{"id":235,"date":"2017-07-02T05:56:13","date_gmt":"2017-07-02T05:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/?p=235"},"modified":"2017-07-02T05:56:13","modified_gmt":"2017-07-02T05:56:13","slug":"the-heavy-shadow-of-nutritionism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/the-heavy-shadow-of-nutritionism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Heavy Shadow of Nutritionism"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his book, In Defense of Food<\/em>, Michael Pollan describes the phenomenon of nutritionism as the defining ideology of the Western diet. \u201cIn the case of nutritionism,\u201d he writes, \u201cthe 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.\u201d The emergence of nutritionism during the past several decades has produced a series of unexpected and deleterious health outcomes in Western society.<\/p>\n

Nutritionism obscures the otherwise conspicuous disparity in health value between whole foods and processed foods. As Pollan writes, \u201cWhen the emphasis is on quantifying the nutrients contained in foods (or, to be precise, the recognized<\/em> nutrients in foods), any qualitative distinction between whole foods and processed foods is apt to disappear.\u201d Thus, processed foods \u2013 with artificially added nutrients comparable to those found in whole foods \u2013 may be considered \u201chealthier\u201d by consumers evaluating their options through the lens of nutritionism. This distorted perception serves to benefit nearly all involved parties (food science, food processors and manufacturers, journalists) but<\/em> the consumer. Pollan states it perfectly, \u201cScientific reductionism is an undeniably powerful tool, but it can mislead us too, especially when applied to something as complex, on the one side, as a food and on the other a human eater.\u201d<\/p>\n

As attitudes around food are increasingly influenced by food science and journalism (the media), and less by the cultural traditions of our ancestors, newly-recognized psychological disorders related to food have emerged as has the incidence in these disorders increased overall. Pollan makes only brief mention of orthorexia in the introduction of In Defense Of Food<\/em>, thus missing a critical opportunity to illustrate the psychological effects of nutritionism alongside the ideology\u2019s aggregation of physiological health outcomes. The National Eating Disorders Association describes orthorexia \u2013 formally known as orthorexia nervosa \u2013 as an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. Orthorexia presents as an especially militant and extreme version of nutritionism. Sufferers experience a steadily narrowing reductionist approach to foods and nutrients, resulting in crippling anxiety around food choices and ever-increasing self-imposed food restrictions. As an eating disorder, orthorexia is not currently included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), as an officially recognized mental disorder; however, its inclusion is certainly imminent.<\/p>\n

As the preferred lens through which consumers are encouraged to evaluate and experience food, nutritionism has become a dominant force in Western popular and health culture. The exclusive focus on nutrients, and their place in our misguided quest for perfect health, has corrupted our intuition around food and nutrition. Nutritionism is leading us ever-further from physical and mental wellbeing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kratina, K. (2016). Orthorexia Nervos<\/em>a. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.nationaleatingdisorders.org\/orthorexia-nervosa<\/p>\n

Pollan, M. (2008). In Defense Of Food<\/em>. New York, NY: Penguin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his book, In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan describes the phenomenon of nutritionism as the defining ideology of the Western diet. \u201cIn the case of nutritionism,\u201d he writes, \u201cthe 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.\u201d The emergence… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,7],"tags":[70,44,69,68],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumption","category-public-health","tag-michaelpollan","tag-nutritionism","tag-orthorexia","tag-westerndiet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}