The Price to be Paid: an Analysis of Michael Pollan Essay

“The solution, in his view, is to replace Big Food’s engineered, edible evil—through public education and regulation—with fresh, unprocessed, local, seasonal, real food.” (Freedman). Pollan has increased spite for “nutritionism,” which is the idea behind packing healthier ingredients into processed foods which is what Freedman is advocating for. Pollan’s view is much the same as some scientists, food activists, nutritionists, and celebrity chefs. He has had such an influence that the Silicon Valley caters to the wholefoods movement and the progression to familiarizing the masses with simpler eating habits (Freedman). However, being an area full of technological endeavors, the Silicon Valley sees technology as the culprit as well. The New York Times Magazine’s food writer, Mark Bittman also shares views with Pollan. In fact, Bittman has even written a cookbook on how to eat better. While most are more wholesome there are still few recipes that are high in fat. One of his recipes consists of corn being sautéed in bacon fat and then topped with bacon (Freedman).

After travailing to Thailand, Shanghai, the Amazon and Madagascar, David Suzuki describes in his essay “Food Connections”, how Product, there producer, and contact with the earth, has been forgotten in industrial countries. He compares countries like Canada to third world countries.

Locavores argue that food travelling long distances before being consumed declines in nutrition as antioxidants and nutrients decay — meaning that food which travels less distance (and is therefore eaten faster) is better for your health. However, Marion Nestle (as quoted by Alisa Smith and J.B. McKinnon) thinks that the nutrition argument isn’t based in science. According to her, “a person making smart choices from the global megamart can easily meet all the body’s needs”, and “there will be nutritional differences, but they’ll be marginal” (Source B). It’s clearly not unhealthy to eat locally grown foods, and they may even be better for your health. However, the benefits of eating freshly picked food may not be as great as locavores claim they are.

To address what distinguishes the food of a western diet, Pollan compares whole foods and processed foods. He quotes Gyorgy Scrinis and concludes to himself “instead of worrying about nutrients, we should simply avoid any food that has been processed to such an extent that it is more the product of industry than nature (Pollan, 438). Pollan agrees with Scrinis for avoiding processed foods, but he complicates it by mentioning that all whole foods are taken over by industrial processes. Again Pollan reminds the reader that escaping the western diet will not be simple,

He probes them to learn the what, where, and how of dinner – knowing what is going into the body, knowing where that food came from, and knowing how that food was made. By first knowing what is being consumed, people can make better informed decisions about their purchases. Nutrition, or lack thereof, is a key component in the battle against obesity. Food giants are hoping to hide the often unnecessary filler present in their products by use of dodgy claims and socially engineered advertisements. In general, most consumers probably couldn’t say where their food came from. This usually boils down to the fact that shoppers typically don’t think about it. Breaking this reliance on mass-grown foods is the second part of Pollan’s proposition. The third and equally important element is how the food is produced. More specifically, Pollan is concerned whether or not the food has been produced in a sustainable manner. Preserving the biodiversity of food, maintaining fertile land for future generations, and ensuring consumers receive food that does not compromise health are all factors of sustainability. Without informed consumers, what, where, and how will continue to be unanswered questions. Whether it is for nutritional or ethical choices, a particular food’s history is something that needs to once again become common

The article “Why Bother” written by Michael Pollan explains how bad climate change has become; he uses cheap energy and specialization to slow the phenomenon. He proclaims that people are all waiting around on each other to make the first move but no one is moving. He understands how critical the world has become and suggests people now have to start going green. He says that to modify the way climate change has taken charge, the best ways to slow it down is laws and a massive amount of money. Pollan suggests having a personal garden or even a community garden will help reduce the carbon footprint.

In his article “The Price We Pay”, Adam Mayblum asserts the power of our country stating “If you want to kill us, leave us alone because we will do it by ourselves. If you want to make us stronger, attack and we unite. This is the ultimate failure of terrorism against The United States and the ultimate price we pay to be free, to decide where we want to work, what we want to eat, and when & where we want to go on vacation. The very moment the first plane was hijacked, democracy won”. Mayblum’s purpose for writing this article was to show that we aren’t scared by an attack and that we aren’t going down without a fight. Mayblum was successful when writing this article. He demonstrates the strength of the United States and shows that our confidence won’t waver as easily as other nations would hope.

