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Permalink Reply by Nicholas on December 4, 2011 at 3:17pm

I 2nd this!

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Permalink Reply by Oscar on December 5, 2011 at 2:51pm

I think it's important to realize what "optimal" means for what you want to know versus what Michael considers it to be. It seems that Michael takes the broadest perspective possible, whereas we usually are mostly concerned about the physical (body) aspect.

Also, they might have their perspective include all the Soul Ages instead of Mature and Old, or even just the latter. For instance social aspects may be far more important to Mature Souls than to Old ones.

Lastly, their perspective probably includes all of Human Sentience, in every circumstance, social layer, tradition, education level, awareness, etc. Ideas about "optimal" may very well differ greatly.

Precise questioning and wording could be crucial, but of course it would be interesting to hear what Michael has to say.

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Permalink Reply by Martha on December 5, 2011 at 3:11pm

I've found it interesting that they talk about food having to be satisfying or pleasing on levels beyond physical.  That's been my problem with restrictive diets.  There has to be some type of pleasure involved or I just get more and more frustrated with it. 

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Permalink Reply by Diane HB on January 23, 2012 at 12:05am

I just finished reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, which has been on my reading list for a while. He takes one of the most sensible and holistic (not to mention entertaining) approaches to diet that I've read, next to John Robbins. And guess what -- he sounded just like Michael:

In the case of nutritionism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. Put another way: Foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts. From this basic premise flow several others.

Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the journalist through whom the scientists reach the public) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. In form this is a quasireligious idea, suggesting the visible world is not the one that really matters, which implies the need for a priesthood. For to enter a world where your dietary salvation depends on unseen nutrients, you need plenty of expert help.

But expert help to do what exactly? This brings us to another unexamined assumption of nutritionism: that the whole point of eating is to maintain and promote bodily health. Hippocrates' famous injunction to "let food be thy medicine" is ritually invoked to support this notion. I'll leave the premise alone for now, except to point out that it is not shared by all cultures and, futher, that the experience of these other cultures suggests that, paradoxically, regarding food as being about things other than bodily health -- like, pleasure, say, or sociality or identity -- makes people no less healthy; indeed, there's some reason to believe it may make them more healthy. This is what we usually have in mind when we speak of the French paradox. So there is at least a question as to whether the ideology of nutritionism is actually any good for you. p. 28-29

His research found that any traditional diet (whether mostly vegetarian, mostly meat, or somewhere in between) is healthier than the Western diet that is the product of industrial agriculture and reductionist nutritional science. It was a big aha! moment for me how the nutritional approach to food, by its nature, disregards pleasure in eating but for the most part has not made us any healthier.

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