Leaves, Yes; Eat Meat, Too

1/26/07

In the New York Times on January 28, best-seller (The Omnivore's Dilemma) and stellar journalist Michael Pollan has, once again, described the complexities and inanities of the modern industrial food system with clarity and his trademark light touch. In 'Unhappy Meals' he points out that the junk food industry and the health care industry are in cahoots - though not consciously. Eat the corn syrup and other junk industrial agriculture sends your way, and then buy the statins and other drugs to cure the diabetes and heart disease that follow.  Bravo for Pollan's simple instructions on eating well, which include:

Eat food your great-grandmother would recognize as food.

Get out of the supermarket; buy local and seasonal food.

Pay more, eat less.

Avoid food products bearing health claims. Pollan writes: 'When Kellogg's can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don't take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.'

Avoid food products with ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, or more than five in number; or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.

Pollan's best advice: 'Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren't a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn't still be around.'

What about the traditional American diet? I would add, 'Eat more like the traditional American diet, not the modern industrial one.' You don't have go abroad to eat well; roast chicken, hamburgers, bacon, mashed sweet potatoes with butter, green beans, raw milk and raw milk cheese - all these are traditional American foods, and good for you.

Pollan also recommends, 'Eat mostly plants.' 'Mostly' is a tricky word here.  By volume? Weight? Calories? Space on the plate? Units aside, you need to know that plants are rich in certain nutrients and not others. What plants are good for is antioxidants too numerous to mention - beta carotene is a famous one, but there are tens of thousands - and for fiber and vitamin C. What you won't find in plants in quantities worth mentioning are several nutrients: B vitamins, especially B12; vitamins A and D; complete protein; iron; and omega-3 fats. For these vital nutrients, you must eat meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and butter. They are simply superior sources.

Eating lots of leaves, as Pollan suggests - I'd say instead, 'Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables every day, no matter where you buy them' - is good advice. But my research doesn't bolster the argument that protein per se is making us sick or fat. Far from it. Meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and milk are some of the best foods you can eat. Most traditional diets contain plenty of all of them, and even traditional vegetarian diets all rely on milk and eggs for complete protein, B vitamins, and essential fats. There are no traditional vegan societies.

What's making Americans sick is not overconsumption of red meat or traditional saturated fats like butter, which raise HDL (the 'good' cholesterol). That's the Vegetarian Myth, one I used to believe myself. But I learned that humans are omnivores, not herbivores, and when I studied the role animal products, including animal fats, play in the diet and in the body, I was convinced that the pro-vegetarian arguments are in fact, or should be, pro-whole foods and anti-industrial food arguments.

It is impossible to nourish a body properly on an all-plant diet (which Pollan does not endorse - he is an omnivore himself). Nor is it necessarily healthier to eat less meat. It depends on how much meat you eat now, what kind of meat you eat, and what else you eat. Protein itself is extremely nutritious.

There's one kind of 'meat' it's almost impossible to live without: fish. Pollan explains neatly how omega-6 and omega-3 fats work and where they come from. Essentially, you get omega-3 fats from fish and omega-6 fats from plants. The body needs both. But they must be in balance. A major cause of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in the US today is the excess of omega-6 fats from industrial grains and seeds such as corn, soy bean, safflower, and sunflower oils. So in addition to adding omega-3 fats to your diet, it's a good idea to limit omega-6 fats. I realize this is the very nutritionism Pollan decries, but it's difficult to discuss food without discussing its nutrients.

As it happens, I don't live by nutritionist thinking on a daily basis. I don't count calories, fat grams, or anything else in my diet. The easiest way to limit omega-6 fats is to avoid all the yellow industrial oils, such as corn and soy. Most are refined anyway. If you eat olive oil, you will get all the omega-6 fats you need.

Doesn't Pollan say you can get omega-3 fats from plants, too? Yes - in theory. But not the most important omega-3 fats, the so-called long-chain, polyunsaturated fats DHA and EPA. Your brain must have these fats. (This is known as an 'absolute' not 'conditional' need.) They're found only in fish (and in small quantities in grass-fed meat, milk, and egg yolks). Hence one of the dangers of a vegetarian diet: omega-3 deficiency. In theory, your body can make DHA and EPA from other omega-3 fats found in walnuts and flax seed oil, but in metabolic terms, that conversion is what the biologists call 'costly and uncertain.' It is much, much wiser to eat fish. If mercury is a concern, remember these rules of thumb:

The smaller the fish, the better. Mercury, like other toxins, concentrates as it climbs the food chain. Sardines are better than shark or swordfish.

Herbivorous fish, for the same reason, have less mercury than carnivores because they don't eat other small fish containing mercury. That means tilapia, catfish, freshwater trout.

Quality fish oil capsules, or cod liver oil, are good ways to get omega-3 fats.

If you're pregnant, nursing, or at risk of heart disease, it's vitally important to eat fish. In my view, the risk of omega-3 deficiency is greater than that of mercury poisoning. (Do make sure any vaccines your kids get don't contain mercury (thimerosal) and consider having all your mercury-containing fillings removed.)

I eat wild Alaskan salmon, canned and frozen, which I love. I also take cod liver oil, which I don't. But it's a fabulous source of EPA and DHA, plus vitamins A and D. I do recommend it for pregnant and nursing women. (For all these foods, and a few quality supplements, see SHOPPING LIST.)