Home > Feeding Frenzy > Archives > 2008 > April > 07
Monday, April 7, 2008
Do you eat food?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sounds like a pretty simple question, but after reading Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” I realized I, like so many fellow eaters, had fallen into the trap of consuming “nutrients” instead of food.
It seems with the advent of the Atkins, South Beach and other diets, every element of a dish has been dissected into which nutrients it contains, determining whether it is a “good” or a “bad” food. Something simple, like a piece of pizza, becomes a slice of carbs and fats with a sauce of the antioxidant lycopene holding it together. Depending on the “diet de jour”, carb-o-phobics peel away the crust, while fat-o-phobics scrape away the cheese and blot excess oil.
When recommending the most healthful way to eat, Pollan encourages us to go back to eating “real food”…things our grandparents would recognize. The easiest way to do this is by breaking the dependency on overly processed food and eating more of the things we know are best for us, fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Most of us would lose weight just by doing this.
It is an interesting concept to be able to enjoy food without overanalyzing each dish’s various components. Do you find yourself falling into the trap of eating nutrients instead of food? Can you just enjoy a meal or a sandwich, or are you always concerned about avoiding some element of it?
