Pollan's Peril

“Finish your vegetables or no dessert.” This simple line is one most children hear thousands of times while growing up, and it is one they learn to loathe. However, “finishing your vegetables” may be more than just kids eating the green stuff on their plates so they can eat dessert. This one line brings to light the argument of Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: people should be eating more whole, unprocessed foods instead of the manufactured, “nutrient rich” food found in most supermarkets. Michael Pollan supports his point in such a way that his argument is actually made ineffective by his scientific evidence and “advice” on what one should be eating.

Personally, I usually take interest when I see scientific data, but Pollan uses too much of it in a contradictory matter to actually intrigue me. He begins his case by saying that readers should avoid breaking down foods into nutrients, similar to the idea of reductionist science, but then promptly begins to describe how omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants are nutrients that can be both beneficial for and harmful to humans. Yet, on page 139 of his book, In Defense of Food, he tries to justify this use of scientific data by stating that the “undertow of nutritionism is powerful, and more than once over the past few pages I’ve felt myself being dragged back under.” However, farther down on page 139, he contradicts himself again by saying, “[reductionist science is] the sharpest experimental and explanatory tool we have.” These two statements weaken his argument because he uses the facts he earlier dismissed to support his stance.

Most people don’t mind little pieces of advice, but Pollan has no mercy in telling the reader how to eat. The first of many problems exists on page 134 of In Defense of Food, where he assumes “you [the reader] would not have bought this book and read this far into it if your food culture was intact and healthy.” By doing this he insults those who read the book for pleasure and interest and so makes half his audience ignore his next few statements. Near the end of In Defense of Food, Pollan begins with a section entitled “Not Too Much: How to Eat” where he tells the reader where to get the organic food he has been recommending throughout the text and how to eat this cuisine. In this section, there are several subsections which inform the reader how he or she can improve his or her eating lifestyle by eating less, eating with others at a table, eating slowly, or even planting a garden.¹ Many of these attempts to guide the reader are written as commands instead of friendly advice so the advice appears offensive.

Michael Pollan has several shortcomings in the writing and argument of his book In Defense of Food. He weakens his stance each time he uses one of these contradictory and overused scientific facts and orders that he claims are advice. Thus, he weakens his argument to the point where it becomes unconvincing and people begin to stop reading the novel. Therefore, he loses most of his readers by the time they finish the book, if they chose to finish it.

1. Pollan, Michel. In Defense of Food An Eater’s Manifesto. New York: Penguin Books, 2008.