Michael Pollan On 'Real Food' vs. 'Edible, Food-Like Substances' (VIDEO)

Environmental and food advocate Michael Pollan has the answer to being healthy: eat food, not too much and more plants than meat.

In the above video, he talks about the difficulty of embracing these practices in a modern, western society, because most of what we are served is what he calls "edible, food-like substances."

In a blog piece on The Huffington Post last year, he described some of the "Food Rules" which guide people on eating "real food" -- this includes avoiding products you see advertised on television. He adds in the above video, "If it has more than five ingredients, it's probably not food. Or if it has ingredients that your third grader can't pronounce, it's probably not food."

In New York Times piece in October, Pollan said the current food system is "unsustainable" and will likely look very different in 100 years. As an example, he says that as the demand for humanely raised meat has grown in the last few years, the industry has responded, with food chains like McDonald's and Chipotle working to make the switch.

His last word of advice: "Cook for yourself, it's going to be healthier than what you're buying."

Comments

[FreedomMan]

07:27 PM on 01/17/2012

Those $5 Pizzas just look like real food, actually they are a swirling, electronic mirage. . .

[lilpeg]

08:57 AM on 12/27/2011

With the economy the way it is and the high-carbon footprint of transportation, we have been looking into local food anthropology. What did poor people eat, who had to work all day during times like the depression? For example, there was a lot of seasonal/growing season dictated eating. In the winter there was little or no fresh fruit. What to do? Canning and drying and other preservation methods were used to get through the lean times. People ate winter greens and dried legumes and some grains (locally grown and milled). Meat was the backyard chicken or some seasoning in the other food. The one thing that makes food commerce necessary is the time needed to cook and prepare and preserve the foods. Folks work outside the home, dinner and meals must be quick. Who has the energy to spend all day canning stuff? (My parents did, but only one worked).

[sabelmouse]

12:41 PM on 12/27/2011

i doubt only one of your parents worked. one worked outside the house and the other in the house, probably more and harder..
i still grew up like that. i know what work went into keeping house,garden and food preserving.

[doxienan]

02:49 PM on 12/26/2011

And if you can grow some of your own food, it's even better. You get healthy working outside in the garden, and the results are both rewarding and tasty.

[LastWave]

02:06 PM on 12/26/2011

this isnt good. i hate almost all vegetables. they just taste sour and earthy to me. the bitterness is overwhelming. My doctor said it has something to do with my tongue and taste buds.
i stick to fruit.

[Parkite]

02:52 PM on 01/20/2012

There are so many different vegetables and so many ways to prepare them. Sweet onions, leeks sauteed with butter, spaghetti sauce. Is there a health food/vegetarian restaurant. Try a green vegetable drink with apple.

[farmilyman]

11:24 PM on 12/25/2011

Avoid genetically modified food, too, since it's not real food.

[wrobbins]

07:18 AM on 12/26/2011

It's not?

[LastWave]

01:47 PM on 12/26/2011

you shouldn't present that as fact.
we need to do some research on it. but no one can tell one way or the other if it is bad for us.

[farmilyman]

09:34 PM on 12/26/2011

Really??

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/05/20/most-evil-company-on-planet-soon-allowed-to-police-itself.aspx

[Parkite]

02:54 PM on 01/20/2012

The Italians reviewed 20 studies and found birth defects and other problems.

[Tich Tran]

04:13 PM on 12/24/2011

Plus of course the best diet for you is one w/ fish and vetegetables&fruits. It is based on a study I read somewhere in a magazine or newspaper a couple of years ago. And that study , of course, will never make it in a PROVEGETARIAN magazine/ newspaper.

[lbsaltzman]

05:51 PM on 12/24/2011

That is my diet and the diet is the best thing I have ever done for myself. I eat no animal product except fish. The fish that I eat is sustainably caught and limited to species that aren't high in mercury and other heavy metals.

[Tich Tran]

04:11 PM on 12/24/2011

I am not necessary a fan of processed food but do you think your , let say, apple is just a apple. No it contains scientific ingredients(that we use the latin language for). How you think we got all these "natural" and "unnatural" preservatives. Be logical not emotional. Just because it is natural doesn't NECESSARY mean it is better or good for you. Look at earthquake that is natural. Be logical(like Spock) not emotional(although I am clearly not advocating getting rid of emotions).

[njb311]

06:00 AM on 12/27/2011

I think Pollan's point is not so much advocating eating *anything* natural, just because it is, but eating what humans are genetically designed to eat. That is extremely logical and not emotional at all. What is natural *and tastes good to us* is probably something we're programmed to be attracted to eating. That is how every species on the planet works. The problem is that we manufacture so much fodder or alter food to make it cheaper/attractive to taste, that we think we're eating things we should, but most definitely should not.

[Nino Bookman]

01:53 PM on 12/23/2011

My wife has been serving me "food-like substances" ever since we got married. So what's the big deal?

[N0NDescript0]

02:31 PM on 12/23/2011

You might what to have Pollan break the news to her. It would be easier on the marriage to hear "you're a terrible cook, and probably poisoning your husband" from a total stranger.

[mlaiuppa]

04:48 PM on 12/23/2011

Wait 20-30 years. It takes a while for you to see the damage that they do.

