Blog Post 6

Blog Post 6

            Michael Pollan’s diagnosis of “Our [America] National Eating Disorder” is disturbingly accurate, but it’s a good thing that people are beginning to notice. Here in America, we have become overly obsessed with the idea of eating healthy so we have turned, numerous times, towards different diets, eating styles, many of which go against one another after more “discoveries” are made. A good portion of these eating programs seem outright strange and seemingly counterintuitive in terms of what has been deemed consistently healthy over the years. Pollan refers to the “French Paradox” as consisting of the idea that the French are remarkably healthy as a whole, especially for a society that eats a lot of wine and cheese, while Americans are the most health conscious people on the planet, but we eat far less healthy foods. This is known as the American Paradox. Pollan goes on to write about how Americans are so quick to jump on any new fad diet that promises results when in actuality they don’t really help. The French, however, eat whatever they want. “Americans associated food with health the most and pleasure the least. We asked what comes to our mind upon hearing the phrase ‘chocolate cake,’ and Americans were more apt to say ‘guilt,’ while the French said ‘celebration.’ This shows the contrasting food values in America and France. Pollan illustrates the idea that we as a species no longer eat what we want whenever we want and have now moved towards a mass-produced, and processed, way of eating which contradicts nature (which we happen to do in more ways than just food). Though Pollan tends to make sweeping generalizations about American culture, he is correct is saying that most behavior in the way he describes.