4 ms·

Every time I read an article like this, I'm reminded of Michael Pollan's writings on food. His advice, even though I read it years and years ago, has stood the

Every time I read an article like this, I'm reminded of Michael Pollan's writings on food. His advice, even though I read it years and years ago, has stood the test of time for me: > Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t....

savanaly 9y ago
That's about nutrition though, and this is about contamination from packaging. The article would still have been written if mac and cheese were an entirely untreated plant product.
- flunhat 9y ago
  I don't follow what you're saying?
  - coldtea 9y ago
    He's saying that the advice you mention "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." is not very relevant to the article, because even if you mainly eat plants, the kind of chemicals that the article talks about can still be present in them (from the process of packing, transporting them, etc -- plus of course all the crap they put on them to make their grow faster and bigger). In other words, your advice is about "eat less processed food" while the article is about how all kinds of food (processed or not) can have those chemicals. Plants can still come wrapped in plastic, with labels attached, pass through conveyor belts, etc.
    - flunhat 9y ago
      If I'm reading the article correctly, it says that the phthalates in mac and cheese are in the cheese mix, not the plastic packaging.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        For that particular case, perhaps, but they also say: Phthalates are not deliberately added to food. They are industrial chemicals used to soften plastics and are used as solvents, in adhesives and in ink on packaging. The chemicals migrate into food from food processing equipment like plastic tubing, conveyor belts and gaskets and other plastic materials used in the manufacturing process, and can also seep in from printed labels or plastic materials in the packaging."
- novia 9y ago
  Something that Michael Pollan advocates is avoiding processed foods. In the quote above, though counterintuitive, "food" as defined by Pollan does not include processed foods like boxed mac and cheese. From the article the GP post linked: 1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these. 2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health. 3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    Ok, but why? I'm sure leafy greens are objectively "better", but is eating Mac & Cheese once a week (for example) going to cause physical harm? Do I need to adopt a zero tolerance policy?
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      No, of course not. But let's not overlook the fact that there are people who eat that every other day and lots of people who eat nothing but processed food to the point that they find real food sort of gross and hard to cook, eat or digest. This is a Bad Thing.
nonbel 9y ago
>"Last winter came the news that a low-fat diet, long believed to protect against breast cancer, may do no such thing — this from the monumental, federally financed Women’s Health Initiative, which has also found no link between a low-fat diet and rates of coronary disease. The year before we learned that dietary fiber might not, as we had been confidently told, help prevent colon cancer. Just last fall two prestigious studies on omega-3 fats published at the same time presented us with strikingly different conclusions. While the Institute of Medicine stated that “it is uncertain how much these omega-3s contribute to improving health” (and they might do the opposite if you get them from mercury-contaminated fish), a Harvard study declared that simply by eating a couple of servings of fish each week (or by downing enough fish oil), you could cut your risk of dying from a heart attack by more than a third — a stunningly hopeful piece of news. It’s no wonder that omega-3 fatty acids are poised to become the oat bran of 2007, as food scientists micro-encapsulate fish oil and algae oil and blast them into such formerly all-terrestrial foods as bread and tortillas, milk and yogurt and cheese, all of which will soon, you can be sure, sprout fishy new health claims. (Remember the rule?)" The saddest part is we know exactly why this flip-flopping is happening. The methods used to "study" nutrition (NHST) automatically generate a series of conflicting results. There is no cumulative progress being made.

savanaly 9y ago

That's about nutrition though, and this is about contamination from packaging. The article would still have been written if mac and cheese were an entirely untreated plant product.

flunhat 9y ago
I don't follow what you're saying?
- coldtea 9y ago
  He's saying that the advice you mention "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." is not very relevant to the article, because even if you mainly eat plants, the kind of chemicals that the article talks about can still be present in them (from the process of packing, transporting them, etc -- plus of course all the crap they put on them to make their grow faster and bigger). In other words, your advice is about "eat less processed food" while the article is about how all kinds of food (processed or not) can have those chemicals. Plants can still come wrapped in plastic, with labels attached, pass through conveyor belts, etc.
  - flunhat 9y ago
    If I'm reading the article correctly, it says that the phthalates in mac and cheese are in the cheese mix, not the plastic packaging.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      For that particular case, perhaps, but they also say: Phthalates are not deliberately added to food. They are industrial chemicals used to soften plastics and are used as solvents, in adhesives and in ink on packaging. The chemicals migrate into food from food processing equipment like plastic tubing, conveyor belts and gaskets and other plastic materials used in the manufacturing process, and can also seep in from printed labels or plastic materials in the packaging."
novia 9y ago
Something that Michael Pollan advocates is avoiding processed foods. In the quote above, though counterintuitive, "food" as defined by Pollan does not include processed foods like boxed mac and cheese. From the article the GP post linked: 1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these. 2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health. 3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.
- mistermann 9y ago
  Ok, but why? I'm sure leafy greens are objectively "better", but is eating Mac & Cheese once a week (for example) going to cause physical harm? Do I need to adopt a zero tolerance policy?
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    No, of course not. But let's not overlook the fact that there are people who eat that every other day and lots of people who eat nothing but processed food to the point that they find real food sort of gross and hard to cook, eat or digest. This is a Bad Thing.

nonbel 9y ago

>"Last winter came the news that a low-fat diet, long believed to protect against breast cancer, may do no such thing — this from the monumental, federally financed Women’s Health Initiative, which has also found no link between a low-fat diet and rates of coronary disease. The year before we learned that dietary fiber might not, as we had been confidently told, help prevent colon cancer. Just last fall two prestigious studies on omega-3 fats published at the same time presented us with strikingly different conclusions. While the Institute of Medicine stated that “it is uncertain how much these omega-3s contribute to improving health” (and they might do the opposite if you get them from mercury-contaminated fish), a Harvard study declared that simply by eating a couple of servings of fish each week (or by downing enough fish oil), you could cut your risk of dying from a heart attack by more than a third — a stunningly hopeful piece of news. It’s no wonder that omega-3 fatty acids are poised to become the oat bran of 2007, as food scientists micro-encapsulate fish oil and algae oil and blast them into such formerly all-terrestrial foods as bread and tortillas, milk and yogurt and cheese, all of which will soon, you can be sure, sprout fishy new health claims. (Remember the rule?)" The saddest part is we know exactly why this flip-flopping is happening. The methods used to "study" nutrition (NHST) automatically generate a series of conflicting results. There is no cumulative progress being made.