Note: As usual, I only listened to the book, so please excuse any misspellings and misquotations of the book and its subjects.
An Overview
Overall, I was very pleased with the book in that it helped me to think about my food, not something I do enough of. It was both informative, and it delved into philosophy and politics, which I hope will make for interesting topics of discussion. The author, at times, spent too much time telling his own story and espousing his own personal views. Still, in general, I thought it was well written, well thought out, and I hope you all found it worth your time. Of course, books that directly mention Decatur, IL (my birthplace) tend to get good reviews from me.
My Thanksgiving Dilemma
I found that I don't typically struggle to much with the question, "What should I eat?" I generally eat whatever's available, much like I did in my Merrill Hall days. My wife is a fine cook, but really, I am not a picky eater. If you have seen Ratatouille, I am like the main rat's family. It's more important to me to fill my tummy quickly than to fill it with quality. My biggest concern at Thanksgiving wasn't the quality of the turkey (you can always smother it in mashed potatoes and gravy if it's not ideal). My dilemma was simply how I was going to fit all of the wide variety of foods on my plate.
Thus, I didn't find the cooking show part of the book very interesting. I often find the heavily descriptive language of menus to be more appetizing than the actual food, which only leads to disappointment. So while all of the description of his hunted and gathered food was nice, my tendency was to think it wasn't worth the work, or the ink.
Discussion Questions: Am I alone? Are there closet chefs out there? What is your 'perfect meal'?
Life as a Speciesist
My favorite part of the hunting/gathering section was the discussion of the morality of eating meat. I though for a bit that he was going to advocate that we all become vegans, at which point I would have not trusted anything he said in the entire book. I thought Pollan did an excellent job of explaining the vegetarian point of view and building a philosophical argument against it.
Still, there is the problem of animal rights. I don't think that every animal needs/wants to roam freely or that only animals that live on a Polyface farm type of environment are happy or have a good life. My human ancestors didn't live in such a crowded environment as I do here in DC, and sitting in a chair in front of a computer isn't what I evolved to do, yet I still consider myself happy. That being said, I see no reason that animals should be raised in circumstances that makes them go crazy or express suicidal or masochistic tendencies. I'm happy that the chickens in CA are getting bigger cages, but I would never legislate a Polyface farm type environment. I still believe in efficiency and cheap food.
Discussion Question: What rights do you think animals deserve?
Corn Derivatives
Before I read this book I remember pondering how my Twizzlers (a road trip essential) were invented and what made them edible and plastic, for example, inedible. Now I know licorice is basically just corn. I enjoyed learning how corn is broken down to it's most basic form and reformed into processed products. It really is amazing the technological and scientific knowledge that makes red licorice possible. Throughout the book I was consistently in awe of both the complexity of nature and the complexity of man made food processes.
Discussion Questions: Are food derivatives as dangerous to the physical health of the world as mortgage derivatives have been deadly to the financial health of the world? Our world economy functions based on specialization and dividing jobs into parts. Similarly, most of our food includes parts of so many things. How can one realistically maintain the 'big picture'? Or is processing food really what is supposed to happen? I mean, as he was cooking his own meal, Michael Pollan talks about cooking the meat in two ways and how cooking is about breaking down what we find in nature and creating something better with it. That's why we're successful as humans. So is processed food bad at all? If so, at what point?
Oil and the Industrial Food Chain
Michael Pollan repeatedly brings up the oil and carbon resources that are used to ship our food around, using this as a hammer to bang on the industrialization of the food industry. Fossil fuels are clearly a non-renewable resource, and I am not trying to make this an environmental discussion. Quite the opposite. One day soon (before the oil runs out or the planet is destroyed), I believe humans will discover a new, renewable energy source to supply the global food chain (i.e. garbage, as in Back to the Future). I think oil is only temporary, and it's discussion belongs in another book, not here. The discussion of how many fossil fuel calories it took to bring me my dinner may be interesting, but I didn't think it contributed much to the discussion of the quality of my food. Imagine a world in which we didn't have fossil fuel energy. Most of us would probably be farmers because we wouldn't be able to produce as much food as we currently do.
Discussion Question: Can we feed the country without the use of large amounts of fossil fuel? If we don't come up with another energy source or if the population of the world out grows our ability to produce food, will we eventually have mass starvation?
Eating Local
The bigger question is perhaps should we eat local food and at what cost. Personally, I think it makes sense to trade things, and it doesn't bother me that my bananas traveled half way around the world in the last 24 hours. However, I can't get the Word of Wisdom out of my head where it says to eat fruit while it is in season. I don't even know what season is banana season.
Discussion Question: Were you instilled with a greater desire to eat locally? If so, what motivates you and how are you going to do it?
