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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Brilliant!

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.

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!