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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started
blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Unhappy Meals
OK, so this doesn't quite qualify as "Science Fun" given the severity of the issue, but this is something everyone needs to know about. Processed food is killing us. In this New York Times Magazine article, Michael Pollan, the author of "The Omnivore’s Dilemma," lays it all out quite nicely:Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that I’m tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. I’ll try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: 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. That’s what I mean by the recommendation to eat “food.” Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: 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. A must-read.
Related: Seth Roberts and The Shangri-La DietLabels: Health, Science
[ Posted at 1:20 PM | Permalink ]
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