Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Back in Ontario...

I'm slowly making the readjustment to the daily routine of work and life here in Haliburton. It's good to be home, yet I have come home with some new perspectives and a renewed inspiration that is causing many questions to come to light. Change is good, and I am excited to implement some of the learning that I have taken in over the last 3 weeks.
When I started this journey, it was focused primarily on food miles - that food traveled too far leading to an increased negative impact on the environment. A local diet would help alleviate some of those food miles.
But as I have begun reading Michael Pollan's new book In Defense of Food, I'm seeing a different side to this issue. Pollan argues that the food that we are buying in grocery stores is not really
food - he refers to this as nutritionism. Basically, scientists have removed individual nutrients from whole foods and made them food in and of themselves. (this description might be a little off, but I'm still reading the book!) Anyway, we're basically consuming nutrients now instead of food. The danger in this is that we've extracted and added so many things into the processed food we eat, that we don't fully understand the affect this may be having on our health. what we do know, is that obesity is on the rise, diabetes is on the rise, and food-related cancers are on the rise as well as heart disease. His rule of thumb is that if there are names on the ingredient label that you can't even pronounce, you're in trouble.
He suggest we eat by 7 simple words...
Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.

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