Friday, June 28, 2013

de-Pollanated?

Looking forward to Michael Pollan's and Mark Bittman's responses to this Atlantic assault on "wholesomeness":
If the most-influential voices in our food culture today get their way, we will achieve a genuine food revolution. Too bad it would be one tailored to the dubious health fantasies of a small, elite minority. And too bad it would largely exclude the obese masses, who would continue to sicken and die early. Despite the best efforts of a small army of wholesome-food heroes, there is no reasonable scenario under which these foods could become cheap and plentiful enough to serve as the core diet for most of the obese population—even in the unlikely case that your typical junk-food eater would be willing and able to break lifelong habits to embrace kale and yellow beets. And many of the dishes glorified by the wholesome-food movement are, in any case, as caloric and obesogenic as anything served in a Burger King...
How Junk Food Can End Obesity - David H. Freedman - The Atlantic

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Deena Shanker responds:
...Making the case that the “science of processed food can save us – if the foodies will get out of the way,” Freedman operates under the mistaken premise that our food system’s only major consequence is a rise in obesity, ignoring other pesky health issues like our population’s growing resistance to medicationearly onset puberty, and cancer; the serious environmental impacts of an industrialized food system (and its direct effect on our health); as well as the basic moral failings of factory farming (to put it lightly). He also uses a series of misinterpretations, false comparisons, “rough calculations,” approximations and at least one “not exactly scientific study,” to peddle the best PR Big Food has gotten since it had the Big-Mac-scarfing Bill Clinton in the White House... Salon.com 

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/30/the_atlantics_latest_silly_idea_is_wrong_no_fast_food_wont_cure_obesity/