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[|Unhappy Meals Article]

NOTE TO THE READER: this is not one big paragraph. The site won't save the paragraph "tab spaces" at the first line, the line starting: "The 'not too much' part of..., and the line starting: "'Mostly plants' is the final... Sorry to those who care (Dr. Field)!!!

Michael Pollan has one piece of advice that covers everything he thinks a person should eat: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He explains each statement in turn, especially "eat food." Pollan says that since the release of an article from the government in the late 1970s, there has been a massive increase in the processing of foods. This processing mostly includes adding "essential nutrients" to foods, and creating entirely new foods to add these nutrients to. Adding nutrients that have been shown to be beneficial sounds like a good thing, right? Wrong. According to Pollan, it isn't only the nutrient that makes it so beneficial, there is also the other nutrients the original nutrient is found with that help make it beneficial. Some nutrients are more efficient with certain other nutrients, a relationship that is far too complex for scientists to understand and duplicate. Yet, we don't have to be able to reproduce these relationships, or even to understand them. The relationships are easy to find in food. Bananas, apples, broccoli, celery, and other foods already come with the appropriate mixture of nutrients, and with far less calories, sugars, and other harmful chemicals that we are always trying to avoid. So Pollan's advice is saying to eat natural food, not processed food, not food with preservatives, not food made in a lab, or any food that has been altered from the way it came out of the ground. The "not too much" part of the advice is sited a couple of times. Pollan's main evidence for this is to look at the French. They eat foods rich in nutrients proven to be horrible for us. Yet they are much healthier than the average American. Why you ask? Because they eat much less than we do. The easiest way to reduce calories is to not eat calories, which are in all foods. So eating less food means you eat less calories. Michael Pollan also sites a study done by the Women's Health Institute. His main point comes from their survey about what people have been eating. The "medium" portion sizes are at least three times smaller than what most Americans consider to be a "medium" portion size. "Mostly plants" is the final piece of advice for Michael Pollan's diet plan. Leafy plants have more of the "essential nutrients" than the seeds that have taken over the American diet do. One such nutrient is the Omega-3 fatty acid. These acids are not only found in fish, but in plants. Pollan brings out a good point in saying that the fish have to get it from somewhere, and since their diets are mostly leafy greens, the leafy greens must have the fatty acids too. The end of the article talks about how vegetarians are much healthier than the carnivores, and that the flexitarians (people who eat lots of veggies and some meats) are just as healthy as the vegetarians. Plus, the animals we eat to get our nutrients have to get all their nutrients from somewhere, so why not eat straight from the source? Eat a little. Eat your veggies. These are pieces of advice we should follow. When in doubt, ask whether or not your great-great-grandmother would eat or feed you the food you are about to eat.