Blog Post #4 (revised)

As more and more people suffer from health problems, researchers, nutritionists, and other health experts are advocating a healthier lifestyle and suggesting more healthful eating habits and diets. What role is nutritionism playing? In the book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan argues that we are depending too much on nutrition and food science, and it is such science that makes us sicker. Although Michael Pollan provides considerable evidence to convince us that we should not listen to these experts, the way he writes does not strongly support his opinion. Basically, he has made three critical mistakes in his argument.

First of all, he successively implies that as more people choose food in accordance with suggestions made by nutritionists, an increasing number of people are developing chronic diseases. He believes that they are strongly related—that actually, scientists’ advice are faulty, and because they are bad advice, more and more people are getting sick. However, just because these two trends are occurring at the same time does not necessarily mean they are related. For example, one individual’s full mark in a test has nothing to do with another individual’s failure in the same test. Likewise, one cannot say nutritionism is the cause of health problems because they are simultaneous. Many other factors may be contributing to the rise in the number of cases of obesity and heart disease, such as a sedentary lifestyle, stress, and lack of sleep. Michael Pollan is simply making observations instead of establishing some scientific evidence that would show a relationship between nutritionism and health problems.

He also fails to understand that parts of nutritional theory being wrong does not lead to every part being wrong, just like one could get partial credit for a question. Michael Pollan keeps using the example of scientists in the past telling us to take trans fat to show that scientists are telling people to ingest toxins. Undoubtedly, this suggestion to use trans fat to replace saturated fat was a serious mistake made by scientists, but that was a long time ago and scientists are trying to make amends by telling people to stop consuming trans fat. More importantly, we cannot deny all the efforts made by scientists because of mistakes they have made because some of their studies reveal numerous problems with people’s eating habits and offer solutions based on scientific research. However, because of his neglect of those helpful suggestions, Michael Pollan argues that all scientific theories are bad and making the situation worse.

Last but not least, Michael Pollan seems to overlook a critical question: What if people never get advice from the experts and their conditions worsen? He ironically says “eat right, get fatter” and insists that the rates of obesity and heart disease and the number of people who have a healthy diet are increasing simultaneously. However, he remains close-minded and never acknowledges the possibility that without such advice, these people may become even more chronically ill. He does not mention that people’s consuming too much fat and protein and becoming unhealthy motivate scientists to conduct research that leads to such recommendations as “eat more unsaturated fat instead of saturated fat” and “consume more carbohydrates instead of protein.” In other words, scientists are attempting to fix the problem. Although they have not fixed it entirely, one cannot disregard their suggestions as not working. However, Michael Pollan does not appreciate the “half-fixed” part of the problem, but blames scientists for the “half-unfixed” part.

Overall, Michael Pollan’s argument is hardly convincing. He dreams of an ideal world in which people eat only healthy food without even thinking about what they are doing. He is strongly against researchers’ and nutritionists’ suggestions and implies they are just making people sicker by manipulating them. He does not acknowledge that two events occurring at the same time could be completely unrelated. He makes gross generalizations based on minimal evidence, and he does not give much thought to what the world would be like without scientific evidence on the value or risk of particular kinds of food. He needs to base his ideas on empirical evidence rather than observation and inference to illustrate how nutritionism makes people sicker.