Spencer J Eggers/The Daily Campus
Micheal Pollan athor of “Food Inc.” spoke to SMU in part of the Tate Lecture series Thursday night.
Micheal Pollan athor of “Food Inc.” spoke to SMU in part of the Tate Lecture series Thursday night. (Spencer J Eggers/The Daily Campus)
Bestselling author Michael Pollan brought grocery bags onto the stage at the Tate Lecture Series Thursday.
The healthy food activist showed a shocked audience the truth behind many family favorites.
“A cereal full of sugar is being sold as medicine for parents and as candy for children,” Pollan said. “The food industry is always a step ahead of framework.”
Nutritionism — a term coined by critiques of the current food system — has shaped how the American media, public and experts perceive consumption.
The concept is based around four main tenets: the key to understanding any food is based around the nutrient, experts are critical to food advice, a binary between blessed and evil nutrients exist and the only purpose of eating is health.
“We need a priesthood of experts to tell us about nutrients and what to eat. Food was once a very simple activity and now it has become very complex,” Pollan said.
Pollan warned that nutritional science is still a relatively new field and lacks credibility in comparison to other sciences.
“Nutrition science is where surgery was in 1650. We have to be humble in how we pick our foods,” Pollan said.
Pollan recommended a return to tradition in order to preserve American health.
He stressed that three basic facts about food can lead to a consumption revolution.
“We know that a Western diet full of processed foods and a lack of vegetables leads to high rates of chronic disease. We also know that pre-Western diets lead to low rates of disease,” Pollan said. “But the key is knowing that a switch in diets from Western to pre-Western can lead to healthy