IN DEFENSE OF FOOD MATTERS

I have been thinking a lot about food lately. Not because I am hungry but for several other reasons. First, I have been working with a compound derived from broccoli in the laboratory. "High" consumption of broccoli (i.e 3-4 servings per week) is associated with a lower risk of developing prostate cancer, but the mechanisms are unclear. A constituent of broccoli called sulforaphane was previously shown to prevent cancer or cause tumor regression in animal models, but, again, the reasons for this effect are unclear. Our work sheds some new light on the issue. Second, I was sidelined with a running injury for the past six months, which has led to a few extra pounds on my frame. Third, I have been cooking more in the past few months and making more conscious food purchases. Finally, on several occasions when Nicholas asked for a snack and I offered him a few choices, he said he wanted something else with more sugar (e.g. "drinking yogurt"). He loves vegetables and eats rather well, but this was a wake-up call.

Last night, I checked out "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan and read it in one sitting in 3 hours. He is an authoritative figure on the topic of our food choices and their consequences, having written "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire," which I have not read. "Defense," though, is less theory, less history, and more practicality. The credo of this book, in Pollan's words, is simple: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants. His book lays out how drastic our eating habits have changed under the influence of the government, scientists, and the food producers- this triumvirate constitutes a "food industrial complex." Needless to say, food is a very political issue, and individuals from the three aforementioned camps have sold the American people on the concept of the importance of food nutrients rather than food itself. This has allowed for the proliferation of food-like substances devoid of the "bad stuff" (fats mainly) and high in the "good" stuff (vitamins, B-carotene, etc). This explains the concept of low-fat ice cream or fortified white bread, which one can eat to one's heart's content because they have been sanitized. Underlying this simplistic view of food is the notion that it is the individual parts of food rather than food as a whole which is the key to health. Largely, this is based upon scientific studies from the nutrition world which purport to tell us what are the good and bad parts of food but which are highly subject to bias or inaccuracy.

All of this research neglects the fact that prior to the industrialization of food, when our diets were largely plant-based and our ways of life largely agrarian, diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease were rare, even when one accounts for differences in life expectancy between then and now. This point was made well by Mark Bittman, aka "the Minimalist" from the New York Times, who recently gave a talk at Powell's promoting his new book "Food Matters" (hence the cute title of this post), which I attended. His mantra is that diets high in animals products are not only bad for our health but also bad for the planet (animal waste, non-sustainable farming practices, global warming, etc). While his ideas are hardly revolutionary and are derivative of Pollan, both authors make the claim, which is hard to refute, that our food choices matter. Despite the me too aspect to Bittman's book, after his talk, I have tried to eat more fruits and vegetables and grains and to eat less meat.

Diet, in my opinion should be like the concept of climate, personally sustainable eating habits over the long-term, rather than like weather, which is subject to whim or yearly variation with the latest food cycle. We truly are what we eat and what we eat eats, and our eating climate has clearly changed in recent years. Despite my own reductionist research to "extract" specific, testable anti-cancer constituents from food, I like to think of myself, an evolving organism, as a whole head of broccoli and that explains my new food choices.