Saturday night I went to a lecture given by Michael Pollan as part of University of Portland's Food for Thought event. This is totally non relatable to this term, but since we read Omnivore's Dilemma in the fall I thought I'd share. He started his lecture pulling food items out of two Fred Meyer's bags (he said he'd never been to a Fred Meyer!). They were all what he calls food like substances. Things like, Chocolate Cheerios, Ritz Munchables ("for this one, they put a cracker inside a pretzel, they really are running out of ideas"), Bagels with the cream cheese and jam already in the middle for you. He mentioned there are 17,000 new food products a YEAR. Crazy!
Something I had never thought of was a nutrient traveling into foods they didn't belong in. Some examples he had were Canada Dry Ginger ale with antioxidants. Calcium fortified bread. FiberPlus: Antioxidants. For that one he said, "look they didn't even need to put a 'with', it's a box full of antioxidants!"
He talked a bit about health care, and the high prices for Diabetes and Heart Disease. He said, "there are whole magazine dedicated to surviving with type 2 diabetes, before you know it there will be insulin buildings on every block!" The point he was getting across was that society has accepted that these are the ramifications of the Western diet, and instead of getting to the heart of the problem - our food industry - they have become a marketing niche. Sad.
In closing he gave shopping tips addressed in his book Food Rules:
1. 5 ingredients or less
2. Do you recognize every ingredient? Or do you need a nutritionist to dissect it for you?
3. The packaging; about one-third of the food industries expenses are spent on fancy packaging
4. Contradictory labels, i.e., Chocolate Cheerios: Help lower your cholesterol
5a. Shop the perimeters, perishable is usually the healthiest
5b. Except in the case of low-fat yogurt, which has more sugar that a soda pop
6. If you were shopping with your Grandma, what would she say about everything you put in your cart?
He was an amazing speaker, and there were 4,000 people. 4,000 people who care about eating healthy and sustainably. Just some food for thought ;)
