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As we study more deeply,
as we work at changing what we eat,
we are coming to realize
some shocking things
and some things we seemed to know
without being conscious of them.
The latest revelations
and affirmations
have come from reading
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
by Michael Pollan.
First sentence, Pollan tells us:
“Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Eat food?
His effort is to help us understand how industrialized agriculture
has affected our diet (and creation)
and that,
for reasons of health, care of creatures and creation,
we need to get back to eating whole food
rather than processed food.
He writes of an ecological understanding of diet and health:
…eating linked us to the earth and its elements as well as the energy of the sun…Industrial food both obscured these links and attenuated them. In lengthening the food chain so that we could feed great cities from distant soils, we were breaking the ‘rules of nature’ at least twice: by robbing nutrients from the soils the foods had been grown in and then squandering those nutrients by processing the foods.
Vast fleets are busy carrying the limited minerals of far-flung districts to distant markets…By breaking the links among local soils, local foods and local peoples, the industrial food system disrupted the circular flow of nutrients through the food chain. Whatever the advantages of the new industrial system, it could no longer meet the bio-chemical requirements of the human body, which, not having had time to adapt, was failing in new ways.
Strangely,
it’s books like Pollan’s
that are the best diet books,
because they help us understand
food systems
and give us deeper reasons
for making changes in our diets.
He helps us realize that
eating well for Earth
is also eating well for our bodies.
Not so strange, really,
since it’s one big, connected system.
