1982 Australian Aborigines Pollan Summary

In the article “Escape from the Western Diet”, Michael Pollan suggest to the people that they should stop eating a western diet because western diet is also responsible for western diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and many more. In his article he said that “People eating a Western diet are prone to a complex chronic diseases that seldom strike people eating more traditional diets.” He also gave the solution of this problem by telling people to stop eating a western diet. New theories made new treatments to treat different diseases. In his point of view, if people want to escape from western diet they need to stop eating western food daily. He thinks that if people want to stay healthy they should eat food, not too much,

Pollan defines the American problem as “unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily.” (Pg. 3) The vast majority of consumers in our society are ones that envision themselves as striving towards a healthy lifestyle, yet many of these consumers don’t realize that in their attempts at eating healthy they are on a slow decline. A large sum of the population garners their information on which foods to eat from their daily news sources, trying new fad diets and picking up any food that Buzzfeed or the Huffington Post tells them will better their health (Pg. 1). This behavior in turn leaves those desperate for a slimmer and healthier bodies utterly confused and desolate.

In Michael Pollan’s essay “Escape from the Western Diet,” he informs Americans about the western diet and believes they need to escape from it. The reason Americans should escape the western diet is to avoid the harmful effects associated with it such as “western diseases” (Pollan, 434). To support his view on the issue, Pollan describes factors of the western diet that dictate what Americans believe they should eat. These factors include scientists with their theories of nutritionism, the food industry supporting the theories by making products, and the health industry making medication to support those same theories. Overall, Pollan feels that in order to escape this diet, people need to get the idea of it out of their heads. In turn he

Weight is a part of every human beings life. Every one weights something. In society, it is commonly found that people mistakenly judge their health based on their weight. America has thousands of health experts and nutritionist who claim themselves as protectors of health, “helping a nation stricken with heart disease, diabetes, and cancer” (Maxville 443). They believe that eating is simply for fueling the body and you should eat mostly plants, but not too much. Maxville uses the vast theory of health experts to tie in the point that, “each of these maladies is tied to our diet and essentially our weight. As a culture we no longer discuss healthy eating without also discussing unhealthy weights” (Maxville 444). While Maxville believes that the bigger issue is not weight, but linking nutrition and body type. While, Pollan warns readers of eating too much, he never mentions that it is equally as fatal to eat too little. Pollan states in his essay that overeating is the “greatest threat” to our survival. Maxville uses Pollan’s statements on the topic of weight to prove that being unhealthy should not be tied solely to being overweight, because being under weight is equally unhealthy. To further discredit the claims Pollan makes linking weight to health, Maxville states, “A growing group of academics who

Michael Pollan says in his argument that the western diet is chiefly to blame for a majority of health deceases, he says “the scientist who blame our health problems on defiances of these micronutrients are not the same scientist who see sugar-soaked diet leading to metabolic syndrome and from there to diabetes, heart deceases, and cancer” (421) Due to all this negative impact to our health Pollan says that the food industry needs new theories to better redesign processed food and the medical community to make new drugs to beget deceases.

“People eating a western diet are prone to a complex of chronic diseases that seldom strike people eating more traditional diets.” He suggests that people who eat other foods that are not western tend to have less chronic diseases. His solution to this is to stop eating the Western diet. She points out that Maxwell is contradicting himself because while being a “critic of nutrition and food science he is bolstering the American investment in those industries.”(443) She also disagrees with his maxim, “Eat food, not much, and mostly plants” because she takes his idea as insulting addressing people “who apparently can’t properly nourish

We 're all Australians, regardless of our ethnic background, political and religious beliefs (NSW Department of Education, 2015).

In his book " In Defense of Food " author Michael Pollan takes an interesting and thought

Native Americans’ bodies could not handle the extra fat and sugar in their diet. This, coupled with a decrease in intense exercise, increased obesity and brought on the rise of diabetes. The sudden lack of exercise resulted in a significant weight increase in the Native American community. Indians were used to roaming the countryside. They had to follow the buffalo or move to warmer weather. Now, they were put into permanent homes and bought their food. This created an overweight, obese group of people. Studies estimated that the overall occurrence of obesity among Native Americans was 13.7 percent for men and 16.5 percent for women. These are higher than the United States’ rates of 9.1 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively. It is reported that the United States spends $93 billion a year on preventable obesity- related illnesses and diseases.

