Lucy+Unhappy+meals+summary

"Unhappy Meals" by Michael Pollan is basically summed up in the very first line. The first words in this article tell us to "eat food, not too much, mostly plants." In reading the entire article, I can come away with the acknowledgment that none of those fad diets truly work. Over the last 20 years the high-carb, low-fat diets, the no-fat diet, the low-cholesterol and many more diets have been tired by many people hoping that it would be the diet that worked for them. But from reading this article, there has been no proof that a low fat diet helped to protect against getting breast cancer. Eating fiber doesn't really prevent colon cancer either. Also when shopping at the grocery, we may want to look at the ingredients listed. According to Michale Pollan, if there are more than five ingredients, don't buy it. Also don't buy it if there are ingredients that are unfamiliar or ones that you can't pronounce. So avoid buying and eating processed foods.There have been studies that processed foods can cause health problems. We should be eating less, period. With all of the studies that show that calorie restriction makes us live longer and reduced the probabilities of many diseases, cancer being one of them we should consider how many calories we are eating. Pollan says, we should avoid corn syrups because our bodies don't know how to handle them well. He also says we know little about nutrition. We don't know which food or ingreidents are health for us. We choose to use margarine over butter as a healthier alternative, but look where it took us, down the wrong path. Most people know fish is a great source of Omega-3 fatty acids but plant leaves also have those essential acids too. Another essential fatty acid is omega 6 and seeds contain those acids. The reason these fatty acids are called essential fatty acids are because our bodies can't produce them on their own, so we need to eat them. The oils from the fish may help prevent heart attacks by a third. If we decide to eat meat we should eat a small portion of it. More of a side dish than the main meal. In the 1980's "real food" disappeared from the grocery stores. Things such as fiber, saturated fat, cholesterol began to take over the mids of the shoppers rather than what the products were made of. All of these products were confusing the shoppers and they were buying the wrong foods, foods that weren't healthy for them. Because there is confusing about food, the food industries are making more money.The things like nutrients and minerals in the food are the important thigns to look for in foods becuase they are important to health. In the 19th century, an English doctor and chemist named William Prout were know for the "macro nutrients." Macro Nutrients consisted of protiens, carbohydrates and fat. They thought these were the 3 essential things that made up food, but later it was discoverer that people need more that just those 3 things to survive. Vitamins were a key idem to have in your everyday nutrients. But the senate select Committee came up with a solution to why people were dieing for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. They noticed that a regions who kept their diets to mostly plants had significantly lower rates of heart disease. When the meat and dairy products weren't available during the war, heart disease were down. When the low-fat diet was the diet to follow, people started to buy and eat everything low in fat. The only problem was that they were eating more or the same amount of low fat foods as they were eating regular foods. So people started to become obese because they were consuming more and more and they though they were being healthy because the food label read LOW FAT. There are several foods that have great nutrients but many people don;t know which foods those are. Antioxidants, such as beta cartene, lycopene, and vitamin E may help prevent cancer. Antioxidants get rife of the free redialed in our bodies that damage our DNA. There are several antioxidants and they all are so good for us an our bodies. Vegetables are important to eat because they make help lower the risk of getting heart disease and cancer. People who eat meat more than vegetables are more likely to have a heart disease There is a difference in meats. choose a low fat meat, choose good fats over bad fats and start to count calories. Most people don't know how many calories they are consuming. Many people are consuming over 3000 calories a day when they need to be taking in about 2000. In America, the rates of diabetes and obesity have increases but cancer and heat disease rates have lowered. So we need to keep up a good balanced diet to have good health. Being healthy involves getting exercise, being active, and eating right. There are several diets, one being the western diet. it involves a person changing they food they are all they way down to the soil the food came from. The modern diet is mostly carbohydrates. Humans have been refining grains since the Industrial Revolution. The refining grains taste better and allow foods to last longer and makes it easier for the grains to digest by removing fiber which slows the release of sugar. Chemical fertilizers are in the food that is grown in the soil. When a food is stripped from its natural state, it loses its nutrients. Humans are like omnivores. It was said that humans needed between 50-100 different chemical compounds and elements to be considered healthy, but today we are defiantly no where near getting all of those compounds in our diets.
 * Cut down on red meat and dairy ( too controversial for the food industry)
 * low fat diets are bad because we are replacing the fat with carbs. diabetes has skyrocketed.
 * we should eat like the French, Greeks, Italians because they have a good food culture. Let culture be your guide, not science. Looking at what they do, not just what they eat.
 * The French eat smaller meals, no seconds, eating slowly.
 * eat until you are 80% full ( the hara hachi bu)
 * focus on quality of food instead of quantity
 * leaves: lettuce, celery, spinach
 * science and nutriitonism: Nutrient by nutrient science is not helpful, antioxidants, fiber, beta, omega fatty acids, science ignores how the nutrient interacts with diet and lifestyle.
 * Surveys were inaccurate.