Wisdom Wednesday: Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan an author, journalist, and educator known for his bestselling books that reevaluate food, agriculture, and society, including The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, andThe Botany of Desire. Often encouraging a return to traditional eating habits, summarized by his mantra “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”.

Pollan has campaigned against nutritionism a word coined in 2002 and popularized by Pollan. The key tenets of nutritionism are:

Reductionism: The belief that the nutritional value of a food is simply the sum of its individual parts (e.g., vitamins, fats, or antioxidants) rather than the whole food itself.

Invisible Nutrients: Since nutrients are invisible, consumers are forced to rely on experts (scientists, journalists, and food marketers) to tell them what is healthy.

The “Good vs. Evil” Dichotomy: It often categorizes nutrients into “good” or “bad” (such as “low-fat” or “high-protein”), leading to frequent shifts in dietary trends as scientific consensus evolves.

Food vs. “Edible Foodlike Substances”: Pollan argues that nutritionism allows the food industry to market highly processed items as “healthy” by fortifying them with specific nutrients, even if the overall product is not beneficial for health.

Below is a quote from his book “In Defense of Food.”

One of Pollan’s remedies is cook more. He says poor women who cook their food have better diets than wealthy women who don’t.