I think a big point from lecture that was thought-provoking to me was the idea of metabolic rift. In particular the idea that because of how global, food consumption has become we have created imbalances in natural levels of nutrients/water from food producing countries by transporting nutrient rich foods to wealthier countries to be consumed. This cycle is countering the… Read more »
The Australian Aborigines experiment from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food peeked my interest due to its findings and its connections to my background in biology. The basis of the experiment was to isolate recently westernized Aborigines with type 2 diabetes into an area away from western civilization. This coerced the relocated Aborigines to rely on foraging to obtain food,… Read more »
In one of my takeaways, I discussed how nutritionism and how many people are buying into the idea of eating certain nutrients in order to look a certain way, the “acceptable way”. I found this to be disturbingly true and Michael Pollan provides a paradox that I feel speaks true: The more we seem to focus on what we eat,… Read more »
My mother and I would yell about the compost while I was growing up, quite literally scream at each other over an apple core. But before that apple was bit into, eaten, and mistakenly sent to the landfill rather than our compost bin, the question was had I washed it or not? Because “Yes Willa I always buy organic apples,… Read more »
What I find depressing and angering is the fact that defining land as property makes governments feel the need to control it, especially if, as Lester Brown discusses, a food crisis makes those without ownership of land vulnerable to economic instability and starvation. This puts most of the people who actually live and work on land at a disadvantage; when… Read more »
While Michael Pollan makes a lot of recommendations about what to eat to have a balanced diet in their own life, there are a lot of practicality issues that I can observe in real life that can not be applied from the readings. Pollan has made a lot of simple recommendations that can be done such has diversifying the types… Read more »
In his book In Defense of Food, Pollan plies readers with the advice to “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” (1). This highly simplistic advice is meant to be in contrast to Pollan’s critique to the overly complicated and every changing world of nutritionism. While Pollan’s offers an entertaining and at times informative commentary on the science and economy… Read more »
In his article, Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World?, author Michael F. Maniates grapples with what he calls the individualization of responsibility that has become embedded into neoliberal environmentalism. This critique starkly undermines Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, which ends with a vague prescription for prudent consumer choices as a method of subverting the industrial… Read more »
The first topic I’d like to focus on is an issue that I feel was undercovered, or in some cases absent, from our early class lectures and readings, especially Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food. This issue is the unavailability of healthy food, and diverse choices for poor individuals and families, particularly in America. Pollen makes some references to… Read more »
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food tackles the issue at the heart of America’s health problems today: Nutritionism. Throughout the book, Pollan mentions how the science behind Nutritionism is flawed, saying that “Few scientists ever look back to see where they and their paradigms might have gone astray…” Later, Pollan explains how Gary Taubes “blew the whistle on the science… Read more »