The Organic Food Bubble
This topic really belongs more as a comment on Jesse and Karl's posts, but I'm trying to break the record for the longest post here. Did you catch the snippet where the organic farmer got caught up in the organic bubble? I mean, there are always bubbles in a free market economy, right? We all agree that the bad government regulations made things worse, but better regulations (whether that be more or less) will not keep us from avoiding another bubble. Aren't bubbles good?
Goverment Subsidies and Regulations
I felt like Pollan gave conflicting messages about the typical farmer. At first, the poor modern farmer was underpaid and couldn't make a living, but later in the book, he said the farmers didn't have to work more than 50 days a year and most weren't very intelligent.
Pollan is clearly against the government subsidizing of corn, making it cheaper than the true cost to produce it, especially when you factor in the environmental costs. I certainly don't like the idea of the government skewing the true market value of anything. Yet at the same time, I don't know what the correct alternative is.
Discussion Questions: Without government subsidies, would we have enough farmers in the US to produce the food to feed ourselves? Is it a national security issue? Without the subsidizing of corn, what would that do to food prices?
Then there is the government regulations that Polyface farm was so upset about.
Discussion Questions: Are those of you that are for more government regulation in the financial market, are you for additional regulations in the food market? Did the regulation of the organic market help or hurt the organic food industry?
Wisdom of Food Traditions
I liked the small section where he said that often food traditions have inherent nutritional wisdom in them, "like the Asian practice of fermenting soy and serving it with rice, turn out to render these plant species much more nutritious than they otherwise would be." This reminds me of how religious 'traditions' have so much inherent value. Relevant to this book, I thought of how we are encouraged to eat together, but I think all of the commandments have much more value than we may currently understand.
Discussion Questions: What did you think of Pollan's version of 'grace'? What do you think is the inherent benefit of actually saying grace (assuming that our food isn't really cursed and won't make us sick if we don't bless it)? Should we really just be much more grateful in our meal prayers for the bounty of the earth and think about where the food comes from?
Thinking about my food
This book didn't stop me from overindulging at Thanksgiving, but it did make me feel more guilty about it afterwards (when I finished the book and really started thinking about it). In the effort to think more about my food (and my food does deserve more thought than I've given it), I have given up sweets from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve. I'm only a couple of days into this endeavor, and I'm already suffering from withdrawal.
Discussion Question: Has reading this book changed the way you will eat?
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Since no one has commented yet, let me add one more bit of skepticism to my post. Pollan refers several times to a "growing body of scientific research", usually suggesting that organic foods or grass fed animals are better for us nutritionally. That totally jives with my intuition, and I think it's probably true. Still, it raised doubts in me when he started talking about the virtues of beta-carotene the same day I got an article at work talking about a clinical trial which shows that beta carotene doesn't protect against cancer (see below).
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/health/30stud.html?em
New York Times: September 30, 2008
Searching for Clarity: A Primer on Medical Studies
By GINA KOLATA
Everyone, it seemed, from the general public to many scientists, was enthralled by the idea that beta carotene would protect against cancer. In the early 1990s, the evidence seemed compelling that this chemical, an antioxidant found in fruit and vegetables and converted by the body to vitamin A, was a key to good health.
There were laboratory studies showing how beta carotene would work. There were animal studies confirming that it was protective against cancer. There were observational studies showing that the more fruit and vegetables people ate, the lower their cancer risk. So convinced were some scientists that they themselves were taking beta carotene supplements.
Then came three large, rigorous clinical trials that randomly assigned people to take beta carotene pills or a placebo. And the beta carotene hypothesis crumbled. The trials concluded that not only did beta carotene fail to protect against cancer and heart disease, but it might increase the risk of developing cancer.
It was “the biggest disappointment of my career,” said one of the study researchers, Dr. Charles Hennekens, then at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
But Frankie Avalon, a ’50s singer and actor turned supplement marketer, had another view. When the bad news was released, he appeared in an infomercial. On one side of him was a huge stack of papers. At his other side were a few lonely pages. What are you going to believe, he asked, all these studies saying beta carotene works or these saying it doesn’t?
That, of course, is the question about medical evidence. What are you going to believe, and why? Why should a few clinical trials trump dozens of studies involving laboratory tests, animal studies and observations of human populations? The beta carotene case is unusual because much of the time when laboratory studies, animal studies and observational studies point in the same direction, clinical trials confirm these results.
There are exceptions, notably the Women’s Health Initiative, a huge study begun in 1991 by the National Institutes of Health. It asked, among other things, if estrogen or estrogen and progestin could protect postmenopausal women against heart disease. As with beta carotene, the evidence said the drugs would work. But the clinical trial showed that women who took the drugs had slightly more heart disease and an increased risk of breast cancer. As with beta carotene, researchers were shocked. And again the Frankie Avalon question arose: What are you going to believe — this clinical trial or everything that preceded it?
