April's CR Diary

Right on April. Its very annoying to hear nutrional superstition. I agree that peopple should be mindful if cutting calories not to cut out the nutrients. Otherwise, you end up less healthy than you had planned by cutting out "said" food item. (Vicious cycle) :-(

Superb post, April! Love it! However, MR is wrong about both of his grandmothers not recognizing eggplant as food. Eggplants were available in our stores in the 50s. His grandmothers didn't cook them, simply because they didn't like them. All of his great-grandmothers, however, would never have seen one and his step-dad hadn't even seen asparagus until he was 20! MoMR :-)

Thank you for this. He brings up so many good points, but it gets a little silly at times--his common sense is sometimes an oversimplification. I was a nutrition major and *can* pronounce a lot of those fancy words--so are they okay? And then, what if "acetic acid" is on the label instead of "vinegar"? It's the same thing, but one's a fancy word, should I be scared? Is freshly-made baba ghanoush off-limits due to both the foreignness of the word and ignorance of my grandmother?

And of course, I am not as active as some of my predecessors, though I do workout faithfully, so I do need to be mindful of fat and grains, whole or no. If I want to be at a healthy weight, that is. Of course that's worth thinking about. His plan would help tremendously if everyone followed it, but it wouldn't leave people at their optimal weights and nutrient levels/health.

Your comment:
" If most Americans were to avoid ingredients that are unfamiliar or unpronounceable, they'd eat nothing but hamburgers and fries."
I find remarks like this offensive. It's as though you're saying that 'few' Americans - obviously the few being CRON practitioners - are not stupid/illiterate.
I shop in Novato Ca and see many people reading labels. It was the same when I lived in Southern Cal. It's the same in other countries. You have the customers who are concerned about their health and others who are not.
Peg D

I liked Pollan's book and found most of the advice common sense, but I did sense a certain hostility toward the health food industry/community. The whole orthorexia/nutritionism thing had me rolling my eyes. By his standard, myself and many of my acquaintance are 'orthorexic'. Personally, with the rate of obesity and chronic disease in our society, it would probably be a positive thing if more people were 'hyper-aware' of their nutrition and food intake.

Hi April,

Great post! I, too, love Michael Pollan, but I have some of the same issues with his arguments. You've articulated them very well.

To me, what I'm getting both from Pollan's arguments and your critique of his arguments is that there are no simple rules. This is the maddening thing about our society. Everyone wants some magical set of rules to follow - "Don't eat fat!" "Cut out carbs!" - but biology remains complex and stubbornly refuses to fit within the confines of these narrow restrictions. Healthy living requires careful thought, and this doesn't sit well with people who prefer to think about the next episode of whatever tv show they're obsessing about rather than the food they're putting into their mouths. Mindfulness can be a tough pill to swallow.

Peg D, I have a little advice that may help you feel less offended in the future: Stop putting words into other people's mouths. April never said CRONies are the only ones who care about nutrition and health. She also never called anyone stupid or illiterate. She merely recounted her own experiences at her own local grocery store. That your experiences have been different is a valid point. However, you could make that point without getting huffy about imaginary insults.

I agree with 90% of your post - but I think you're totally misinterpreting the first two Michael Pollan rules.

"1. MR points out that his grandmother wouldn't have recognized an eggplant as food."fen

The point of this rule is not, did *your* grandmother eat the food, but rather, has this food been around for a long time, or was it recently created? My grandma may not have eaten miso, but it's been around for hundreds/thousands of years. I doubt that anyone's grandma ate (for example) sugar-free fat-free pudding as a kid.

"2. If most Americans were to avoid ingredients that are unfamiliar or unpronounceable, they'd eat nothing but hamburgers and fries. But I'm with him on the avoid high-fructose corn syrup though."

Literally, you may be correct, though a lot of Americans are familiar with a lot of foods. But he clear MEANS that one shouldn't eat weird manufactured foods - not unfamiliar fruits or something.

Again, I don't disagree with most of your post; I choose to eat a couple processed items (fiber one cereal and whey protein are highly processed), though 90% of what I buy at the store has a 1-item ingredient list (not that produce has an ingredient list. . . ) But I think you're willfully misinterpreting Michael Pollan's point in order to make your own point.

I think Michael Pollan has a point about "nutritionism." If you think about it, Americans are stuck between two industries: Big Food, which wants us to eat stuffed-crust double-meat pizzas with 30-ounce Pepsis every day, and Big Diet, which wants us to join Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Curves, buy Lean Cuisine, etc.

