A reader named Shawn made an interesting comment on Michael Pollan vs. Processed Food:
I’d like to point out that your example of fortifying flour (white flour, actually) is not really that great, since in this case they are simply adding back some (but not all) of the nutrients that were destroyed in processing. Whole wheat flour does not have to be fortified because it has those nutrients to begin with — which actually supports Pollan’s arguments against food processing.
That’s true, it does support Pollan’s argument against food processing. More detail will help make my underlying logic clearer. Flour is milled for several reasons, the details of which don’t matter; let me just say that white flour is more profitable than whole wheat flour, thus can be sold at a lower price. In terms of price, milling is win-win: the supplier makes more profit and the customer gets cheaper flour. But when you consider nutrition — milled flour less nutritious than unmilled — it is not clear at all that milling is win-win. B vitamin supplementation, by cheaply replacing what the milling took out, moves us back to win-win. Not milling is not win-win: It is nothing-nothing.
When you process food based on a correct theory — an accurate understanding of how our bodies work — the result is often win-win. When you process food based on a wrong theory, it is much harder to reach that result. This is what Pollan didn’t understand. As usual, Jane Jacobs said it best. In response to people who said that Problem X or Problem Y was due to overpopulation — just as Pollan is anti-food-processing — Jacobs said the problem is not too many people, the problem is the undone work. In the case of food, the problem is not too much processing, the problem is the undone work — the undone work of coming up with good theories to guide the processing.
“the undone work of coming up with good theories to guide the processing”
Things like including lost omega-3? Say, what do you think about magnesium? Isn’t it considered to be deficient in the same way omega-3 is in American diet?
Coming up with good theories — well, the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet, for example. If food has been processed in a way that caused weight loss, Pollan would have much less an argument. But yes also the work of figuring out better how much omega-3 we need and how to measure its benefits. Making a more convincing case for it.
don’t know about magnesium, thanks for mentioning it.
The best point I thought the article made was that there is so much we don’t know about nutrition. It’s ridiculous to think that we have identified all of the important nutrients that we obtain from food, and until we have, less processed food is going to be better than more processed food.
As you say, the problem is the undone work. It’s not as simple as that makes it seem, though, we don’t really know how much remains to be done and we won’t really know when we’re finished until well after that point. I really doubt we’re finished now though, so until we are, I’m going to try to stick with the less processed food that our bodies have evolved to use.
I agree, “there is much we don’t know about nutrition” is the best point the article made. Given that it started and ended with nutritional recommendations, it didn’t make that point very clearly.
When it comes to processing, I make distinctions: packaged food, no; refrigerated food, yes; cooked food, yes. I suspect you agree with me here.