IN DEFENSE OF FOOD - Michael Pollan - Nonfiction

A lot of what Michael Pollan will tell you, you already know. High-fructose corn syrup is bad for you. Eating too many processed foods is also bad for you. In general, the industrialization of our food supply has led to foods with fewer nutrients and more processed food-like additives, the effects of which on our health are dubious. Pollan, attempting to convert a following, lays out these arguments as though for the blind who now can see: you didn't know! You didn't know that factory farming was making fruits and vegetables less nutritious, you didn't know that eating twinkies was bad for you, you didn't know that artificial flavoring and partially hydrogenated corn syrup was fooling your body into taking in more calories than it needs. You didn't know! But, of course you did. What Michael Pollan wants to convince you is that science--food science in particular, but science more generally as well--has led you astray. By focusing on the individual aspects of food, Pollan says, the carbohydrates and proteins and fats, as well as the vitamins and anti-oxidants and minerals, we have lost sight of the bigger picture: that what we eat matters as a whole, not only to us, but to the environment from which we obtain it. Pollan then champions a return to more traditional forms of eating: a traditional diet, ANY traditional diet, he says, which is not the "Western" diet, not made of processed foods and more corn and soy than a pastured chicken could shake a feather at.

Of course, the evidence that Pollan uses to back up his claims, both for the unhealthful effects of the Western diet and the benefits of the traditional diet, are steeped in the same nutrition science he repudiates a few chapters before. Pollan is keen to point out that the narrow focus of some scientific studies fails to find a correlation between associations we "know" to be true: that eating more fat leads to heart disease, that anti-oxidants protect against cancer, and that diets low in carbohydrates lead to weight loss. Pollan says that we cannot dissociate one aspect of the food (the type of protein it contains, the amount of fats, the number of glasses of red wine) from the diet as a whole, and that synergistic effects of food and culture contribute to health in mysterious ways. No doubt this is true, but Pollan misses the point of science: science doesn't intend to tell you what is healthiest. The best science tells you is that if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight, and that's all that most people really want to know. Science is interested in finding building blocks, and then finding connections between those building blocks. And before you say that this method doesn't work, remember who told you that smoking causes cancer. Even though a number of traditional ways of living include smoking: the Native Americans, healthy though their wild-game-based diets may have been, kept smoking as an integral part of a balanced lifestyle. And focusing only on traditional ways of eating fails to take into account what is probably the most important part of a traditional way of living: it was hard work. Pollan tells us not to eat at our desks, without pointing out that the most important part of that injunction is to not be at a desk at all: the traditional way of life was bolstered by a traditional diet that took into account a lot of traditional hard labor. The healthy cultures Pollan points to are ones that needed to do a lot of physical labor, and exercised more than we are accustomed to.

Pollan is even willing to admit that a more "traditional" American diet--i.e., pre-70s--is better for us than our modern diet. He cites the moderating influence of "Mom" as the arbiter of portions and ingredients, leaving aside for a second that our move from dependence on "Mom" to dependence on every, or any, member of the family is hands down a positive accomplishment. Pollan blithely assumes that if we just remembered what our mothers cooked for us, we'd be a healtheir populace, skipping over the possibility that your mother wasn't all that healthy herself, and that if it's now a Dad who's cooking the meals, the entire family might be healthier for its modernity and sharing of responsibility. But again, there's a deeper problem with this assumption: the assumption that food choices are a solely personal concern, and that the best ways to get healthier foods are to pay more for them, and to grow them oneself. Pollan doesn't advocate any sort of protest or overthrow of the giant food corporations that are making a lot of these unhealthy choices for us. He doesn't provide any suggestions or avenues for advocacy. He doesn't even advance some of the suggestions he offers in his classes at Berkeley, such as pushing for the decoupling of the Farm Bill: unlinking subsidies for farms from subsidies for food stamps. Instead, Pollan assumes that all we need to make us a healthier society is to plant victory gardens, go to the farmer's market, and "stick to the edges of the supermarket" instead of the processed-food inner aisles. He also glosses over the idea that many families eat poorly because processed food is cheapest, and a nice filet of fish three times a week is a sizeable expense for a family of four. He admits that this is "regrettable" but then says that, on average, we spend less than 20% of our income on food anyway, and that perhaps we should increase that number, for the good of our health.