Big Food wants us to believe that it's cool to eat anything anytime ("Fourthmeal"), while Big Diet wants us to believe that we're all fat!! and about to have heart attacks!! so we'd better start eating carrots (on their plan, of course) and blasting our butts (in their gyms).

Unless you're a very hardy and independent CR DIY-er, therefore, an industry stands to make money off your health and nutrition beliefs and the choices you make. That's not good.

Americans who are not interested in life-extension, but just want a little guidance for "normal" eating, can be forgiven imho for coming to mistrust both Big Food and Big Diet. And deciding to go it alone in their own way.

" If most Americans were to avoid ingredients that are unfamiliar or unpronounceable, they'd eat nothing but hamburgers and fries."
I find remarks like this offensive. It's as though you're saying that 'few' Americans - obviously the few being CRON practitioners - are not stupid/illiterate.
Robin,
I quoted what April had said about 'most' Americans - not the one's she sees in 'her' store. My criticism is with people making blanket statements about society at large. One does pick up inferences IMO unless one's an insensitive self absorbed individual.
Peg D

"...are not doing so because they've just gotten so frustrated with all the conflicting nutrition information that they've thrown up their hands in exasperation"

*blushes a bit* I've actually done this once or twice. I've spent the time looking at labels, reading information and then ended up going "Oh f*@& it, I'm getting the _____ (food product) I want. I don't care what's in it." But I'm awfully cranky and it's usually with some gak I shouldn't be eating anyway, "healthy" makeover or otherwise.

Hi April!
I completely agree with you that it seems silly to blame obesity on "nutritionism." Why would it be negative to learn more about nutrition?
However, I also agree with what Ellie said in her comment above -- that you are misinterperting Pollan's three rules (or whatever he calls them) in order to make your point sound stronger and, perhaps, more humorous/entertaining. I don't think it has to be that *your* great-grandmother would recognize the item in question as food. Obviously, some people's great-grandmothers lived in China, some in Africa, some in Norway, etc. I think what he means is, don't eat something that *no-one's* great-grandmother would recognize as food.
As for the second and third rules, it seems like you are choosing to ignore the fact that Pollan specifically and purposely refers to "food products," not food. Fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, and milk are not "food products," they are food, and thus it's fine and dandy to eat them under his rules. I think that you and the readers of this blog would pretty much have very little difficulty distinguishing between foods and food products, and it just kind of ends up seeming like you're willfully ignoring that distinction in order to make your point seem stronger, sharper, and more humorous.
And as for Pollan's point about avoiding food products that make health claims -- again, he is talking about food products, not food, so this rule would not apply to broccoli, pomegranate juice, or other things that are foods, not food products (okay, I suppose you could say that pomegranate juice, as opposed to a pomegranate itself, is a food product, but I think you know what I mean). How can broccoli make a health claim for iteslf? It's just a head of broccoli and doesn't have a brain. I think he means, avoid food *products* that marketers and advertisers claim have health benefits.
Again, I think you make a good point about the lack of a logical link between nutritionism and obesity. But as for Pollan's three "rules," I still don't see anything negative about them, as long as one interprets them in a logical, sensible way, and recognizes that the difference between food and food products is important (at least to Pollan). If anything, all you have done is to persuade me that perhaps Pollan could have been a little more careful and precise with his language, as in the "your great-grandmother" rule.
Anyway, just my 2 cents. Thanks, April!
Rachel S.

Actually, I have a question re CR, weight/body mass and aging. I read the following post at Junkfood Science:

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/06/when-fat-dare-i-say-it-is-good-thing.html

...which talks about ahistorically low "ideal" body-fat percentages currently being promoted. It ends up talking about weight/body fat and aging as indicated by menopause:

"...it is generally agreed that among contemporary industrialized populations, the age of menopause rises with better" --by which she means more copious-- "nourishment. The association between fatness and slower aging is one few have probably heard about."

And "higher BMIs [are] associated with longer, healthier lives," which of course is a somewhat different issue than how fast or slowly you're aging within your lifespan, but which is still relevant to CRONies.

Given your interest in all research/studies on aging and lifespan, I'm assuming you know about this. How does it fit in with your CR practice? If heavier, better-fed humans appear to age slower (at least by the marker of menopause) and live longer, how is going the opposite way going to cause a CRONie to live *even longer*? It seems counterintuitive. Not impossible by any means, but freaky in an interesting way. Like, "be thin, die younger; be fat n' sassy, live a good long time; be thin the CRON way and possibly hit escape velocity." How does that work? Intriguingly weird.

