america's national eating disorder

8/12/2019 America's National Eating Disorder

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In "America's National Eating Disorder", Pollan assumes the role of doctor and neatly lays out

what he thinks America's problem is and what he thinks America's problblem with food is and why it's

happened !e hae too much food, and too many choices##"$ats or carbs% &hree suares or continuous

gra(ing% )aw or cooked% *rganic or industrial% +eg or egan% eat or mock meat%"##and no cultural

anchor to tell us "what and how and where and when to eat" -Pollan ./0.10.23 &his has brought the

uacks and snake#oil sellers, who sense "easy marks for food fads and diets of eery description"

-Pollan ./0.10..3 4ust in case his audience wants to argue, Pollan then walks through some of these

fads and diets, from 5arey 6elloggs "legendarily nutty sanatorium" and 5orace $letcher up to the

Atkins diet and the war on carbs -Pollan ./0.10.73 Pollan argues that the only reason these gain

traction is our "lack of stable culinary traditions" and lab#based "nutritional orthodo8y" leae us

confused and wandering in the ast foodscape of modern America -Pollan ./0.10.73 If we were like

the $rench, Pollan argues, we would be healthier &hey hae a "strict and stable set of rules" that allows

them to eat supposedly 'unhealthy' foods while being more healthy than us -Pollan ./0.10.23 &hey

en9oy their eating and let taste and tradition guide them, unlike the :; In the :;, Pollan e8plains that

the food industry is rather delibriyely creating waes and creating fads and fears in order to "sell more

food to such a well#fed population", no matter the cost to our health and wellbeing -Pollan ./0.10.23

&5e argument is that food companies are constantly trying to sell more and new foods and thus

deliberately "erode the cultural underpinnings" that stand in the way of "the march of

commerciali(ation" and eating is 9ust the latest "casualty of capitalism" -Pollan ./0.10.ig ?orporations because capitalism

;o America has a problem, a 'national eating disorder', if you will Interestingly, Pollan seems

sure that his audience is already aware of this and considers it an issue &his article 9ust launches

straight into an argument &here's hardly any build= right away we hae "neurotic eating" and are


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"tortured" about food ;low down a little, Pollan I 9ust started reading and you are already throwing

punches like a madman I'm not een sure where I am yet, I 9ust know you're hitting me &his sudden

start is a ma9or flaw with the essay, for it's wildly disorienting to begin an article so strongly with so

little conte8t 5oweer, I suspect that may lie not with the author himself, but with whoeer it was who

ripped this essay from &he *mniore's Dilemna I sincerely doubt that this was the first part of the

book= the audience would already be primed and ready for this rather dogmatic beginning >ut as a

standalone piece, this is not good A disoriented audience cannot follow an argument &hey're

disoriented >ut the rest of this section is much easier to follow &his does not mean that it is free of the

same heay#hitting, biased approach &he strong language of the opener continues throughout the

piece1 we hae "great parao8syms" and "succumbed to the ogue" -Pollan ./0.10..3 !e hae "neo#

pseudo#foods" and are "antinomian eaters@struggling to work out our dietary salation"= we hear

"seductions" about food from those who are "e8ploiting" us at "a steep cost" and so on and so forth

-Pollan ./0.10.23 *ne good thing about such blatant, open bias is that Pollan makes no pretensions

that this is an unbiased piece After all, an author absolutely cannot claim we are ""antinomian eaters@

struggling to work out our dietary salation" without showing a ery strong position As of April 0een a >ig $at ie%", howeer 5e deliberately brushes them off to gie

huis argument more weight, and this is one of the few instances I feel his bias is more 'underhanded', so

to speak It's not uite as obious as before, but still present >ut maybe it hasto be this strong to een

draw someone's attention in a sea of fad diets and nutritional studies and loose regulations and general


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confusion ;o the article starts strong and rushed, but it work well enough to introduce the idea that

America is 9ust as much country of neurotic eaters clinging to fad diets as it eer was 5istory will gie

us perspectie, and we'll see what we do now is 9ust as silly as what we did way back when

&he second big point Pollan raises is that our digressed and distressing eating, as Americans,

comes from our lack of stable dietary traditions Pollan seems to beliee here that if we had only had a

really strong set of cultural beliefs, then we would be healthier, almost no matter what they were as

long as we has strict traditions to tell us "what and how and where and when to eat" -Pollan ./0.10.23

