Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.
I barely know how to react when I read articles like this one. A large part of me is on the verge of launching into a massive rant about self-obsessed fuckwits who manage to turn something as incredibly simple as diet into the carnival of self-loathing naval gazing that it has become. And another part of me is just sad.
Funnily enough, I think I went to school with Michael Pollan, who wrote the article. Not as mates, but I think he was a few years ahead of myself and Mrs. Toad at Vienna International School. Maybe it’s a different Michael Pollan.
Anyhow, yes, food. Well his first three sentences read thus: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. A masterpiece of economical, impactful writing. Michael (or Mr. Pollan I suppose, if it’s not the fellow from Vienna) goes on to explain that food does not mean Food Products, it means actual, fresh, raw ingredients. But honestly, is any of this news to anyone? I read the article, and beyond the interesting explanations of the politics of the food industry and their lobbyists, and a little about the biology that means sugars are no longer slowly digested by our systems when we ingest them and instead flood into us unchecked, there’s not much there that isn’t amazingly fucking obvious.
Does anyone, anyone out there really think that when they eat things from containers labelled Really Incredibly Healthy and Organic and Pure and, erm, Cuts Carbon Too! that they are eating anything more than the same old processed shit that they are in the other boxes? People fiddle with certain quantities of trivial levels of particularly buzz-worthy ingredients (No Transfats! Bursting with Omega 3*!) and peddle it to us like the idiots that we are.
Eat fresh food all the time and cut down on the meat. Not too much booze either. It’s fucking obvious. I know when I am straying from this advice, and I know I have to accept the consequences. What’s the fucking problem? Are we that desperate to excuse our lack of self-control? Our greed? Or are we just really, really stupid as a species? Eat less, get some exercise, don’t eat shit. How many millions have been spent pimping hugely over-elaborate versions of that really simple and really obvious statement?
I really should start Mr. Toad’s Stop Fucking Moaning Life Coaching, shouldn’t I. I might have a slightly higher than usual suicide rate, but a few weeks of being told to shut the fuck up, stop whining and just get the fuck over yourself would do most patients a lot of good. And dishing out a good beating to those exploitative charlatans like Patrick fucking Holford and that witch-faced coprophiliac Gillian McKeith wouldn’t do anyone any harm either.
The sad part is that it is in absolutely no-one’s interests to point out that this just isn’t that complicated an issue. Two hugely parasitical industries – the big pharma companies and the alternative medicine quacks – make millions from fuelling the prevaricating and the self-indulgent hand-wringing. The shrinks profit from all the neuroses and the marketing whores and the manufacturers benefit from peddling us all this tosh.
Even the NHS, who actually would benefit from people following the simplest and most effective advice, can’t be that blunt because it quite simply is neither self-obsessed enough for most people, nor does it place the blame anywhere other than our own doorsteps. We all know we should eat fresh food, presumably, so if we are not doing it then who else can possibly be to blame but ourselves? Unfortunately that is not a very 21st Century answer.
The Fall – Eat Y’rself Fitter
Great Lake Swimmers – Put There by the Land
Belle & Sebastian – Meat & Potatoes
Eels – Hospital Food (Live at the BBC)
Willy Mason – Where the Humans Eat
* Omega 3? Fucking pointless.
**Incidentally, these antioxidant supplement pills have been comprehensively shown to do you no fucking good whatsoever. Eat your greens instead.
Yay! Bad Science!
Bad Science is a fucking Angel of Goodness of a website. So is Improbable Science. If you look in my sidebar (bottom of the right hand one) you’ll see a link to it. I may even prefer that one to Bad Science actually, but they are both gems.
And, erm, it’s not that Michael Pollan, I checked!
Christ, that really was a long, tiresome, largely pointless essay. He even warns us! You’re right: if only he’d stopped at the lead and stopped trying to make it so complicated and boring, we’d all be better off.