I'd be interested in your perspective on this.

PegD,

I think it's reasonable to infer from what April wrote that she thinks most Americans are ignorant about nutrition. This is, perhaps, a debatable point. However, note that ignorance is not the same thing as stupidity or illiteracy. By purposely inserting unnecessarily inflammatory language into April's mouth, you have created insults that simply are not there.

By the way, in my experience, hypersensitive people who like to interpret everything as a personal insult are the ones who tend to be self-absorbed. But that's just my own observation, and it may not be universally applicable.

Thanks to all for your comments!

Yvonne, the question you raise reminds me that it's unfortunate that I don't have a good indexing system for the blog, since this is something I've answered multiple times, but neither of us could find the post if we tried!

Short version:

That's just junk science. Those "studies" don't compare people who are thin because they are eating calorie restricted, nutritionally optimized diets. There are very few such people... about ten, in my estimation! :) Seriously, if you're just looking at who's thin, you're looking at smokers, people with wasting diseases, the malnourished, anorexics (a tiny percentage of the population, but still there) and "naturally" skinny people who don't have an advantage on longevity.

If you look only at people practicing CRON, or even people eating moderately CR'd "healthy" diets, you'd see lower risks of disease than those who are overweight. But it's hard to do those studies because a) people do not properly measure their calories, so they don't really know and tend to underestimate their caloric intake b) there are very few people doing actual CRON.

Point being: worry not if you're practicing CRON, mild to serious. You're not hurting your longevity by refusing to become overweight.

a

Thanks for your reply!

It still seems odd to me that (A) weighing more can make you healthier, but (B) weighing less *for the right reasons* can make you even healthier than that. It's like: Here's a bunch of people who are thin because they smoke, they're chronically ill (including with anorexia), or they're just genetically impervious to Big Macs. They don't do as well as people who eat, drink, make merry, and have the bodies to show for it. But then *those* people don't do as well as people who practice CRON...which tends to make CRONies thin, sometimes even very thin. Honestly, aren't we pretty much back where we started? Well, apparently, the *way* CRONies get or more precisely survive being thin (with super-nutrition) makes a difference.

But I don't understand *why* that's the case. Why is more fat/mass protective and beneficial *up to a point,* past which suddenly having a lot *less* fat/mass takes over (as long as that's achieved in a certain specific way)? Why is it okay to have fewer fat reserves under those particular circumstances? Fat does specific jobs in the body; why does a person need more of it under "ordinary" circumstances but less of it if they happen to be getting 100% RDAs from 'real' food? Why is it beneficial to restrict calories under those circumstances but not otherwise? Why would my health have been better through my twenties if I'd weighed more, but *even better* if I'd weighed *less* but with ON? (I didn't have ED, by the way, nor did I smoke.) Has anyone figured out the underlying logic to that? I'm not saying it can't be true, I'm just saying it seems counterintuitive.

Lacking a science background really hurts me here.

Yvonne,

I can solve your problem: It's not cause and effect! It's correlation. You're having trouble with the difference between causation and correlation. It's not being super thin, it's eating fewer calories with adequate nutrition. Eating more doesn't make you healthier: it's correlation that people who don't smoke, have wasting diseases or eating disorders tend to live longer than those who do.

It's not that fat mass is beneficial, it's that a lack of it is more often a result of negative causes rather than CRON or even a healthy diet. The fat itself isn't protective. The slightly heavier people who are healthier than people with wasting diseases aren't healthier because they have more fat, they're healthier because they don't smoke, have wasting diseases, etc.

Also, keep in mind that being "naturally" skinny isn't protective of anything. Nor is being "naturally" heavier. It's calorie intake compared to ad lib calorie intake, assuming adequate nutrition. Adequate nutrition doesn't help you "survive" being thin: being thin is not a danger in itself! It's when thinness is caused by unhealthy things that it may correlate with unhealthiness.

It's not that your health would have been better in your twenties if you weighed more. The weight isn't decreasing risk. It's just likely that if you'd been a smoker with an ED you would have weighed less.

The failure to understand the difference between causation and correlation is one of the main reasons why people have trouble interpreting evidence, especially second third or fourthhand interpretations of evidence.

Hope that helps.

a

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply. I really appreciate it.