Escape From The Western Diet Analysis

I read an interesting book that left me thinking of the way I shop and I don’t mean the way I shop at clothing stores I mean the way I shop for groceries, it also left me thinking of the food that I’ve been eating and even the food that I order when I go to fast food restaurants. This book is “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” it pictures the reality in the food business, but in a different funny way to understand it better. The book even makes you think of how important food is in life and it can also make you see a new way of looking at the food that’s on your plate. Pollan’s point, the author for this book tries to make us think and realize of what we’re doing with our food, how we get it, and even if we save money with our way of buying it.

In Michael Pollan’s essay “Escape from the Western Diet,” he directly to Americans about the western diet and why he believes they need to escape from it. The reason Americans should escape the western diet is to avoid the harmful effects associated with it such as “western diseases” (Pollan, 420). To support his view on the issue, Pollan describes factors of the western diet that dictate what Americans believe they should eat. These factors include scientists with their theories of nutritionist, the food industry supporting the theories by making products, and the health industry making medication to support those same theories. Overall, Pollan feels that in order to escape this diet, people need to get the idea of it out of their heads.

In chapter one (Escape from the Western Diet) of Michael Pollans book In Defense of Food, Pollan informs people about what he believes needs to happen in order to change the health issues that many people in American are facing today. Pollan begins the chapter by discussing the many different scientific theories that have been presented in response to the western diet and the western diseases that follow. He informs the readers that many of the theories conflict with one another and that even scientist gravitate towards simple one part solutions that many time fail to see the bigger picture of the problem. At this point in his book Pollan (2008) states one of his many thesis’s that, “People eating the Western diet are prone to complex of chronic

Michael Pollan’s article “Escape from the Western Diet” has provided the knowledge on effects of consumption of western diets which is mostly a processed food and the benefits of consuming a wholesome food which is farm fresh. In contrast, David Freedman’s article “How junk food can End Obesity” compares the nutrition level and healthiness of wholesome and processed food and also discusses the obesity issues and how to tackle it through the proper diet. According to pollan, the nutritionist or scientist published many theories on food which leads to chronic diseases, but such theories are not used to make a healthy diet, instead it has used by food industry and medical community to improve their profit margin. Pollan suggested that to prevent

“Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat”, is a famous quote by the well known philosopher Socrates, who believed this is the perspective we should take when we are eating food. Unfortunately, the times have changed and so has the way we eat. We no longer have to go hunting for our food, or grow crops to receive all of our fruits and vegetables. Because we have become a society that has grown into the new world of technology, there would be no need to rely on ourselves for what we need-- we can simply gather our resources from other people. In the book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, written by Michael Pollan, takes us on a journey full of concerns of the “Food Industrial Complex”.

The essay repeatedly states that we do not know what our food goes through, where it comes from, and that we are ignorant to the food industry. Berry says, “The consumer must be kept from discovering that in the food industry, the overriding concerns are not quality and health, but volume and price.” In basic terms, the food industry does not care about the health of their consumers but their profit. The essay also repeats questions that the reader should ask themselves, such as, How fresh is it? How pure or clean is it, how free of dangerous chemicals?

The procedure of how food is made does not come into concern, only the results do. That is how large industrial farms are accepted, because they provide proficiently. The outcome of industrial farms outweighs the negative impacts, at least to industrial farmers. Pollan responds to Berry’s statement by agreeing with him on the issue of the current industrial model being acceptable to some consumers, only due to the fact that

The industrial food chain unveils the scary but accurate truths to some of the foods found in our local grocery store. For example, Pollan trails the process of turning cattle in a feedlot to the meals found on our dinner tables. He finds many imperfections in the system--the health problems resulting from feeding the cattle grain and not grass, the overwhelming use of chemicals and antibiotics in crops and animals, and the disgusting and cluttered environments of feedlots and industrialized farms. Section two focuses on organic, or rather, the ambiguous definition of organic foods. Pollan explores the manipulations of labels and advertisements, claiming that their foods are “organic”.

The three essays assigned this week had several common threads running through them. The strongest core theme is the rapid change in the food cycle in America and the vast changes that have taken place in the way by which we grow, produce, and process the food that average Americans eat. The food we eat now is drastically different from what our grandparents grew up eating and the three essays each examine that in a different way. Another theme is the loss of knowledge by the average consumer about where their food comes from, what it is composed of, and what, if any, danger it might pose to them. “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear” by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele is a harsh look at the realities of food production in a country where large corporations, like Monsanto, have been allowed to exploit laws and loopholes to bend farmers and consumers to their

According to Pollan, the focus of society on the nutrients in food has not helped the obesity epidemic in the Western world. According to Pollan, “The industrial food supply was promptly reformulated

In “How Junk Food Can End Obesity,” by David H. Freedman, he claims that processed foods can help fix the obesity crisis in a more realistic manner, rather than whole-some foods. The popular opinion emphasizes whole-some foods because they aren’t informed about the similitude between processed and unprocessed foods. The essence of the essay is that people believe processed foods are bad and unhealthy for us, therefore whole-some foods are highly recommended for the health of an individual. Freedman mentions many prominent authors who wrote books on food processing, but the most influential voice in the food culture Freedman makes a point of is, American journalist, Michael Pollan. The media and Michael Pollan indicate that everything should be replaced with real, fresh, and unprocessed foods, instead of engineering in as much sugar, salt, and fat as possible into industrialized foods.

Kalista Cook Miss Grimes College Composition II 9 February 2023 Persuasive Techniques Used by McKay Jenkins and Anna Lappe The topics of food sustainability and agricultural awareness are incredibly important. Authors McKay Jenkins and Anna Lappe bring awareness to these topics in their articles Can GMOs Be Sustainable and The Climate Crisis and the End of Our Fork. In these articles, the authors address the negative impacts of the food and agriculture industry. More specifically, they attempt to educate on the importance of creating environmentally conscious eating habits.

In Michael Pollan’s book, An Omnivore’s Dilemma, we are focused on many different views of eating meat and other foods that are products of animals. The majority of those who chose to consume

Peter Singer’s lead us in these issues throughout the article to point out how complex our choices of food have become. Moreover, he persuades us in many ways on how the farming

Michael Pollan is the author of “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual”. Throughout his career, Pollan has been investigating about the hazards that industrial foods pose to us, and how we can avoid them and replace them with a healthy diet. He believes that “The way we eats represents our most profound engagement with the natural world.” (Shetterly, Robert. “Michael Pollan.”