Sense of Community

P6: Read Pollan’s “Our National Eating Disorder.” What does Pollan diagnose as the symptoms and / or causes of our national eating disorder? What do you find most interesting in his analysis? How do you choose what you eat?

Pollan discusses the America's obsession with eating healthy but seeming inability to actually be healthy.  He talks about the attack on the bread industry and how diets that we create cause companies to process their foods more.  It's interesting to me that in taking so much time to eat healthy we are actually working backwards.  Pollan says that many American's will stop at the gym just so that they can eat a pint of ice cream later that night.  No one in their right mind should eat an entire pint of ice cream.  American culture surrounding food is all about size, quantity and efficiency. This causes American's to eat excessively and then diet excessively.  If we had a better relationship with our foods, not having them be created in laboratories and eating the right amounts in balance, we would be healthier without having to diet.  Take a country like Japan.  Though recent times have proved economically difficult, the Japanese people have for a long time eaten well and had plenty of food.  Regardless of how much they eat, most Japanese are skinny and healthy.  Their average life expectancy is 82 years old, over four years longer than the Average American's life expectancy.  The foods that they are eating to live this long are simple and basic. Japanese people eat a ton of fish and rice.  Though you may have had a bad experience with food poisoning from sushi at some point in your life, it is really good for you and the food poisoning can be avoided with the right preparation.  Pollan talks about this same occurrence with French food culture.  They don't worry about dieting but are much healthier than Americans.  All of this reminded me of a book I read called Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  One chapter he bases off of a small, isolated town in Pennsylvania that was only occupied by a group of people from Roseto Italy.  In the 1950's a scientist began to study this town because of the health of its inhabitants.  The rest of America was plagued by heart disease and other diet concerns.  The Rosetans on the other hand didn't have a case of heart disease with anyone under 60.  After studying all of the factors such as fat intake, foods consumed, the amount the people worked out and their genetics, the scientist couldn't find any differences.  In fact, the Rosetans still ate lard, and a lot of it.  What he found to be the variable that cause their great health was not dieting but rather the sense of community that they had.  Not worrying and stressing out made them live longer.