Pollan

Reading just the introduction of Michael Pollan's book, Omnivore's Dilemma, brought a lot of good points to my mind. Like, how the Atkin's diet fad changed the way everybody ate, and what was sold in the stores. Grain sales dropped as meat rose. And how 100 calories packs and low carb snack bars popped out of nowhere. And I like how he brings attention to the way that we Americans, known to be overweight, are the ones most obssessed with eating healthy and counting calories. We don't look to enjoy our food, but rather to what sounds the healthiest. Yet, we are still the most unhealthy and overweight. We are obssessed with nutrition, that we overthink it too much and overlook actual value of what we are eating. I have never heard of the "French Paradox", but I understand and witness it in almost every other country I visit. Americans are known to be fat, other countries eat what they want and enjoy, but are more fit than us. I think that a lot of it has to do with our lack of exersice and the amount that we eat. We are sooo used to eating huge portions of food where "bigger is always better" and because we are such a capitalist country, we always want to get the most out of our money. We, as Americans, are willing to sacrifice nutrition and health for what is cheap and fast. I also really like how Pollan sort of makes fun of us because we really don't know waht goes into most of the foods that we do eat. How, recently, people are becoming infatuated with buying organic with booms at stores like Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, but, still, for most of what we eat, we need a nutritionist to tell us what is in it.