Oh the irony...

          Michael Pollan suggests that as a nation of mixed cultures, America has no establish food tradition. This is the problem that our “national eating disorder” boils down to. Without this solid background of food, Americans have nothing to base their food choices off of and therefore buy into the propaganda of science and advertisements. Science breaks food down into it nutrient components, trying to define it by its health factor, and not necessarily taste or enjoyment. Ads latch onto this idea and project an image of healthy foods. This is what fills the vacuum of American food culture. We want to be healthy; diet crazes change our eating habits all the time depending on what is important to us. One day we count calories while the next we buy into the Atkin’s diet and watch out for carbs. Pollan suggests that this instability in our diet is not good. Other cultures have relatively stable eating patterns, but of course they have the history of food that America is lacking.

He discusses how other cultures actually are more fit than Americans, pointing to those that value “pleasure and habit rather than nutritional science” when sitting down to a meal. Pollan cites France as a place where food tradition is an integral part of society; the French choose food based on taste and enjoy small portion sizes at very social and lengthy meals. In a society of convenience and diet and fads, Americans try to “work out our dietary salvation on our own.” This doesn’t lend to a social atmosphere for meals. Food should be about enjoyment. In America food is about guilt. We feel guilty when eating foods that taste good, foods that are high in sugars or carbs. Pollan notes that food becomes numbers. We are so busy worrying about the health ramifications that we don’t find eating pleasurable like the French. At worry turns into binge eating and other unhealthy activities – which is really kind of ironic. Pollen writes that “…how we eat, and even how we feel about eating, may in the end be just as important as what we eat.” If we eliminated the stress around eating “right” we could enjoy our food again and probably be healthier because of it.

I like to think I eat what I eat because I like it, because I enjoy certain things over others. Generally this is true; I eat pizza for lunch over fish and pick up chocolate chip cookies at the dessert bar instead of a Jell-O cup because those are my tastes. But I can’t deny that I don’t feel the American guilt every once in a while. After a large dinner or a second ice cream cone or going through an entire bag of Cheetos in my dorm room, I start questioning if I really should have done that. This idea of eating healthy is kind of programed into us. Even if I don’t go around analyzing the fat content of every meal, there is still a little voice in the back of my head.