aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The silence of the yams

I was glad to hear Michael Pollan do a commentary on Marketplace last night:

[T]he more processed the food, the less nutritious it typically is. Yet it’s the processed food makers who have the marketing budgets to do the research to support the health claims and then shout them from the rooftops. That’s not the same as actually being healthy. A scientist can find a crucial nutrient in any edible he or she is paid to study. And there isn’t a plant under the sun that doesn’t contain an antioxidant or two.

But here’s the thing. As everybody knows—or used to know before the proliferation of health claims confused us all—the hands-down healthiest foods in the supermarket are the unprocessed vegetables and fruits and whole grains. These foods sit silently in the produce section or the bulk-food bins. They don’t utter a word about their antioxidants or heart-healthiness, while just a few aisles over the sugary cereals scream about their heart-healthy “whole grain goodness.”

So next time you’re in the produce aisle, don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing important to say about your health. They do. They just don’t have the money needed to say it.

I’m looking forward to reading his new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. The book is based on a NYTimes Magazine piece he did a year ago, Unhappy Meals.