Fit Fare

Photo courtesy of www.simonsays.com

There’s an interview with Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, at Truthdig.com that caught my interest. In July of 2002, The New York Times Magazine published an article which reported that a growing number of respected nutritionists were beginning to conclude that carbohydrates, not fats, were the main cause of America’s obesity problems.

“Almost overnight,” the article says, “in Pollan’s estimation, bakeries went out of business, dinner rolls in New York restaurants went the way of the pterodactyl, and pasta became regarded as a toxin.”

Pollan is then quoted as saying: “These foods were wonderful staples of human life for thousands of years . . . and suddenly we’ve decided that they’re evil. Any culture that could change its diet on a dime like that is suffering from an eating disorder, as far as I can see.”

And that to me, sums up America’s diet and health strategies in a nutshell. We’re so eager to find a “quick fix” to our problems that we tend to jump from fad to fad, listen to anyone who says they’ve found the answer, label foods from “good” to “bad” overnight (and sometimes back to “good” again by the next day), and food manufacturers get rich pandering to our gullibility by producing “lite” “low-fat,” “low-carb,” or the newest incarnation–”whole grain”–products. (See Sher’s recent post on Whole Grains.)

With so many people telling us so many things for so many reasons, it’s hard to know where to look to get accurate information that will help us make good decisions about how and what we should be eating. How do we wade through all of the information that’s out there?

One solution is a book written by the chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, Walter C. Willett, M.D. It’s called Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, and it’s full of helpful information.

Based on two decades of research, Eat, Drink and Be Healthy takes each step of the USDA food pyramid, outlines what the current research has shown, and offers suggestions on how to decide what to eat, how often, and what to avoid. The book is informative and accessible; the information is clearly laid out and easy to understand.

I was lucky enough to find this book when I was first trying to change the way I was eating. It both confirmed the direction in which I was heading, and helped me understand why it was good that I was taking those particular steps, like changing to whole foods, eliminating trans fats, and eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat. I liked the straightforward way Willett addresses each subject, and the non-preachy way he suggests the best foods to eat. Foods aren’t labeled “good” or “bad”; Willett just lists their properties and makes recommendations about how often or sparingly certain foods should be used.

There’s a section of suggested recipes and menus at the end of the book, which includes a piece on how to read labels and what to look for at the grocery store.

In a world where information is thrown at us from several different directions at once, it’s a relief to find a source of information where the only bias is provided by research.

Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, by Walter C. Willett, M.D. (Fireside, 2002; updated 2005)