Michael Pollan Debunks Food Myths

Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food, is a scathing indictment of the food industry and a call for a return to unprocessed food.

The human digestive tract has about the same number of neurons as the spinal column. What are they there for? The final word isn't in yet, but Michael Pollan thinks their existence suggests that digestion may be more than the rather mundane process of breaking down food into chemicals.

The larger issue is that the very nature of journalism and the nature of food don't make a good fit. Food is a really old story. The foods that we do best on are the ones we evolved eating over many thousands of years. But journalism needs a new story every week, and so we tend to play up novelty and surprise. The classic methods are to eat more fruits and vegetables. How are you going to interest an editor in that story? But in fact, that is the story. Nutritionists haven't changed their points of view nearly as much as you would gather from reading the journalism about them.

On the other hand, there is a very good fit between journalism and the food industry, which needs lots of change. The food industry needs to know that the blueberry is the food of the moment and that there's very exciting research showing that it's a "superfood" so they can put blueberries in all their products. That suits both journalism, which needs a new story every week, and the food industry, which puts out 15,000 new products every year.