Michael Pollan's Book Talk:

On Thursday, September 24, 2009 I attended the Michael Pollan public talk on his book In Defense of Food with roughly 7,000 other fans and critics. While I found the whole lecture very engaging and well formatted, the two most interesting points were both the four premises that reflect American’s assumptions of what food actually is as well as the history of what has become the ideology of nutritionism.
According to Michael Pollan, the four premises that reflect the assumptions American’s have of food are as follows: First, the key to understanding food is nutrients and food is merely a sum of its nutrient parts. Second, the population as a whole is dependent on experts to tell us how to eat since “[our] dietary salvation depends on unseen nutrients” (Pollan 28). Third, food is divided into good and evil. Last, the secret to health is navigating between those good and bad nutrients since “for every good nutrient, there must be a bad nutrient to serve as its foil” (Pollan 30). While I agree with these statements, I had previously never thought about the extreme to which people have become more attracted to ingredient labels versus the product itself. As a result, I find it disheartening that the focus of eating has gone from socialization and enjoyment to a game of risk where people have to decode product labels. With that being the case, nutritionism may be good for the market since science can altar products to fit the current ingredient fad, but it maintains a negative impact on the human mentality towards food.
Providing that most people follow this concept of nutritionism, it was shocking to learn how industry can negatively affect the government’s role in food labeling regulations. For instance, the American Heart Association’s determination to get American’s onto vegetable oil versus other fats caused the removal of labeling foods as imitation. Therefore, consumers no longer knew when they were buying the product they wanted or its nutritional equivalent. Furthermore, the rewriting of the United States dietary goals during the 1970’s Low Fat Campaign was a direct impact from the struggling food industry. The industry realized it could not sell products that were being suggested against but could sell products that did not contain nutrients which were being suggested against. While at first I disagreed with the government taking part in this development of nutritionalism, these two evident examples blatantly show the government’s role in the national focus shifting from foods to nutrients.
As has been noted, the lecture attracted many people and was overall very informative of the main points of his book In Defense of Food. The audience never lost interest and anticipation grew as everyone eagerly waited for Pollan to start speaking. Therefore, the format was well though out beginning with a series of introductions from the chancellor, project manager, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and finally Michael Pollan and concluded with a question and answer session. Michael Pollan was a very intellectual speaker and his clever attention getter of mocking the labels of America’s favorite and “ healthy” snack foods kept the audience entertained from the start.