The pseudo-science food mania that bugs me the most is the whole “Eat Local” religion. Yeah, I get it and accept it as a guideline. Generally speaking, it’s better to eat fresh and you’re more like to get fresh goodness by supporting your local farmer whenever you can. But these people who try to guilt everyone into taking that notion to extremes seriously need to be kicked in the head. I mean, I live in a place where no citrus fruits grow, it’s dead winter half the year and the only thing that grows really well is wheat. How the sweet fucking hell am I realistically supposed to eat a balanced diet by eating local? Jeez, grab a brain people. As I see it, Eat Local is a notion dreamed up by some California hippies (one of the few places it’s actually practical) and then foisted on the rest of us by that class of self-important navel-gazers who are constantly looking for the guilt trip du jour.
Mr Toad, it is not often that I am not in PERFECT agreement with you, but Michael Pollan is pretty fucking amazing. I know that the essay you linked to seems pretty obvious, but his first book, The Ominvore’s Dilemma is really brilliant.
In addition to all the indie-rock and music stuff, I actually have worked as a chef, a food and wine consultant, an affineur (cheese-ager), an artisinal baker and a fishmongress—in short, I know a LOT about food, and this guy knows of which he speaks. He writes about it with a particular ethos and philosophical outlook regarding sustainability that is refreshing to read amidst all the food porn tv shows and gluttonfests that serve as dialog about cuisine.
Check out the book. He’s got a new one as well, but I haven’t read it yet.
Sorry to rain on your otherwise entertaining rant
His book botany of desire is also pretty fantastic.
But this article does run out of things to say after about the first paragraph. Shame as the best points are often the most eloquently simple. Which means his title and clarification of the word food sort of does it mostly.
Thing is that it ignores the fact that the eco-organic-freerange revolution has put delicious nutritious healthy food squarely in the hands of the middle and upper class, and the rest can go and fornicate themselves with a greasy processed fishstick. “most of us can [afford to eat better]“. Er, why “us”? Because “we” are reading the NYTimes? And how so most? How many Whole Foods are there is working class neighbourhoods? How many Sainsbuy’s in Moss Side? Patronizing little bastard! I have to walk for half an hour to get to anything like a fresh bloody vegetable and two blocks to get to a microwave dinner. Which is true of most of the population of any major city.
My favourite thing i read somewhere quite possibly bad science or possibly hugh fearnly twistleton about omega 3 was that (1) what may actually be good for you (for all sorts of reasons) is eating lots of oily fish and not supplements and that (2) one of the major danger to fishstocks at the moment is the huge factory trawling of fish in order to make more omega 3 supplements. It’s all fucking ridiculous. If you start the therapy thing I might sign up just so i can get a regular diet of a posh bloke swearing at me, it’s all black country teenagers these days.
Omega 3 = walnuts
Quite tasty if you toast them. I put them in everything practically.
Yay! This is why we read Toad. Good literate sweary polemic. Much better than that mimsy indie he’s normally peddling.
Bollocks. The stuff about the politics of the food industry was interesting, as was the part where he described what refined sugars do in the body and why the flood of glucose is so difficult to deal with. The soil bit was a little less focussed, but for the most part I found the whole article really interesting. But the first three sentences… well someone should make that the manifesto for the entire farming industry.
Wendy – how are we disagreeing? I don’t think I was criticizing Pollan, was I? The obvious comment was actually a compliment. I was a restaurant manager for a year before I was a design engineer or a music blogger, and anyone who describes herself as a fishmongress, apart from being mocked for unnecessarily feminising a word that wasn’t male to begin with, is going to be alright with me.
Fish worry me actually. It is some of my favourite stuff in the world to eat – all of it, the squishy, slippery, funny-looking and weird tasting lot. Yet as Crash (good to have you back mate) touches on, eating fish is actually a highly morally dubious thing to do these days. Nothing I read about the fishing industry fails to horrify me, I must be honest, but it’s so hard to walk past glistening piles of yumminess in the window of our local fishmongers.