If you don't want to wait until it's too late, why not spend some time in the kitchen yourself? Cooking is just chemistry you can eat. There's plenty of simple stuff to start with. Soups are easy. If you get adventurous, you might want to try bread on the weekends. It's relaxing and the chemistry involved in bread is amazing. It could become a lifetime hobby. It also might instill a healthy competition with your wife wanting to improve her culinary skills too.

Read amazingribs.com. Meathead has great knowledge of all things grill. You could become a grillmaster. And it's amazing the diverse menus you can produce with a home grill. It doesn't have to be fancy either. I use a little, cheap $30 one from the local drug store. (I like lump charcoal FYI.)

[Nino Bookman]

08:00 AM on 01/01/2012

Good reply! Actually I was trying to be funny. We read labels and rarely eat out. She's a tremendous cook...and I am a tremendous eater!

[Creox]

01:03 PM on 12/23/2011

The primal or paleo diet is well documented and researched which promotes healthy, organic and local foods, including meat, vegetables and fruit.

The paradigm of little meat with mostly greens is shifting, as it should.

[quillsinister]

04:38 PM on 12/23/2011

I like the idea of paleo, but I've never gotten a satisfactory explanation for why they reject grains and legumes.

[AnthropologistAmongApes]

04:54 PM on 12/23/2011

Likely because these did not become prominent in diet until too recently in our evolution. We probably don't process them like the food-types that were there from our earliest ancestry. So in some sense, this could translate to health issues if we are introducing compounds that our systems have not evolved to fully handle.

We are still "selecting" for the modern diet, which really goes back to the hybridization of wild grains and their broad cultivation. We are likely less adapted to grains and legumes than we are to vegetables, fruits, fish and meats. You could probably prioritize the efficacy of all our foods, and our adaptation to them, by the order of their appearance in diet.

[lbsaltzman]

06:22 PM on 12/24/2011

The Paleo diet's emphasis on meat is very unhealthy. It is also very mushy thinking to claim this diet allows us to eat like our ancestors. FIrst of all we ate a far greater variety of plants than people realize. Aborigines in Australia utilized 300 plants for food. Secondly the portion of our diet that was meat was not always that high. Gathering plant based foods is much more reliable on the whole than hunting meat. There also may be no comparison between the wild game they did eat and modern meat, even grass fed organic meat.

Paleo people got a lot more exercise than we do. They also didn't live as long on average. So there is no real scientific basis for assuming the Paleo diet is an accurate reflection of how our ancestors ate or that it is a healthy diet.

[Martin Levac]

12:44 PM on 12/23/2011

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Chris Gardner, the A-TO-Z study. A comparison of four diets including Atkins and Ornish. The Atkins group did better in all things measured than the other three groups. If Pollan was right about "not too much" and "mostly plants", then the Atkins group, which ate an ad libitum mostly meat diet, would not have done better, it would have done worse.

[MercuryinTN]

01:21 PM on 12/23/2011

That's interesting Martin. Maybe in the short term the Atkins is good but the long term a mostly plant based diet is healthier. Hell, I just wish there wasn't so much confusion.

[Martin Levac]

02:14 PM on 12/23/2011

"Maybe in the short term the Atkins is good but the long term a mostly plant based diet is healthier"

Don't you think that's a little suspicious? If Atkins does better than the other diets for the whole duration of the study, then why should the other diets suddenly do better later on? Scientists would say "lack of evidence to support that conclusion". If there is no evidence to support the idea that Atkins is going to turn bad at some point down the line, then why do we continue with that idea? Scientists would say "if the facts disagree with your ideas, you must adopt new ideas that agree with the facts".

[N0NDescript0]

02:44 PM on 12/23/2011

I think part of Pollan's argument stems from an ecological sustainability argument. While there is certainly evidence that regular consumption of red meats and other animal products (*which usually displace plant foods*) contribute to cardiovascular disease, obesity, and cancer, that doesn't meant that all the negative effects will be visible in the short-term, as Mercury suggested.

I think studies on the effects of short-term dietary changes are most telling. To summarize multiple studies that I've recently read/skimmed, drastic changes to the diet produce drastic changes in health. Remember the effects of "Supersize Me"? Apparently the effects work both ways (it just happens to be easier to very quickly wreck your body, than it is to very quickly improve it).

[Martin Levac]

03:16 PM on 12/23/2011

"While there is certainly evidence that regular consumptio­n of red meats and other animal products (*which usually displace plant foods*) contribute to cardiovasc­ular disease, obesity, and cancer, that doesn't meant that all the negative effects will be visible in the short-term­"

The evidence against meat is observational. The Chris Gardner study is experimental. Experimental trumps observational. So whatever observational evidence there is that red meat contribute to heart disease, obesity and cancer, is refuted by the experimental evidence that says otherwise, such as this A-TO-Z study. It works this way because an observational study is merely the first step in the complete sequence of science:

1. Observation
2. Hypothesis
3. Test

The Chris Gardner study is the test of whatever hypothesis was generated using previous observational studies on the same subject, namely diet and health.

What of the short term/long term argument? If a thing is effective now, then why should it stop being effective or worse reverse its effect later on? The very idea is inconsistent with pretty much everything we know about reality.