an apple a day
like michelle simon’s book, michael pollan’s recent article “Unhappy Meals” discusses the Western-diet shift from whole-food to ingredient-based nutrition in the past 50 years or so. the short answer: the processed food industry is dependent upon people choosing foods based on ingredients, not on their holistic value. i mean, what’s in an apple – sugar and water and fiber? that’s no fun. that’s why Grāpples® exist.
Of course it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.
so basically, whenever some nutrient or another is deemed either good or bad, processed foods are reformulated in response and marketed as “healthier” . the produce section, however, contains virtually ZERO “unhealthy” nutrients to begin with. they need no reformulation. so where’s the money in that?
the pollan article looks at the sordid political history of the processed food industry and discusses how this reductionist way of looking at nutrition has (purposefully) caused mass confusion among consumers about what is good to eat and why they’re still fat/have high cholesterol/aren’t healthy when they’ve been eating frozen Weight Watchers meals and drinking Diet Coke for weeks, and how and why the Western Diet fails to increase American health and in fact has probably done more to harm it (obesity epidemic, etc) despite all the science behind the food on our shelves. the article is informative and well-written, but 14 pages long.
–via freshtopia
for the humorous viewpoint, see: Frito-Lay Angrily Introduces Line of Healthy Snacks and Heavily Processed Food Makes Pathetic Nutritional Claims
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