Michael Pollan claims that “the human animal is well adapted to a great many different diets, and the Western diet isn’t one of them” (Pollan 11) in his book “In Defense of Food”. The Western diet is another way of saying processed food. Pollan explains how a group of doctors visited different countries to get feedback on people who have turned away from their traditional diet and adopted the Western diet, and soon enough
followed a predictable series of Western diseases, including obesity and diabetes. Why is this? Industrialization and the economy: we now have machinery that can significantly increase the yield of processed food, so companies are making more money, and in turn the prices of fresh fruits and vegetables are unreasonably high. The middle to lower class people cannot afford the food that it takes to be healthy. There is a reason that citizens of unindustrialized countries do not have the diseases and health problems that we have, and I got to experience that first-hand. Last summer, I traveled to a small village in the middle of a Costa Rican forest and the life expectancy was in the 90’s. In the United States, it is 78 years. I posed the question as to why this is. Every villager I asked said one word: diet. They have a strict corn-based diet and grow their own food so fresh food is their only option, whereas in the United States, most of our food is processed with chemicals that keep our food from going bad. Costa Ricans do not live longer by coincidence…. That experience I gained backs up that Pollan is correct in the sense that humans are not adapted to the Western diet, and because of this, we are dying younger and becoming significantly unhealthy…. woah.
Villagers Cooking Dinner
Works Cited:
Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: an Eater’s Manifesto. Penguin Books, 2009.