[Exploring Life] Most of what we buy in a grocery store is not food. Manufactured, processed, or modified products are not real food, they are food imitations or edible food-like substances. Food imitations might begin in nature but are then modified through the addition of additives in manufacturing and processing facilities before becoming available to the general public. The application of science and technology on our food supply has served to deteriorate the quality of the food we eat, exposes us to toxic additives that impair our health and well being, increases psychological tension and anxiety associated with eating, and confuses our understanding of what food really is.
What is Food?
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food[1] invites us to question our basic assumptions about food. The first and most critical step in questioning our basic assumptions about food is to place the definition of food under review. In other words, we are asked renew our curiosity and interest in identifying the essence of food in order to understand what we should eat and what we should avoid.
But I contend that most of what we’re consuming today is no longer, strictly speaking, food at all, and how we’re consuming it – in the car, in front of the TV, and, increasingly alone – is not really eating, at least not in the sense that civilization has long understood the term. (Pollan, 2008)
The premise of Pollan’s message is to “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” (Pollan, 2008) Advising a person to “eat food” may first appear to be simplistic. If we are not eating food then what are we really eating? Food is its pure form and edible food-like substances need to be distinguished from one another. Our confusion about food originates in a vast cultural expanse of scientific reduction, misdirected government policies, manufacturing processes, and marketing techniques that have manipulated our assumptions about food. Food has become hostage to needless confusion and complexity.
In its normal state food is both whole and fresh food, or food that has not been processed or modified. If the environment in which our food grows, whether it be plant of animal, is toxic then our food is a direct extension of that toxicity. If our food is toxic then so is our mind, body and spirit. The act of eating is an unavoidable act of communion with the environment. If we alter the natural environment with pollution, fertilizers, hormones and other toxic additives, then it is only obvious that we are literally ingesting contaminants into our body.
Food: An Unavoidable Connection with the Environment
In its most basic sense, the emergence of organic food is a recognition that we are intimately and unavoidably connected to the environment. If we put fertilizers and pesticides on plants and then eat those plants it is obvious that we are also eating chemicals. Similarly, if we feed animals growth hormones and antibiotics and eat those animals we are also eating chemicals. To trust science to define so-called “safe” levels of these chemicals in our food supply is both misguided and inept. The science of food is a narrative of trial and error.
The word organic generally refers to something that is related to or derived from living matter. The term organic food is a subtractive correction, that is to say, it identifies a class of food that is free or makes limited use of fertilizers, pesticides, genetically modified organisms, hormones or antibiotics. This makes sense since a return to natural and whole food requires the reduction or elimination of additives and modifications. The adjective organic is really a cultural admission of our confusion about food. Organic food is really just food; anything that is not organic is really an edible food-like substance – or not food.
An important way to reduce our confusion is to simplify our understanding of the word food to mean a pure and unaltered state. Food in its purest sense would therefore not have long lists of ingredients, either in its cultivation or preparation. Thinking about plants that have been grown in a backyard garden without the aid of chemicals is a simple way to capture this meaning. From this perspective we would not need to apply the adjectives “pure” or “whole” to qualify the nature of food; food is by default pure and whole making the use of adjectives redundant.
Nutritionism
Nutritional science is built upon the assumption that essential nutrients essential can be identified, isolated and, taken in the correct amount, will promote positive health. Nutritionism is a scientific ideology that promotes a limited way of understanding food and our bodies in terms of nutritional and chemical elements. A nutritionist is the professional agent of this ideology and a new diet is the means to seek attention. Left unexamined, nutritional science and the resulting confusion of dietary approaches may be preparing the way for the emergence of a vast range of health problems yet to be revealed.
Like so many ideologies, nutritionism hinges on a form of dualism, so that at all times there must be an evil nutrient for adherents to excoriate and a savior nutrient for them to sanctify… nutritionism supplies the ultimate justification for processing food by implying that a judicious application of food science, fake foods can be made even more nutritious than the real thing. (Pollan, 2008)
The notion that a nutritional element in a food source can be extracted, manufactured as a supplement, and ingested as a means to increase overall health if fundamentally flawed. Nutrients within food exist in dynamic relationship with other nutrients; they do not function in isolation from one another. To remove a nutrient from its natural context is to denigrate its overall interactive value within a unified system. The notion that nutrients can be classified into good or bad, essential or nonessential, can only lead to errors in thinking that slowly reveal themselves in health problems over time. Once revealed, however, nutritional science is often quick to replace it with the new “discovery” of the day while quickly sweeping the old perspective out of awareness.
The Psychology of Food
The question of what to eat and what not to eat has become deeply mired in a bog of confusion originating in nutritionism, journalism, food production, and commercial marketing. Confusion, when internalized to an intense degree, can reveal itself in the form of psychological disorders. Anorexia nervosa is a horrific disease that simultaneously affects body, mind and spirit resulting in distorted perceptions of body image coupled with a deeply placed fear of gaining weight. It is a class of disease that is commonly referred to as an “eating disorder.”
Psychologists are now examining the emergence of a new eating disorder called orthorexia nervosa, which refers to suffering from an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. The word “anorexia” refers to “without appetite; “orthorexia” refers to “correct appetite.” Both conditions result is severe malnutrition and potentially death by starvation.
The establishment of a deeply felt sense of fear and anxiety is an all too common the basis for marketing and advertising. By establishing a fear in the general population and opportunity to market a “solution” appears. If a product “promises” relief or a “solution” to our fear is associated with “credible” sources then the potential for profitability emerges. The illusion of marketing is the promise of something better; the reality of marketing is the creation of victims in the form of consumers.
Summary
This article has focused on identifying the basic problems surrounding our understanding of food. Four essential issues emerge:
- confusion between food and edible food-like substances;
- a scientific tendency to take nutrients out of their natural context and promote “good” over “bad” nutrients;
- the inability to fully appreciate the unavoidable connections between the earth and what we do to it, our food supply, and our health; and
- the emergence of psychological fears and anxieties about food that provide opportunities for commercial profiteering.
One possible approach is to explore ways to counteract these influences. For example we might adopt the following four goals as a means to overcome our confusion:
- Simplifying Food: The most important step is to simplify our understanding of what food is and what it is not. Unless we have a clear awareness of the differences between food in its natural state and edible food-like substances that masquerade as food then our thought processes remain ill-equipped to rise above the confusion;
- Organic Food: The notion of organic food is really an issue of certification standards, that is, an organization or association evaluates food productive and grants or refuses certification as organic. Understanding the focus and implementation of these standards is critical to placing our trust in them.
- Nutrition: Nutrients taken out of their natural context and interaction is misguided. Nutritionism tends to promote a “nutrient of the day” mentality and therefore perpetual cycles of out with the old nutrients and in with the new. Dietary considerations cannot be isolated from lifestyle and cultural considerations. It may be that historians and anthropologists have more value to offer than biological or chemical science.
- The Body and Mind of Food: Our orientation to food has both a physical and psychological impact on our well being. Mind and body are integrated systems as captured in the term bodymind. Chemicals, additives and GMO’s simultaneously affect our physical and mental health. Food is about both the body and the mind.
Future articles will explore ways the average individual can overcome the senseless confusion and complexity surrounding what we eat.
Footnotes
1. Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food provides an excellent overview of the key issues surrounding food. Further information can be accessed at his website.
