Quantity Rather Than Quality (Pollan)
A diet based on quantity rather than quality has ushered a new creature onto the world stage: the human being who manages to be both overfed and undernourished, two characteristics seldom found in the same body in the long natural history of our species. In most traditional diets, when calories are adequate, nutrient intake will usually be adequate as well. Indeed, many traditional diets are nutrient rich and, at least compared to ours, calorie poor. The Western diet has turned that relationship upside down. At a health clinic in Oakland, California, doctors report seeing overweight children suffering from old-time deficiency diseases such as rickets, long thought to have been consigned to history’s dustheap in the developed world. But when children subsist on fast food rather than fresh fruits and vegetables and drink more soda than milk, the old deficiency diseases return—now even in the obese.
— Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (pgs. 122-123, 2008)
This entry was posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7:15am. It has been filed under Media, Books, Quotes, News, Science, Writers, Joshua.
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