FOOD RULES

The book Food Rules by Michael Pollan discusses the reasons why American's deal with obesity and why our eating habits have to change. Michael Pollan is the author of five previous books, including In Defense of Food, a number one New York Times bestseller, and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by both the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Fact . Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don't suffer from these chronic diseases. These diets run the gamut from ones very high in fat (the Inuit in Greenland subsists largely on seal rubber) to ones high in carbohydrate (Central American Indians subsist largely on maize and beans) to ones very high in protein (Masai tribesman in Africa subsist chiefly on cattle blood, meat, and milk), to cite three rather extreme examples. But much the same holds true for more mixed traditional diets. What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets. Except, that is, for one: the relatively new Western diet that most of us now are eating. What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization:to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick! It has been shown that people who get off the Western diet see dramatic improvements in their health. In one analysis, a typical American population that departed even modestly from the Western diet could reduce its chances of getting coronary heart disease by 80 percent, its chances of type 2 diabetes by 90 percent, and its chances of colon cancer by 70 percent. If Americans made changes in their diet, and they don't even have to be major, we could see a total decrease in health issues that Americans suffer from every year. The health care industry makes more money treating chronic diseases ( which account for three quarters of the $2 trillion plus we spend each year on health care in this country) than preventing them. In an economy where we need to control our spending and where our money goes, an effort needs to be put in to not only treat disease and infection but help prevent. And all that is is just knowing what you're putting into your body and how this may effect you.