In the article, “Another Year of the Chicken: U.S. Beef Supply Will Fall Again in 2015” (2014) the author, Vanessa Wong, analyzes how the the price of beef and been increasing resulting in more of a demand in chicken. Wong goes on to state that the increase in beef resulted from an extreme drought in 2012 “caused feed prices to spike and, in response, farmers thinned their herds” (Wong, 2012). More of a demand in chicken has also been noticed in restaurants. The price of chicken increased five percent as opposed to the nine percent increase in beef at Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants. However, by the year 2016 Tyson Foods has projected that the cattle supplies will be down to has little as one percent. In truth, the price of beef will decrease.

Journalist and novelist Michael Pollan writes about the trials and tribulations surrounding food in North America and raises questions regarding Western diet, which is mostly comprised of refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup and corn in general. He reiterates that chemically generated food is creating disease in North Americans; If we eliminate these factors and adopt the eating habits of less industrialized places in the world will we in our lifetime see rates of heart disease, type two diabetes and obesity decline dramatically? The western diet has evolved drastically in the last sixty years, so much so that people have become codependent on the government, dietitians and food agencies regarding their health and what to consume. The land is suffering from pesticides and singular plant farming, the alternative to this is to buy organic but at a higher price. Media has influenced the consumer to read the label and accept and trust the daily vitamin percentages on the box, as this is what is best for them. Money is the key factor in all of this and the government, scientific research and media know that, therefor the public is in for a shock when they realize that the very labels that are supposed to save them have fooled them.

Each of these writings were prompted by the same situation: climate change. However, Michael Pollan was inspired by a different reason than Steingraber. Steingraber’s main reason for writing was to inspire people to make the world better for their children. Pollan, in contrast, wrote to put an end to climate change in general.

Consumers have become increasingly detached from their food as America’s food system grows larger and continues to ruin the environment. The main problem is that most consumers do not know how their consumption habits affect the ecosystem around them. Nor do they know about how their food was produced. Information about how and where the food is being produced and wasted is essential, so people can shop responsibly. Short of legislation, Americans make choices at the grocery store. It is essential for all Americans to cast in a vote with their dollars to change the way that food is produced in the United States resulting in more sustainable food being more accessible in the aisles of the grocery store for all Americans.

Right now overproduction of bad foods is becoming a problem not only for the environment but also for the people consuming them. Bittman said that hundreds of years ago everyone cooked their own meals with local ingredients, nothing shipped around the world and nothing was processed. However as time went on more ready foods were being made, more restaurants opened, family farms were shrinking all because it was more efficient this way and convenient. Most people now were buying prepackaged food and food shipped from around the world and less people were eating home cooked meals.

Have you ever thought, you 're doing a great job slowly killing yourself and the Earth while walking through the supermarket pushing a shopping cart filled with an assortment of western dietary staples? Probably not, right? If you 've recently watched the Netflix documentary Cooked, released in early February 2016, this self-analysis may be a part of your shopping trips for the foreseeable future. Cooked was produced by Alex Gibney, and narrated by the man whose book, by the same name, inspired the series itself, Michael Pollan. Michael Pollan is a professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and food activist with many accolades, including several New York Time best-selling books. Cooked is filled to the brim

In the first section of Chapter five, Pollan explains about the processing process. The ingredients include sugars, alcohols, acids, and starches, which makes our body adapt into consuming the processed food with the particular digestion-like process. There is a passage and specifically a quotation of Pollan which struck me that Pollan writes “The twentieth-century prestige of technology and convenience combined with advances in marketing to push aside butter to make space for margarine, replace fruit juice with juice drinks and then entirely juice-free drinks like Tang, cheese with Cheez Whiz, and whipped cream with Cool Whip”(91) which demonstrates the phenomenon that the processed food symbolizes the era., especially in the end of the World

Nations are judged and measured by their production and selling of goods and services. Not only has increased consumerism resulted in ecological imbalance, it is also depleting earth’s natural resources, which in turn is creating an environmental crisis. One of the biggest products being consumed is food. Rapidly growing world’s population requires increased food production. Author Anna Lappe does an excellent job expounding on the impact that food production and distribution has on the environment. Lappe (2015) argues that modern practices of food production directly contribute to air pollution and increases carbon dioxide emissions (par. 11). Crop production uses an absurd amount of land, artificial fertilizer, and harmful pesticides that seriously pollutes the environment and threatens young children and wildlife species. Author Sandra Steingraber (2015) also argues that increased consumerism has led to a high usage of harmful chemicals to produce products for consumers (par.