious nature of the stuff, so surely, an indie film is small fry to them.

That Sugar Film DVD Amazon UK

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A Rose by any other name would not BE as sweet

Tags

Aromatics, Chemistry, Cosmetics, Fashion, Health and wellbeing, Other Stuff, Perfumery, Soapbox

A Killjoy post about synthetic perfumery

I happened, as one does, on an interesting blog devoted to perfume. The only reason I’m not linking to it, or doing a pingythingy, is because THIS post is actually an anti SYNTHETIC perfumery post, and it might seem it is a post against the perfume passionate blogger – which it isn’t. Though it is a killjoy post about pretty well all modern perfumery, despite my love of aromatics, as evidenced by earlier posts – and rants – wrapped up in reviews of two books by Jean-Claude Ellena

I have become deeply concerned about the fact that virtually ALL perfumery is using synthesised ‘novel’ chemical constituents – this is very different from the complexity of naturally occurring chemical compounds as they arise within the chemistry of a plant.

A fine example is the fact that the fragrance industry has now identified linalool, a naturally occurring chemical constituent in many essential oils as a potential skin irritant, so its use in compounds is restricted to a maximum level. This is because (for example) tests with synthetic linalool isolate showed a potential to trigger eczematous reactions in susceptible individuals

This is now having a (negative) effect on aromatherapeutics as MANY essential oils – including some of those known to be amongst the ‘safest’ – for example, Lavandula angustifolia, true lavender, is high in linalool (Sometimes also referred to as linalol)

And information which tries to equate the synthetic isolate with the whole herb synergy has herbalists and aromatherapists turning quite puce with rage – as the two are not the same.  Linalool rich true lavender is one of many essential oils which may be effectively used in topical applications to TREAT eczema

So what is going on here, and how has a plant which has been used, both aesthetically and therapeutically, for thousands of years, suddenly turned out to have restricted levels in ‘products’ And by the way, I mean ‘thousands’ literally as documented use stretches back that far in herbal texts from classical times, as whole herb use, and also, from a few hundred years later, as essential oils. The invention or re-invention of distillation occurred around the 10th and 11th century by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) a Persian (Iranian) doctor/herbalist/healer/writer of medical texts.

What no one really seems to be getting their heads round is that complex evolved chemistry in a plant is not a chemical in isolation, but a synthesis of hundreds – creating a particular new synergy. Plants (like people) are made of chemical checks and balances to maintain integrity. A particular chemical component may be toxic but may be contained or have its toxicity ameliorated or modified by the presence of other chemicals

A fine example is that. within our own bodies, the contents of the stomach are highly acidic, through the presence of corrosive  hydrochloric acid, which is present to break down foods, particularly as part of protein digestion – however the aggressive and necessary effects of HCl (hydrochloric acid) are moderated by the presence of mucus secreting cells which protect the lining of the stomach itself being ‘burned’ by the acid

So, within plants, there may be aggressive or irritant chemistry which is contained by the presence of other chemicals. It is just not true to say that a plant containing high levels of linalool, like true lavender, has the skin irritancy potential of much LOWER levels of the synthesised chemical isolate, linalool

Perfumery Chemists-behaving-like-gods are creating ‘novel’ chemicals which have never existed before, as well as creating synthetic versions of preexisting chemicals. The situation is further complicated by the fact that although synthetic linalool, for example, and linalool as a naturally occurring compound may indeed have the same chemical formula – the molecules may not have the same shape. How chemistry is utilised in the body is often linked to receptors on cells,with a particular shape, designed to be activated by the presence of a chemical fitting the receptor (like keys in locks) And like keys in locks, the wrong key, or a badly cut key may not only ‘not work’ but get jammed into the keyhole

The above picture of two naturally occurring forms of linalool is a diagrammatic illustration of how the same chemical molecule may exist in different spatial arrangements – and the shape itself will alter various characteristics of the chemical. For example, the two forms of the same chemical compounds even SMELL completely different.

Naturally occurring chemistry has been part of an evolutionary process, species will evolve ways to use or protect itself if it comes into contact with specific chemistry, over many generations. But evolution on that level works quite slowly.

However NO ONE KNOWS  how we are really responding to the new chemistry flooding out into the market place – whether in perfumery, household products, food, atmosphere, industry etc. And we know EVEN LESS how all these individual novel chemicals will react with each other.

