In Defense of Food

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I'm a writer.

I don't have a scientific background.

And I thought, "Am I qualified to take people on this journey

and offer any kind of advice?"

But as I delved into it,

I began to realize it was actually a strength.

I brought a very open mind,

and I think I could see it freshly.

I had spent a lot of time writing articles and books

tracing the food chain

and showing people where their food came from,

how it was produced...

following meals all the way back to the farm.

But I found that what I kept hearing from readers was,

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've told me where the food comes from

and how the animals live and everything."

But what I really want to know is what should I eat?

And it's no wonder people are confused.

Every day, there's a new headline...

eat more fiber,

drink less milk,

eggs are bad,

eggs are good.

As eaters we feel whipsawed by the changes

in the nutritional advice we're getting.

And I became absorbed in this question,

"Yeah, what do we know?"

What do we know about the links between diet and health?

That was something I hadn't really focused on very much.

So, I decided to see if I could come up with

some guidance for myself,

for my readers, for my family...

on how to eat if you're concerned about your health.

I really thought the answer to this question

would be so much more complex than it has turned out to be.

Thank you.

I'm Michael Pollan.

Join me as I make the case "in defense of food."

[slow instrumental music playing]

Food...

Why does it need defending?

It's everywhere around us.

And who doesn't love it?

Oh my goodness, I love pizza.

My favorite dinner is chicken pot pie.

A nice piece of char-grilled steak.

I love arugula... can't get enough of it.

And, of course, I like ice cream, too.

I think food is one of life's greatest pleasures.

I don't have one favorite food. I just like food.

But the food we're eating today

is very different from what it used to be.

And that change has been taking a heavy toll on our health.

[amusing instrumental music playing]

The Scavotto family lives outside Boston.

-Would you call this shredded carrots? -Yes.

Anthony is 11.

Yes, I would.

Last year, when I went to the doctor's,

he said that I gained 30 pounds in a year.

I didn't like that at all.

See if that says "whole wheat" on it.

Most of my friends, they can run

and they can not get tired.

They can, like, be athletic and I can't do that.

I couldn't do that.

When I found out he gained 30 pounds

under my watch,

that's crazy to me.

I definitely felt I failed in the food department.

My mother and my father

were buying foods that said they were healthy,

but they weren't.

You know, granola bars...

they're not so healthy if you look at the sugar.

Yogurt...

We were doing all that.

All right, then it's not healthy.

I was mad at myself.

I was trying to eat healthy, but apparently it didn't work.

I didn't like it.

I wanted to change my body.

Anthony's doctor referred him to a program

for overweight kids at Boston Children's Hospital.

It's a busy place.

Anthony.

Over the last 30 years,

the rate of childhood obesity in America

has more than doubled.

More and more young people are now getting a disease

that used to be very rare in children--

type-2 diabetes.

Okay.

Being overweight increases your chances of getting the disease.

Hold your hand out like that.

So Anthony may be at risk.

Obesity can affect

virtually every organ system of a child's body.

And in some cases, uh, resulting in type-2 diabetes...

the ultimate metabolic meltdown.

Swallow.

It's one thing for an overweight adult

to develop type-2 diabetes at age 50

and then have a heart attack at age 60.

Take a deep breath.

It's a very different thing

if the clock starts ticking at age ten.

Since 1975, the percentage of Americans

who have type-2 diabetes has more than tripled

and is expected to keep on growing.

Four of the top ten things that will kill you

are chronic diseases linked to diet.

So something's wrong.

The diet most of us eat these days

has become known as the Western diet.

It includes lots of meat,

white flour,

vegetable oils and sugar,

and very little fruit, vegetables, and whole grains.

It's cheap.

It's convenient.

And most of it has been processed to taste really good.

The food industry has gotten incredibly good at manipulating

the properties of food

so it has just the right texture,

just the right color, just the right smell

to make you consume as much of it as possible,

miss it when you don't have it,

crave it to the point where

you want to keep coming back for more.

And the key to getting us hooked

is our inborn craving for salt,

sugar,

and fat.

We're biologically designed

to like foods that are very high in calories,

very high in sugar, fat, and salt

because that was adaptive during

almost all of human history

when food was scarce and there were things like famines.

But now food is abundant and our biology is mismatched

with what's occurring out there in the environment.

Take Buffalo wings.

What are they?

You start off with the fatty part of the chicken.

Usually fried in the manufacturing plant first.

That pushes a lot of fat into that chicken wing.

Fried usually again in the restaurant.

That pushes more fat into that wing.

That red sauce, what is it? Sugar and salt.

That white creamy sauce on the side?

Fat, sugar, and salt.

What are we eating? We're eating fat on fat,

on fat on sugar, on fat, sugar, and salt.

From fast food meals

to all the packaged products in the supermarket,

we're eating more processed foods than ever before.

They now make up some 60 percent of our diet.

The food industry makes its greatest profits

through the most extensively processed foods.

The key ingredients for those foods...

corn, soybeans, wheat, and rice...

don't cost the food companies much

because government subsidies keep supplies high and prices low.

The food companies turn those crops

into things like hydrolyzed soy protein,

mono and diglycerides,

and high fructose corn syrup,

ingredients that end up in so many processed foods.

The American farm system

has turned into a calorie conveyor belt

that produces massive amounts of commodities

to make sugary beverages,

fast food, junk food...

very, very cheap.

You've added all this packaging,

and this marketing, and these characters,

you know, that appeal to kids, and you're selling it

for an order of magnitude more money.

And, of course, this is a good business model for the companies

'cause they want to maximize their sales.

But it's not very good for human health.

People who eat a lot of processed foods

struggle more with health problems.

And so we've been really curious

to understand what happened to the food.

So we look at what's present and absent from processed foods

to understand where they went wrong,

why they make people sick.

Take bread, one of my own favorite foods.

It's made from a few basic ingredients...

flour, water, yeast and salt,

which you mix together, let rise,

and then eventually bake.

We've been eating it for thousands of years.

But the bread our ancestors ate was very different

from what you find in most supermarkets today.

Flour used to be made by grinding grains like wheat