In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan

This reminded me of a story I read a long time ago about zoos in the United States trying to keep sloths alive. Sloths live in jungle forests (maybe Borneo), move very slowly, and eat apparently nothing but the leaves of a specific tree. So zoos would move the tree to what seemed like a good habitat for sloths, but they would die anyway. Years of experimentation and research (and dead sloths) later, they discovered by watching sloths in the forest that they need all the little ants, and fungi, and lichens, and micronutrients that grew in the forest on the leaves, not just the leaves. In other words, they were missing essential ingredients from their environment. Michael Pollan makes the case in defense of food, real food, and against nutritionism and nutritionists who think they've identified all the micronutrients we need and are nevertheless making us increasingly unhealthy with our Western Diet. What it amounts to is that we, just like all other creatures, no the whole environment, the micronutrients from multiple sources, and multiple whole foods, and that the synergy of eating whole foods in combination that we've learned from our mothers (or our grandmothers, or great-grandmothers) is what will keep us healthy. Over and over again researchers have come back to the basic inescapable conclusion that there is a synergy to whole foods that is more than the sum of its parts, and that we need to go back to living in a culture that grows, cooks, and eats local produce. His bottom line: eat real food, mostly green leaves, and not too much, in real meals with real people. It sounds so basic, so fundamental, but it represents a huge revolution in how we actually live right now in our fast-paced somewhat mindless culture.

I highly recommend this book, and urger those who can to support their local CSA (community supported agriculture).