Sure you may be able to test for obvious things in cosmetics, like application to the skin, and at what levels an irritability reaction may occur with each chemical, or even the finished product. But, long term? And as many of these compounds belong to classes of chemicals which are related to naturally occurring compounds which absorb into the body via various routes, it is LIKELY that they may well be absorbed into the body, through those same routes, reaching the brain, via the olfactory receptor cells, the respiratory system, or with a partially fat soluble partially water soluble structure, being absorbed through the skin (in cosmetic or perfumery application)

Allergic and intolerant responses have been on the rise for some time, and a percentage of those are from people who are claiming strong perfumes trigger headaches and migraines. In fact there have been some who are trying to stop the wearing of ‘strong perfumes’ in public places and are using some of the arguments akin to those brought up around the dangers of passive smoking. Which of course took many years of known negative health implications and growing statistical evidence before the might of Big Tobacco was overpowered enough to create changes in legislation

To return to synthetic perfumery – It is my own belief that it is nothing to do with the ‘strength’ of the perfume, and everything to do with the pervasiveness of synthesised chemical compounds, both ‘copies’ of naturally occurring compounds and entirely novel ones. That belief comes from the number of people who begin to use only natural perfumes and cosmetic products because they DON’T have the intolerant reactions to these latter products.

In what might seem a disconnect (but isn’t) some years ago we were all deluged by advertising claims that margarine was better for us than butter, because of the danger of saturated fats (primarily animal origin) as compared to mono – or poly, unsaturates (primarily plant origin)

The difference between a fat (solid at room temperature) and an oil (liquid) is that the latter has a bendier, more flexible structure. A saturated fat, like butter, contains all the hydrogen atoms the carbon atoms will hold. Hence, the carbons are saturated’ with hydrogen. Our bodies can recognise and process these naturally occurring substances

With a monounsaturated fat, like oleic acid ( naturally occurs in olive oil) or a polyunsaturated fat for  example, the Omega 3’s in fish oils, or the Omega 6’s in borage or evening primrose or other seed oils, one (monounsaturated) or more (polyunsaturated) of the carbon atoms in the chain of carbons forms a double bond with another carbon – so it is no longer ‘saturated’ with the maximum number of hydrogens it could hold. The double bond makes the molecule bendier

And still, the body can recognise the shape of these different molecules. However, the process of hydrogenation turning a liquid plant oil into a solid, spreadable fat, effectively, re-saturates them again – except – except the hydrogen atoms attach in a different way. which is not a naturally occurring ‘shape’ and which the body is unable to properly recognise and utilise.

Way back IN THE 50s concerns were already being expressed about health issues related to  ‘trans fats’ where the hydrogen atoms are forced onto opposing ‘sides’ of the carbon. It took 40 years before, slowly, slowly the food industry made changes (were forced to make changes) so that now we know to check our spreadable plant oil-turned-into-fat is ‘free from trans-fats. This time, the Big Food industry were the ones doing the heel-dragging

My rather lengthy deviation into butter versus margarine is really not a deviation at all. We make and use novel chemistry in a rather ‘because we can’ way, without really knowing the effects

Back in the time of the first Queen Elizabeth it was fashionable for ladies to have a complexion which was as white as possible, and lead was used in cosmetics to give the desirable pallor

We gaze on smugly at the ignorance and folly of that earlier generation dicing with death due to the follies of fashion

In fact, our ancestors, knowing less about chemistry, had far more excuse for their ignorance than we do. Watch, as they say, this space (the cosmetics and perfumery industry space) and see what the next 40 years may bring.

Tim Parks – Teach Us To Sit Still: A Sceptic’s Search for Health and Healing

Tags

Autobiography, Book Review, Health and wellbeing, Meditation, Teach Us To Sit Still, Tim Parks

The body bares (and bears) its soul

This is a difficult book to categorise. It has a much much wider market than those who suffer from ‘problems with the waterworks’, BPH, irritable bladder etc. It is a fascinating and deeply reflective account of the meaning of illness and wellness. Parks, an acknowledged atheist and sceptic about all things remotely New Age or alternative in the health field, developed an increasingly disruptive and painful urogenital condition. Exhaustive tests yielded little information, other than to show an absence of anything ‘sinister’. Conventional pharmacological management proving largely ineffective for him, the standard option was for surgery. Something which he had ‘a gut instinct’ was wrong for him. Parks’ exhaustive research on his condition and the surgical procedure via the internet showed the procedure offered could not be guaranteed to be successful, or indeed problem free.

