Friday, September 18, 2009

Blog 1 Michael Pollen

Michael Pollan does an adequate job depicting his views on nutrition and the past and current views of the American diet. He makes clear the shift from Americans focusing on nutrients instead of the "food" they are eating. He states that nutrients take turns being the popular nutrient of the time. For example, he says protein was known as the "super" nutrient. This led to America’s dramatic increase in size and had a major effect on health. I don't completely agree with this statement. He puts a lot of blame on eating too much red meat to the cause of health disease. Looking at this issue from an athletic standpoint, protein makes up the majority of my diet. It is necessary for muscle growth and without proteins lifting has a dramatically decreased affect on muscle growth and development. He later touches on the amount of power the food industry has. He uses the example of Senator McGovern and how he stated to eat less red meat. This caused a major stir among the meat industry and eventually led to him not being reelected. Even after he retracted the statement and instead said eat less saturated fat. This led to a shift from foods to nutrients. Many companies began inserting "healthy" vitamins and other supplements into their products to advertise there quantative supremacy of these healthy products. People have been fooled into believing that added vitamin a or omega 3's increase health instead of focusing on the product themselves. Many of these products are processed and provide a small amount of natural nutrition. I personally am not fooled by these advertisers. I eat what I eat and focus on the major food groups necessary for my ultimate health level and what benefits my personal goals. I put the blame on individuals that are so easily persuaded to these false advertisements and their belief that they are becoming more healthy. I do think its a good sign that many Americans are trying to focus on better health. I believe that they need to do a little research of their own instead of listening to what so called experts or what the product itself claims.