Books

I do not write book reviews on my blog anymore, because nobody cares to read though hundreds of reviews.  I will make an exception with this one, because it’s one of the best of all time.  Michael Pollan in “In Defense of Food” so thoroughly, so completely, so  conclusively, so extensively, DEBUNKS “nutritionism” that is deserves to be called one of the best.  This is a mainstream book too; when I point people to no-name doctors that debunk it just doesn’t have enough clout as someone who writes for NY Times I suppose.  But it’s another sign that things are getting better and better. Why this one is so good is because you can henceforth throw out about 95% of ALL OTHER HEALTH AND DIET BOOKS.  It explains how faulty the science is, primarily behind as he calls it “Nutritionism”.  Nutritionism  is the new reductionist “science” of figuring out that people are more healthy when they eat, oh let’s say carrots.  So they try to break down carrots into their micro and macro nutrient parts.  They figure out it’s got a whole lot of carotenes in it, primarily the beta.   So they either try to take the carotene out, or synthetically make it, bottle it and sell it.  The problem is, there are hundred of other carotenes in it.  The people don’t thrive on the pills like they do on the actual carrots, non the less, most health books, science and government regulations will say “you need to have 500mg of β-Carotene a week. “  The advice continues and basically you can eat some nasty tasting veggies mono-culturally grown in depleted soils with pesticides (yuck) or you can just pop this shinny pill and call yourself good.   Except vitamins mostly prove to be expensive urine as your body can’t or does not absorb them like they do with a carrot.  Just about everyone who has lived outside of the USA confirms all fruits, veggies meats and milk taste better.  Pollan also points out how every single world diet  including ones rich in meats, fats, and milks people thrive on and have but a fraction of the disease we have here…except one; the western diet.
I heard Pollan lecture at the U of U, he talked about how nutritionism is just in it’s infancy of science.  So any book that has you taking supplements (ahem ALL of the Oprah popular “YOU” Manuals) you can throw them out the window and worthless bunk propagated by the sellers of supplements.

Here is another example of Nutritionism:

This is a chromatogram showing the difference between ascorbic acid and the whole vitamin C complex. Vitamin C is on the left and ascorbic acid on the right. Ascortic acid is only one part of the Vitaimin C complex.  The ascorbic acid is synthetic and derived from corn, the food industry has paid off the FDA to call it the same thing, because using the pre-school tools of Nutritionism, it looks similar, I will admit it’s similar.  But when doctors started recommending synthetic products that were nutritionally “identically” to the real thing, they had no affect and nobody knew why.

And still nobody quite knows why.  They think it also has to do with synergy, but they take try (key word) to all the nutrients out of the fruit or veggie, and put them in the correct ratio, but still it has no effect.

So there is an X factor to nutritionism that nobody has figured out yet.  There is an energy to natural  foods that we have not been able to measure yet.  I suppose it’s from the sun.   The closest thing I have seen, that doesn’t measure but may show the energy or X factor difference is kirlian photography:

Organic Raw Kiki vs Commercial Raw Kiki

Raw Corn vs Cooked Corn

Raw Organic Tomato vs Slightly Cooked Organic Tomato

But who really knows, Kirlian photography may just be a giant coincidence; it’s the only thing that correlates food that you will thrive on vs food that you will get sick on.    But considering all things we can agree upon is we need real food (non processed) to thrive, and to help prevent and cure all diseases.  Regardless of your beliefs, there was some sort of intelligence that guided our evolution here, and provided everything we’d need here.  We haven’t yet been able to make a single blade of grass, or a smattering of new life.  Sure we can squash out life, or copy life, or modify existing life, but we haven’t yet figure out how to put or make new life with our science.  So trust in the food that is already here, and leave it as it was meant to be.  I’ve read Omnivores Dilemma too, His advice is, ” Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”   Not taking a dozens of supplements a week, as if whatever intelligence organized us here TOTALLY forgot about something.  I highly recommend the book, just so you can throw away just about 95% EVERY SINGLE other health book out there on diet based on Nutritionism or bases getting healthy based on supplements.