Author Parks began to look at other options, specifically to consider not just ‘the condition’ but himself as experiencing the condition. Discovering a book which discussed his condition as a muscular/neurological reaction to hyperpresent tension – an attribute of his own nature – almost against his intellect he began to explore embodiment, grappling with his own inability to be present in the here and now of his body, rather than the constant backwards and forwards cerebral activity of the mind. His desire to understand his own story and narrative, what his body was saying, led him, initially sceptically and unwillingly, to a gifted Shiatsu practitioner, and, later to a deeper experience of meditation. The initial debilitating nature of his condition had been much helped by the specific techniques of `paradoxical relaxation’ described in the book, but the alleviation of pain and nocturia were no longer seen as the end of the journey.

Parks’ ability to be open to challenge his own perceived notions of reality, and to accept experience completely outside his belief systems is rather wonderful.

I particularly appreciate the fact that he doesn’t fall into the convert’s trap of saying `THIS is the way’, exhorting everyone to follow suit. This was HIS way, his story, his meaning.

There is also much which is fascinating about the possible effect of various illnesses on both the choice of subject matter and the modes of expression used by other writers and artists with chronic conditions

There is so much within this book, not least, an understory about language and translation. As well as writing novels, he also teaches Italian/English translation skills to students in Italy. There is a parallel here to `what is lost in translation’ between the experience (any experience) and the description of it. Our species’ amazing faculty for language and complex expression both illuminates and obfuscates our experiences, at one and the same moment. Language itself defines and therefore limits what it describes. His analysis of various texts and what will be `lost in translation’ from a too literal juxtaposition of one language into another, missing the inner meaning of a thing, is directly mirrored in his attempt to describe `the ineffable’, the felt sense of the present which arises when the mind is stilled from its endless narrative. As he notes, in the moment the narrating mind tries to verbalise the experience, we are no longer WITHIN what we are experiencing.

Another book which incorporates the autobiography of illness is Hilary Mantel’s equally wonderful Giving up the Ghost: A memoir

Teach Us To Sit Still: A Sceptic’s Search for Health and Healing Amazon UK
Teach Us To Sit Still: A Sceptic’s Search for Health and Healing Amazon USA

Molly Birnbaum – Season to Taste

Tags

Autobiography, Book Review, Health and wellbeing, Molly Birnbaum, Olfaction, Science and nature, Season to Taste

Smelling the way to reality

I can’t begin to adequately express how much I enjoyed this book.

As the publicity info indicated, Molly Birnbaum, clearly a highly talented chef-in-the-making, lost her sense of smell and taste as a result of a traffic accident, shortly before she was due to start training at a prestigious Culinary School. This book charts her personal story around the loss of 2 lesser-valued senses, smell and taste, and also contains a more scientific journey into olfaction.

Like Birnbaum, I am someone who had a profound awareness of living in a world full of aroma, a good smell memory, a strong realisation of the fact that the world is full of aromatic messages, and smelled my way around my world with as much pleasure as hearing it and seeing it. Like Birnbaum, I have experienced anosmia. And the loss of the particular pleasure olfaction brings is something I mourn. I’ve been fortunate not to lose my sense of taste, but from time to time I am anosmic, hyponosmic and, gloriously, sometimes fully scenting – without fully knowing, or being able to predict, why I move through these states rather than having a steady sense of smell

So, I know that part of my extreme pleasure in this book is because it feels personal and pertinent – but even if I were not intermittently anosmic, I would have adored this book. Birnbaum (who after having to give up her culinary dreams, trained as a journalist) is a beautiful and evocative writer, particularly about olfactory and gustatory experiences, painting her way through smells and tastes with her choice of words. I found I could smell the smells she was describing, and taste the tastes, through her ability to engage my imagination fully.

There is some fabulous, clearly explained science within these pages (lots of it, I revelled in her ability to be so clear about olfaction, the flavour industry, perfumery, the testing of olfactory neurological disorders) However, she also explains a personal, evocative, profound journey about how odour cements and enriches relationships.

This book is a wonderful marriage of head, heart, soul and gut – olfaction and taste are both the most visceral of senses – they are, after all, how we take in ‘other’ whether that other is the food we eat to live, or the real chemistry, the odour molecules, of the world. We literally breathe each other in. Birnbaum explains both the metaphysics and the physics of this, and how aromatics are part of our 3D experience of the world, profoundly, movingly, and most engagingly.