Crash, I think the Omega 3 craze is symptomatic of the whole industry, in its own stupid way. People trying to micromanage very specific ingredients instead of just taking a fucking sensible approach to eating well. What the fuck is wrong with people? Do we need that much reassurance that we can’t just eat our greens without having to have things labelled as high or low in whatever the hell it is we’re getting our knickers in a twist about this week. Low carb fucking potatoes – jesus wept!
“that witch-faced coprophiliac Gillian McKeith”
Brilliant!
She’s a litigious old bitch too, so I’d better be careful.
I think we have to be careful here not to lump the necessity for clear and informative food labelling in with all the marketing bollocks and snake oil selling that pervades the food industry.
Much of the food I buy is Organic; but not because I believe that organic food will help me live longer, run faster or protect the furry little bunnies, but because I believe an organic certification on the label offers the producer less chance to fuck around with food before it gets to me.
The idea of drinking milk that has been blended with Omega 3 oil, as an example of a product marketed as “healthy”, sounds no more healthy to me than eating a Big Mac. Both foods have been through a number of unnecesarry and unnatural processes before they reach me so therefore don’t strike me as particularly healthy.
In fact, the idea of milk mixed with fish oil sounds fucking minging. At least a Big Mac is vaguely appealing when you’re pissed enough.
Vitamins are for idiots and Frankenfood scares the hell out of me. I am amazed though, at how terribly people eat. I guess that’s who the vitamins are for.
For example, my roommate. He’s a vegetarian and he tells me he eats a “Mediteranean diet.” Ha-ha…that’s if you consider a couple of olives, half a loaf of bread and an entire WHEEL of Camenbert to be “Mediterranean.”
Alas Toad, I have cut my fish consumption, but rather than let you assume it’s a noble gesture in solidarity with environmentalists, it’s really because good fish (the dayboat stuff, not the catch from industrial trawlers) is so fucking expensive.
Bollocks?
Main post: “beyond the interesting explanations of the politics of the food industry and their lobbyists, and a little about the biology that means sugars are no longer slowly digested by our systems when we ingest them and instead flood into us unchecked, there’s not much there that isn’t amazingly fucking obvious.”
Comment (after I had the temerity of agreeing with you): “The soil bit was a little less focussed, but for the most part I found the whole article really interesting.”
With all respect, you are a skilled debunker of hypocrisy, but in this case – Physician, heal thyself.
Well I thought a lot, if not all, of the dietary advice was indeed very obvious. And pointing out that processed food is shite for you and that when people make all those healthy marketing claims they are lying to you (No! Surely not!) is also obvious.
But I definitely didn’t think that the article itself was “long tiresome and largely pointless”. The bit about the entirely political forgetting of the research into what such a meat-heavy diet does to your chances of getting cancer was rather interesting, and the stuff about what processed food actually does on a physiological level was also interesting.
One thing he forgot to mention was the massive subsidies give in the States to growers of maize for high-fructose corn syrup. This is one of the fundamental ingredients in a huge percentage of processed food and amounts to government sponsorship of shit eating habits because buying fresh foods simply cannot compete on price as they receive nothing like the level of support.
All in all though, I found it an interesting read, despite the fact that most of what he had to say about diet was basic common sense. Mind you, common sense told us that the Earth was flat for years, so it’s not always wise to rely on it too heavily.
I agree the article seems obvious, However, never underestimate the stupidity of the American public at large (says the Yank, ha-ha).
Totally off topic, but…
Sadly, you have stumbled over one of my pet peeves:
“…common sense told us that the Earth was flat for years…”
As far as I know, in the history of the world there have been almost no models of the shape of the Earth that involve it being flat. Tortoise-shell shaped is about as close as you get. The flat Earth business is a bunch of Columbus myth bullshit.
See this old post for further info:
http://propagandaghandi.blogspot.com/2006/09/columbus.html