However, Michael Pollan, in his article “Escape from the Western Diet” states that both the food and health industries are partially to blame. He talks about how he wants Americans to leave behind the western diet. Pollan claims the fast food business is to be faulted in light of the fact that they utilize these distinctive wholesome hypotheses to discharge new items, and that the wellbeing business is to be faulted on the grounds that they utilize these speculations to grow new solutions and strategies. He’s not just opening up about the unfortunate western eating habits, but additionally how the health care buildings are charging at this issue, however they are profiting from the results. He wants Americans to avoid this diet because of the harmful effects it could bring, such as “western diseases”(Pollan 423). Pollan claims that utilizing reductionist science, which concentrates on individual gatherings as opposed to entire nourishments, is unavoidable to attempt to make sense of what isn 't right with the Western eating routine. Pollan believes that it is because of the huge amounts of salt and sugar, put into foods that cause obesity. In that statement I agree with him because I personally don’t use a large amount of salt in my food, but I see peers just pour so much salt and sugar in their meals like it’s nothing and then complaining about how they 're getting fat. He additionally clarifies that these restaurants and markets

Native Americans have the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Native Americans are 60% more likely to be obese and are over twice as likely to have diabetes than the general population. These numbers are even higher for Southwest Native Americans. But their diet is very similar to the rest of modern society. So why do Native Americans suffer these conditions at higher rates than the general population? The answer may be found in new research that is beginning to point to a genetic cause for these conditions. In a study by Peggy Halpern, Ph.D. for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, she found that historically Native Americans of the

Colonization caused the disempowerment of Aboriginal peoples and limited available resource due to environmental factors and geographical isolation (Gates et al., 2016). The influence of obesity in Aboriginal children is multidimensional because it affects both the physical and mental health. Obese children are likely to have poor self image and self-esteem (Thompson, 2015) and they similarly are at risk of growing up to be obese youths and adults, therefore placing them at risk of mental and physical health conditions throughout their

Pollan believes that Western diet is the primary cause of many of the different ailments that are impacting contemporary society. A few of the most notable include: heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. This is because there is no vested interest in supporting primary care and preventive medicine. As the health care industry wants to create drugs that can treat these conditions. Yet, they do not deal with the root causes of the problem. Instead, they allow the individual to engage in a pattern of destructive lifestyle choices. This increases the profit margins for everyone inside the health care industry by taking this approach. (Pollan)

Many Americans are concern about the increment of disease and obesity caused by the limited options of healthy food, “since America is saturated with junk food advertising”(Khullar 135). However, in consequence of the absence of an American cuisine, fast food restaurants and foods high in fats offered by supermarkets, has become the first option to Americans. After all, Pollan’s argument that the lack of a stable traditional cuisine is the consequence of America’s national eating disorder and the steady national diet is reasonable since there are many factors that support his claim. For example, Mary Roach, in Liver and Opinions: Why We Eat What We Eat and Despite the Rest, claims that the food we eat is influenced by people’s cultural background; in other words, people are used to eating what their parents feed them when they were kids. “In addition, Americans have a conflict with having a stable eating habit; they tend to change their diet often”(Roach 123). Overall, Pollan’s is comprehensible while he argues that Americans do not have a stable culture of food, which causes an instability in people’s

Australian Aborigines are thought to have the longest continuous cultural history in the world. Yet, within a hundred years, the near extinction of the Aboriginal culture almost occurred. This single event, the invasion of the Australian continent by European settlers, changed the lifestyle, the culture, and the fate of Australian Aborigines. Their entire lives were essentially taken away and they were forced into a white, European world where the lifestyle change could not have been any different. Aborigines in Australia today are struggling to deal with a past in which they lost touch with their culture and now are trying to regain some of that cultural identity.