Highly, highly recommended

Jan Breughel Evocative painting of The Sense of Smell – Wiki Commons

I was lucky enough to get offered this as an ARC on the Amazon Vine programme
Season to Taste Amazon UK
Season to Taste Amazon USA

Michael Pollan – Cooked

Tags

Book Review, Cooked, Food politics, Health and wellbeing, Michael Pollan, Nutrition

A deep meditation on alchemy in the kitchen

Michael Pollan is a writer whose mind so excites me that I often feel I need to take a cold shower in order to calm down my over stimulated thoughts, which start veering off into several directions simultaneously.

Pollan is a philosopher and mystic of the mundane, in my book. Some philosophers and mystics begin from the ineffable and the intangible and whirl you around in concepts almost impossible to get a handle on.

By contrast, Pollan is like another favourite writer of mine who performs the same trick, – Sharman Apt Russell Hunger: An Unnatural History. Both start with the quotidian (Bread, potatoes, barbecued pigs, roses and the like) and expand outwards , opening them out to reveal worlds – anthropology, evolution, economics, psychology, desire, history, chemistry, biology, physics, feminism, capitalism, poetry, metaphor, the interconnectedness of all…………….I could spool on, endlessly, the big concepts Pollan (and Apt Russell) connect, by starting on the basic stuff of matter – food, shelter, and weaving it all together

In this book, he examines something so basic, cooking – and indeed the lack of it, in the `developed’ Western world. Something which once created social bonds and community disappears as we spend more time in front of screens, eating `convenience’ ready meals which have not been made by anyone we know.

Almost the first gauntlet which Pollan throws down is the one which asks, `just what is it which makes us human, and different from `dumb beasts?’ And as the things which formerly we thought of as `human’ – for example, language, empathy, ability to problem solve, are increasingly shown by animal behaviourists to occur in other species – he concludes `we are the cooking animal’ – and perhaps controversially suggests that from cooking all else of our developed, intelligent humanity, flowed

That sounds a ridiculous statement – except when it is put together with the fact that cooking not only tenderises sinewy animal muscle, softens and makes available resistant plant fibres – but means we no longer have to spend most of our waking hours chewing, in order to get at nutrients. Even more usefully the chemical changes produced by cooking releases nutrients more easily, in an easier to assimilate form. More calories available for less expenditure of calories. Less work for the gut (and the jaw) and a higher yield of glucose for the brain.

Cooking is all about connection….between us and other species, other times, other cultures…..but, most important, other people

This book compares cooking to alchemy – and indeed, he breaks his chapters down to the poetic and alchemic four elements of fire, water, air, earth.

At the beginning of each section of the book, are different displays of circle logos. Don’t miss these – they are actually quite profound in terms of visually, what they are saying about the inner nature of each cooking process. Pollan thinks like a mystic!

Cooking is one of the more beautiful forms that human generosity takes;…….the very best cooking…..is also a form of intimacy

Fire, the first, the earliest cooking – the `dangerous’ primitive cooking of the hunt (and still, today, men are more willing to take charge of the `mysteries of the `barbie’ then to move indoors to the deeper alchemy of the kitchen)

Water – the next major step, the more mysterious, more advanced `inside the home’ cooking – which needed to wait for the development of cooking vessels – this became what was seen as `women’s work’ – cooking in a liquid. No longer the fire directly heating the food, fire tamed to heat liquid which heats a more complex possibility of flavour, not to mention a greater complexity of chemistry, as this is cooked in combination with that, that and that.

Air – the mysterious agency when our `cooking’ gets done by some other transformational agent – yeasts, enabling us to finally access the nutrients in grain (as we evolve to an agricultural society) – the alchemy of yeast, grains and breads. In this section he almost for me rounds the journey of the book. He reminds us again of the evolutionary advance cooking represents – a way of processing what is, or what might be, edible, in order to make more of its nutrients available, so giving us the advantage towards greater health and wellbeing. Traditional bread making, whereby WE are able to get at the seed potential, the embryo for the germination of new seed.

And then, as he reminds us, we score a fatal own goal – moving from the health giving ‘processing’ of cooking itself, to OVER processing whereby we strip what is nutritious, producing a substance quickly (the commercial white bread loaf) that not only has no nutritional value at all, but is in fact detrimental to health. This then has to have other, synthetic forms of what WAS nutritious in the first place, added back in. The contrast between mankind’s initial discovery of how to utilise the goodness of whole grains – time an integral part of the process, allowing slow fermentation to break down and transform proteins, fats and carbohydates – and modern breeding of strains of wheat which are easier (quicker) to process, fitting modern machinery, but are less rich in nutritional value, is clear.