Pollan is right to be skeptical of mainstream nutrition science. As he points out, fad diets are a dime a dozen, and studies purporting to support or debunk their beneficial effects are hard to interpret and hard to believe, when longitudinal studies that could really tell us who lives longer by eating what understandably take a lifetime to complete. His main points, that we should eat more fruits and vegetables whole, and keep a close eye on what is in our food, are important and simple. However, many of his predictions smack of regressive thinking, of the wistful idea that if we returned to the 50s--to a garden in the backyard, and a Mom with enough time to tend to it and cook three meals a day from scratch--we'd be better off for it. Realistically, in achieving progress we have sacrificed some of the more basic pleasures, like enough time in the day to leisurely prepare a demi-glace, and go shopping at a farmer's market in the middle of the day. Grocery stores are open until midnight, and there's definitely a need for that. If I could only get milk on Thursdays from three to seven (the hours of my local farmer's market) I would just drink less milk. And that's what has happened. The solution is not to ask people to go out of their way to get healthy food. The solution is to demand that healthy food be put back in front of us, conveniently: in the grocery stores and the 7-11s and in every aisle, not just the perimeter. Personal efforts, like replacing lightbulbs and inflating tires, can only take us so far, and that "so far" is often only 5% of the way. We need political and legal change, and someone to lead us there: someone who, it seems, will not be Michael Pollan. He'll be too busy with his garden.

THE ANTHOLOGIST - Nicholson Baker - Fiction

A poem is a rhyming piece of verse, says Paul Chowder. A poem that doesn't rhyme is a plum. And so, welcome to the lusciously illustrated cover of this novel, a gorgeous, dark plum at the bottom of a cream-colored jacket. Baker's novels encompass all the senses, and this illustrative collaboration in particular is apropos. In the bookstore, I saw it and reflexively declared "I want that."

It's Nicholson Baker, so the subject doesn't matter. This one, of course, strays a little less afield than some of his previous work, dealing as it does with poetry, rhyme and meter, and the life of a modestly successful poet with ambitious theories about scansion and notation. If you're interested in plot, there is predictably little: Paul Chowder's girlfriend has left him over his inability to complete any work, and he is still unable to finish the introduction to his forthcoming anthology of rhyming poetry, partially over concern about his own poems, and partially out of the sense that this may be his last widely-received polemic, and his last chance to make a mark on the greater literary community. He befriends his badminton-playing neighbor, drives to a few poetry readings, visits the Grolier poetry bookshop in Harvard Square (always good to see wonderful real-life bookstores pop up in fiction) and composes a few lovely minor-key tunes for the lyrics of his favorite poetry.

If you are not a singer or a sight-reader, you may miss the beauty and unexpected notes in these short phrases. I play the cello, so I was able to go back after reading and play the music for myself; if you don't have access to your own instrument, I would suggest using something like this online piano to hear Chowder's music for yourself. He sings these songs in the attic of his barn, while trying to write, and then to shorten, his introduction, and their tone is not the jolly serenade I was expecting.

Part of the joy in poetry is reading aloud, and Baker exhorts the reader to do this throughout, counting out syllables, enumerating pauses, and playing fast and loose with typography as a guide to pronunciation. If the reader hasn't been introduced to much poetry, from Poe to Mary Oliver, Baker is the ultimate guide, knowing and name-droppy and entirely lacking in condescension. Paul Chowder may have been kicked out of his teaching job, but Baker is an entertaining educator.

P.S. THE ANTHOLOGIST is also the New Yorker's October book club selection, if you are interested in more discussion.