National+Eating+Disorder

Calla McCarthy Ms. Lathrop American Literature: Nature January 7, 2010

Our diets vary on the conditions we live in. In other words, depending on the condition, our diets will adapt. We Americans have adapted too well. We depend on supermarkets and factories to produce the fake products we "need" to survive. According to Michael Pollan, "We Americans suffer a national eating disorder: our unhealthy obsession with healthy eating." Having anything we desire to eat at the convenience of our grocery stores, has allowed Americans to top the charts of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. If we follow Pollan's seven guidelines to sustainable, healthy eating, we, as a country would become more sustainable and our diets would adapt to a new way of life.

1. "Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. 2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce. 3. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. 4. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. 5. Always leave the table a little hungry. 6. Enjoy meals with the people you love. 7. Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline."

By using these guidelines offered to us by Michael Pollan, we will find ourselves healthier, happier, and more energetic. With this eating disorder rapidly spreading, think about what you are eating and where it comes from.

"When food is abundant and cheap, people will eat more of it and get fat. Since 1977 an American's average daily intake of calories has jumped by more than 10 percent." (170)

"But the Western mind can't bear an opt-out opinion. We're going to have to refight the Battle of the Little Bighorn to preserve the right to opt out, or your grandchildren and mine will have no choice but to eat amalgamated, irradiated, genetically prostituted, bar-coded, adulterated fecal spam from the centralized processing conglomerate" (Pollan 132)

"'Industrial fecal factory concentration camp farms'" (241)