The Western diet is an extension of our capitalist culture. We are told what to drive, where to live, what to buy, who to vote for and what/how much to eat. We have allowed the Western diet to take root because of our desire for cheap, fast, processed foods that are easy to ingest. Over-consumption is not just encouraged, it is… Read more »
The interconnectedness of the topics discussed in the course thus far offer a thought provoking global view on the future of the human species on Earth. The issues of populations growth, the recognition of the impact that we have on our ecosystem, the global food system, and the water and ecological footprint we are leaving on our planet, are huge… Read more »
In Michael Pollan’s book In the Defense of Food, his observation that people have become more sickly, more overweight, and less healthy since the inception of the social craze of nutritionism (81) is incredibly interesting. The opposite is suggested by the concept of nutrition, so how could this have happened? With a heavier focus on nutrition in society, or at… Read more »
In his book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan describes the phenomenon of nutritionism as the defining ideology of the Western diet. “In the case of nutritionism,” he writes, “the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. Put another way: Foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts.” The emergence… Read more »