Although I've always endorsed fresh food, I've heard the siren call of "convenience foods" too, and started to slip away from my healthy habits. I gained weight, in the process. So, I've recently gotten pretty rigorous about avoiding processed foods. I eat butter, whole milk (low fat/skim has non-fat dry milk added to it for consistency, which is even worse for cholesterol), lots of cheese, fresh fruits and veggies, pastured meats and eggs, and don't pay attention to calories, carbs, fats, etc. Without any other changes to my diet, I've lost a clothing size in the past few months. I haven't weighed myself, so don't know what the total loss is so far but, when I put my hands in my pockets, my pants slide down my hips.
In his book, In Defense of Food, MIchael Pollan describes how nutritionism has changed the American diet and had a deleterious effect on our health, causing or seriously contributing to the rise of Western diseases: obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Nutritionism, different from "nutrition", is an ideology that shifts the focus from food to nutrients: "the widely shared but unexamined assumption of nutritionism is that the key to understanding food is the nutrient. To enter a world in which you dine on unseen nutrients, you need lots of expert help. This is good for business. But is it good for us? You might think that a national fixation on nutrients would lead to measurable improvements in the public health. But for that to happen, the underlying nutritional science, as well as the policy recommendations (and the journalism) based on that science, would have to be sound. This has seldom been the case."
When it comes to the current national rate of obesity, "nutritionism deserves as much of the blame as the carbohydrates/fats/calories themselves do — that and human nature. By framing dietary advice in terms of good and bad nutrients, and by burying the recommendation that we should eat less of any particular food, it was easy for the take-home message of the 1977 and 1982 dietary guidelines to be simplified as follows: Eat more low-fat foods. And that is what we did. We’re always happy to receive a dispensation to eat more of something (with the possible exception of oat bran), and one of the things nutritionism reliably gives us is some such dispensation: low-fat cookies then, low-carb beer now. It’s hard to imagine the low-fat craze taking off as it did if McGovern’s original food-based recommendations had stood: eat fewer meat and dairy products. For how do you get from that stark counsel to the idea that another case of Snackwell’s is just what the doctor ordered?"
"Scientists operating with the best of intentions, using the best tools at their disposal, have taught us to look at food in a way that has diminished our pleasure in eating it while doing little or nothing to improve our health. Perhaps what we need now is a broader, less reductive view of what food is, one that is at once more ecological and cultural."
What to do? "Eat food (not edible foodlike substances). Not too much. Mostly plants. A little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main. And you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. 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."
Eat traditional diets like the French, Italians, Greek, or Okinawans. The French paradox is the observation that French people suffer a relatively low incidence of heart disease, and obesity, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats.
Yes, I spend a lot of time cooking, canning, gardening and shopping at local farms, but I enjoy it. It beats spending time on Facebook, playing mindless computer games, or watching reality shows. I don't think I spend a whole lot more money on food, because I grow some of my own and don't buy snacks like cookies or chips. So, I think it balances out.
Did you know that in 1960, 17.7% of our national personal income was spent on food, while only 5% was spent on health care: but, that today those numbers have flipped to 9.9% on fast, easy, cheap food, and 16.6% on health care? As a nation we spend less on food than any other, but we're also more obese and less healthy.
If you want to read a shorter version of the book that will give you all the information you need, read Pollan's paper, Unhappy Meals, upon which his book is based. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www
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