The final chapter, `earth’ continues the process with preservation through the fermentation process without ‘cooking’ – salting, pickling, cheesemaking, brewing – or, as Pollan much more evocatively subtitles this section – Earth – Fermentation’s Cold Fire. Indeed, he takes his conceit further, what we are seeing, in fermentation is the move from life to death – the grape, once perfectly ripe, begins to decay, break down, and ferment to wine; the milk soured into yoghurt or cheese; the cabbage into sauerkraut. Or, put another way

” these transformations depend on the fermenter’s careful management of rot, on taking the decompositions of those seeds and fruits and fleshes just so far and no farther”

I could go on – and on – and even more on about the delights of this book, but really, yours is the journey to make.

If you don’t much enjoy cooking, this might inspire you to connect with its mysteries (though its not `a cookery book’) if you love cooking, you will feel like some entrant into ancient mysteries as you engage with your next kitchen assignment

‘Hand taste’…is the…experience of a food that bears the unmistakable signature of the person who made it – the care and thought and idiosyncrasy that the person has put into the work of preparing it….Hand taste is…I understood all at once….the taste of love

Pictures: Barbecue, Braise, Wikimedia commons
Finnish Rye Bread; Commons, Flicr; Pickles, Flicr originator link inactive; Cheeses Flicr North Devon Farmer

Cooked Amazon UK
Cooked Amazon USA

Michael Pollan – In Defence of Food

Tags

Book Review, Health and wellbeing, In Defence of Food, Michael Pollan

The food, the whole food, and nothing but the food; except less of it

Michael Pollan’s hard-hitting, witty and possibly life-saving look at food – specifically the shambolic disgrace that is the ‘Western Diet’, sets its premise out right at the start – we need to:

Eat food. Not too much. Eat more plants.

That first statement might raise a few eyebrows. Surely anything we eat, by definition, is food? Not so. As Pollan shockingly shows, we stopped eating food in the West several decades ago, and began to eat ‘nutrients’ instead. As part of an ongoing ‘reductionism’ which gets applied to almost everything. our foods have been picked apart to analyse specific ingredients (in isolation) which are said to harm us or to help us. Politics, big business, whether the food ‘industry’ – which it has become as most of our food is now manufactured rather than, well, allowed to grow, graze or roam – or the ‘health industry’ have all benefitted from the ‘un’ food revolution. The individual consumer pays the price in terms of soaring rates of heart disease, cancer, obesity, type 2 diabetes and more. The planet and future generations pay the price in terms of depleted soil, the rapid fall in biodiversity and an unsustainable way of life. Our non-food is another way we are killing the planet. And ourselves.

Pollan’s book shows elegantly and easily how much our food has changed. He urges us not to follow faddy diets which all look at food through single nutrient zealotry – eg ‘the Atkins Diet’ ‘the GI’ diet ‘the Omega 3 diet’. Look at the labels on any ‘packaged’ food. A loaf of bread rarely contains the ingredients your great grandmother would have recognised. Not only are there a whole host of ‘enriching’ additives and ‘nutrients’ – designed to replace those which should have been naturally within the original foodstuff but which modern farming techniques and agri-breeding for yield rather than anything else has stripped away – but the food will have been subjected to processes further depleting it of its goodness.

We literally consume more of our ‘food’ because it is giving us less in the way of ‘nutrients’, as Pollan says, the ‘Western diet’ manages an unheard of own goal – obesity coupled with malnourishment or deficiency!Throw out the faddy diet books, throw out the supplements, throw out the ‘science’ – often bad science – eg margarine being ‘better for you than butter’ – eat food you can recognise which is simply grown or reared. The food we have evolved to eat over millenia. And recognise that food has always been about more than nutrients – its about our connection to the earth and to each other – food is a part of our culture, cementing and connecting social bonds. As Pollen engagingly shows, food loving cultures such as Italy and France celebrate and enjoy food, as part of life’s pleasures,; they don’t eat nutrients! And they tend to be healthier. Or at least they were, till ‘the Western Diet’ (ie McDiet) began its parasitic onslaught into every corner of the globe
In Defence of Food