Experts agree that there are three basic principles that underlie the search for medical truth and the use of clinical trials to obtain it. The first, says Dr. Steven Goodman, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is that it is important to compare like with like. The groups you are comparing must be the same except for one factor — the one you are studying. For example, you should compare beta carotene users with people who are exactly like the beta carotene users except that they don’t take the supplement.
By contrast, observational studies that ask what happens to people who act a certain way in their everyday lives rather than in an experiment are not as tightly controlled. For example, if people who eat fruits and vegetables or take beta carotene are compared with those who don’t, the two groups are quite likely to be different from the start. Fruit and vegetable eaters and vitamin takers tend to be more health-conscious in general, more likely to exercise, less likely to smoke. So scientists try to adjust for these differences with statistical modeling.
The problem, according to David Freedman, a statistician at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the design and analysis of medical studies, is not so much the differences that are known. Instead, it is the differences that scientists are not aware of.
Cynthia Pearson, executive director of the National Women’s Health Network, has a favorite example of how easy it is to be fooled. Study after study found that women taking estrogen had less heart disease than women who did not. But, Ms. Pearson says, it turns out that women who faithfully take any medication for years — even a sugar pill — are different from women who don’t. The compliant pill-takers tend to be healthier, perhaps because they follow doctor’s orders. So when scientists said they were comparing two equal populations, the estrogen users and the nonestrogen users, they may have actually been comparing the health of the sort of women who conscientiously take pills with that of the sort of women who don’t or who do so less rigorously.
The advantage of randomized clinical trials is that you have to worry a lot less about whether your groups are alike. You assign them treatments by the statistical equivalent of a toss of the coin, the idea being that differences among individuals will be randomly allocated in the groups. Faithful pill takers will be as likely to show up in the beta carotene group, for example, as in the placebo group.
The second basic principle is that the bigger the group studied, the more reliable the conclusions. That’s because the real result of a study is not a single number, like a 20 percent reduction in risk. Instead, it’s a range of numbers that represent a so-called margin of error, like a 5 to 35 percent reduction in risk. The larger the sample size, the smaller the margin of error. Small studies have large uncertainties in results, making it difficult to know where the truth lies. Also, in a small study, randomization may not balance things well.
The third principle, Dr. Goodman says, “is often off the radar of even many scientists.” But it can be a deciding factor in whether a result can be believed. It’s a principle that comes from statistics, called Bayes’ theorem. As Dr. Goodman explains it,
“What is the strength of all the supporting evidence separate from the study at hand?”
A clinical trial that randomly assigns groups to an intervention, like beta carotene or a placebo, Dr. Goodman notes, “is typically at the top of a pyramid of research.” Large and definitive clinical trials can be hugely expensive and take years, so they usually are undertaken only after a large body of evidence indicates that a claim is plausible enough to be worth the investment. Supporting evidence can include laboratory studies indicating a biological reason for the effect, animal studies, observational studies of human populations and even other clinical trials.
But if one clinical trial tests something that is plausible, with a lot of supporting evidence to back it up, and another tests something implausible, the trial testing a plausible hypothesis is more credible even if the two studies are similar in size, design and results. The guiding principle, Dr. Goodman says, is that “things that have a good reason to be true and that have good supporting evidence are likely to be true.”
To teach students the power of that reasoning, Dr. Goodman shows them a paper on outcomes of patients in an intensive care unit, with every mention of the intervention blacked out. The study showed that the intervention helped, but that the result was barely statistically significant, just beyond the threshold of chance.
He asks the students to raise their hands if they believe the result. Most indicate that they do. Then Dr. Goodman reveals that the intervention was prayer for the patient by others. Most of the hands go down.
The reason for the skepticism, Dr. Goodman says, is not that the students are enemies of religion. It is that there is no plausible scientific explanation of why prayer should have that effect. When no such explanation or evidence exists, the bar is higher. It takes more clinical trial evidence to make a result credible.
With the beta carotene studies, it was the discordance between all the evidence that came before the clinical trials and what the clinical trials found that shocked the scientists. They had a proposed mechanism and a mass of evidence from observational studies. But the randomized studies found no protection.
The clinical trials, though, were methodologically sound and large enough to leave little uncertainty about their conclusions. The scientific consensus was that these large and rigorous clinical trials trumped everything that came before them.
When the news was released in 1996, Dr. Richard Klausner, then the director of the National Cancer Institute, summed up the conclusion.
“The major message,” Dr. Klausner said, “is that no matter how compelling and exciting a hypothesis is, we don’t know whether it works without clinical trials.”
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