&o proe this, he cites the $rench, who eat wine and bread and cheese but are oerall healthier than us

because they hae &)ADI&I*N -to be said like &eye in "$iddler on the )oof"3 In America, we hae

"the omniore's dilemma -Pollan ./0.10.23 *r so says doctor Pollan >ut it would be far easier to

agree with his diagnosis if he actually told us what an 'omniore's dilmna' is.ooking at it in conte8t, I

decided it probably meant that we hae A the options in our local supermarkets, so then we hae to

chose what we actually want to eat from the endless aisles.?lose, but not uite right In his conclusion,

Pollan references that the omniore's dilmna is actually a prehistoric one, form back when we were

"an8ious omniores struggling@to figure out what is wise to eat" -Pollan ./0.10.


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interesting, but a whole case can't be made from one e8ample $or all the audience knows, $rance is

actually the unusual one

Pollan's last argument is that all this badness and confusion and an8iety -up to and including

actual eating dieoreders3 is pretty much delbritey caused by the food industry so they can sell us more

crap food, not matter what the cost to our health or society &his last bit eers off into Pollan's personal

diatribe on big business, specifically food marketers !ell, *6 Didn't see that one coming, Pollan *f

all the points, this is perhaps the strangest Pollan warnsBinforms us that all of these food fads are

pushed by the market because how else do you sell food to people who already hae it% >y telling them

what they hae is poisen and they need something different, obiously And so Pollan includes a

heartrending anecdote about "the state of the American family dinner", where eeryone is off doing

their own things, maybe sort of together, maybe not= this is how we "sit down to a family meal" now

-Pollan ./0.10.2#0.


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step" spiel, but that didn't happen Instead, capitalism >ut Pollan doesn't doanything with the

capitalism angle 5e 9ust kinda lets us know it e8ists= he doesn't call for more regulations, or a more

caring form of goernment -socialism, maybe een communism%3, or widely aailable and repeatable

nutritional programs for all, or an "eerything is good in moderation" or anything ie me something,

Pollan Don't leae me and the rest of your audience hanging &5is is a ma9or flaw1 he chooses a

diatribe oer aid of any sort &his can't be a hopeless situation, so where's the hope in this essay% It

seems that the only point was to raise awareness, which isn't good enough

I chose this piece because I en9oyed reading it the first time, and because I hae personally

witnessed America's eating disorder y sister, 6aitlyn, hung out with a ery competitie young

woman back home $or a long time, eery week 6aityln would come home with stories about

whateer health cra(e aya was into at the time or how aya would belittle my ery slender and

healthy sisters "terrible" eating habits y baby sister ended up becoming seerely anore8ic and was

almost taken from us to be placed in a residential hospital $illed with conflicting ideas about what was

good to eat and what wasn't, she chose simply to aoid the issue by not eating at all ;o, an une8amined

reading of this appealed to me It touched on familiar aspects, played a tune I knew and we were both

righteously indignant about 5oweer, as soon as I began to look at this piece with a critical eye, it

seemed to fall apart &he bias is too strong ;ometimes that works, like in A People's Historyby

5oward Cinn &hat is e8plicitly leftist, for the purpose of balancing all the right#wing histories &his@

I don't know It doesn't behae in a proper way It makes some of the bias obious, so other bits can

sneak in under the radar And I don't een know what was up with the ending It starts fast, speaks with

familiarity about unfamiliar topics and is 9ust ery angry without focusing the power of anger &his

article was a good stopping off point, but it needs more ike, about a book more aybe the whole rest

of The Onmivore's Dilemnais like this, but probably not It would probably hae a lot of the eidence,

conte8t and calls this essay needs Alone, this essay doesn't go anywhere when it should build to

something, because it does a ery ery good 9ob of riling up its audience along with it, but then it 9ust

leaes us with all that energy instead of focusing it Actually, that's rather ironic &he essay about the

omniore's dilemma leaes us with an omniore's dilmnema1 the audience is now angry, but without


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someone to tell them what to do and when, there are too many options !e are again lost in a sea of

supermarket aisles without a compass &hanks Pollan :ntil someone gies better some answers, I

guess I'll listen to my -much much healthier and well#educated3 sister1 "&here are no bad foods, only

too much food"

america's national eating disorder

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