A few years ago, I learned that persons who apply to the Chez Panisse Foundation for funding are warned by staffers not to use the word nutrition in their applications — Alice Waters hates that word. A more nuanced version of this attitude was expressed in Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. Supposedly we should eat food (= choose our food using food names and categories) rather than nutrients (= choose our food according to nutrient content). Here is Marian Nestle, the prolific and influential NYU professor, on the subject:
Q: How do nutritionists feel about Michael Pollan’s idea in “In Defense of Food” that we should be eating food, not nutrients?
A: I can’t speak for all nutritionists, but my guess is that we are all jealous of how well he writes. But look around you. Except for people in hospitals who are fed intravenously, I don’t know anyone who eats nutrients. Everybody I know eats food.
When I give lectures in Australia or India, as I did last year, I see people eating food – all kinds of food. In Australia, I went to a Chinese restaurant one night and sampled kung pao kangaroo. In India, I ate dosas every chance I got. I never gave the nutrient content of those foods a single thought.
“Everybody I know” indeed. Our understanding of vitamins comes from nutrition research that, contra Waters, Pollan and Nestle, focused on nutrients rather than food. This research has been enormously beneficial, mainly among the poor and institutionalized. From a review article about Vitamin A:
By 1992, most large-scale mortality prevention trials and at least 3 measles treatment trials [in poor countries] were completed. A meeting convened at the Rockefeller retreat in Bellagio reached consensus that vitamin A deficiency increased overall mortality, particularly from measles; improving vitamin A status would reduce overall mortality; and treating children already ill with measles with high-dose vitamin A was an effective means of reducing their risk of complications and death. This “Bellagio Brief,”published widely, helped draw attention to the importance of vitamin A. . . . National programs of varying effectiveness have been launched in over 70 countries and vitamin A “coverage” is now one of the core health indicators published annually in the State of the World’s Children. By UNICEF’s estimate, over one-half a billion vitamin A capsules are distributed every year, preventing 350,000 childhood deaths annually. . . . The World Bank lists vitamin A supplementation as one of the most cost-effective of all medical interventions.
This isn’t esoteric knowledge.
Seth,
Talking about nutrients, this reminded me another fact you might want to use to reinforce or refute some aspects of the Shangri-la diet (I realize that refuting is not your goal but it might bring a narrow aspect of it to light). In Space, one of the main issue for astronauts is the issue of taste. Most astronauts that have spent some time in orbit will tell you that the food is extremely dull. One of the goal of some of the chefs doing work for the space agencies (US, French or Russian) is to find a way of implementing spicy foods so that they raise the tasting experience. They have to do that and weigh this against the stringent requirements that the food must have a very low bacteriological activity.
At the same time, zero-g also brings a whole slew of annoying side effects such as space sickness (which is not the same as sea sickness and will bring down the best people for days -if they ever recover, some people have been known to be sick during their whole trip- ) and bone loss.
Many astronauts will also probably tell you that their sleep pattern is not good and most of them do put that on the excitement of the trip. Eventually, it looks like I am noticing that most of what you are mentioning eventually has a strong relation to gravity (standing up for ten hours or one lieg) and taste (the shangri-la diet). Both of which disappear in Orbit.
Igor.
so gravity affects taste/smell? What strikes me is that space travel (the accompanying lack of gravity) could result in accelerated decrepitude, i.e., loss of taste, loss of bone are both hallmarks of getting older. it makes one wonder what effect space travel would have on mental activities, i.e., could enuff space travel result in cognitive impairment.
hey seth
do you know a lab where i can go with a sample of food and get it checked for nutrient content
no I don’t.