A History of our Quest for the Perfect Diet

Our American Culture thinks too hard about what to eat and then eats too much of it.  After reading Pollan and Dupuis’s essays on how our society chooses its food, now and in the past I was shocked to see how things came full circle.  Because we don’t have a long food history or culture and no common faith in religion we seem to rely on trends that continually change for advice on what to eat.  This is not working as we don’t even seem to listen to our own advice.  As Dupuis nicely put it “most American’s have listened to sermons of moderation while eating away to excess” (34). 

Instead of looking to find the right combination of foods to have a healthy balanced diet we have looked to change the foods to fit our dietary needs.  The invention of the graham cracker to avoid white bread.  The invention of low-fat foods to avoid getting fat yet “oddly America got really fat on it’s new low-fat diet” jokes Pollan, yet seriously this was the beginning of our diabetes and obesity filled society (5).  Instead of eating regular amounts of home grown vegetables, meat that has been raised well or whole grains we have grown to eating large amounts of food choked full of extra nutrients.  But do the added nutrients do the trick or is it the foods found in nature combined with their natural nutrients help our bodies? Pollan seems to think the whole foods are important.  For example antioxidants appear to help prevent cancer, “at least thats how it seems to work in the test tube.  Yet as soon as you remove these molecules from the context of the whole foods they are found in...they don’t work at all” (6-7).  

Instead of looking for the magic health compound; a vitamin, a calorie, an angel, an antioxidant, we should be looking for the magic foods.  Dupuis raises the question “What to eat?”.  Through his food history he discovers that “we are a nation that has always tried to eat a perfect diet but we have always failed” (43).  I think the key to a perfect diet is simplicity.  Simple combinations of meat, grain, vegetables.  Simply what is available and local.  Simply thought out without looking to the  magic solution. Simply enough that fits on one plate and simply not eating once one is full.