*>The NYT article talks about the Atkins diet and other fashionable >fads, but the problems with industrialized agriculture are far more >fundamental than that and can hardly be dismissed as "vegan liberal
>elite propaganda". I'd refer you to Michael Pollan who makes a very >well-argued case for diversity in our food instead of breaking >everything down into carbs, proteins, minerals and other chemical >components and then arguing about the relative importance of each: >http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php ><http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php>* Yes, of course, I've read all his books, which are often fine in their own ways, but this is a somewhat separate issue and Pollan's view is too narrow to really grasp it. The Atkins diet, however we feel about it (certainly it ignored the important issue of the quality of meat, the methods by which it is cultivated etc) did represent something of an epistemological rupture in nutrition, irreducible to its often dogmatic vilification of carbohydrates. The rupture was the attack on the idea that people get fat because they eat too much. The new concept was that certain kinds of food, which, due to the operations of the food industry, people eat in unprecedented quantities (including the angelic hippie or yuppie foods free of animal-derived villains) have altered the operations of the body (specifically the hormones which regulate metabolism). No reason to ignore the content of the article because it happens to mention the Atkins diet early on. Don't forget that the dominant nutritional ideology put carbohydrates at the base of its notorious food pyramid--any ideology critique will have to deal with that, and perhaps emphasize it in its initial moments. The importance of this concept is that it shows that frequently people don't get fat because they eat too much--actually, they eat too much because they are fat. Here we are running around making fun of people who are often genuinely ill and telling them to stop eating so much, when it is really medically quite difficult for them to eat less! What does this have to do with overconsumption? Well, it is one example of the need for real conceptual shifts instead of simple inversions. There is an ideology of the marketplace that says more is better, and a certain kind of opposition now wants to argue that less is better. But if Americans eat less of the things they currently eat, leaving more for the rest of the world, it does not help anyone much; it just means that throughout the world people will be satisfying basic energy requirements while getting obese, diabetic and malnourished (in terms of micronutrients and any beneficial compounds science has not yet isolated beyond the antioxidant fad), and yet will feel strangely hungry all day. A resolution to the food problem can only come from seriously high-tech innovative farming solutions, which may breach the "organic" orthodoxy (some good journalism on that: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/02/spoiled-organic-and-local-so-2008). One pleasantly sci-fi example is the hydroponic skyscraper, but it all means an end to the reliance on grains and the sensible integration of livestock, which will eventually be killed and eaten by those interested in participating in order to convert non-nutritive substances like grass and worms into nourishment for humans (Pollan is pretty good on this). Anyway, me or any other American having a smaller serving of fries has nothing to do with that.
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