“Nutritionism” is truthiness on a plate, a pseudoscience related to food rather than the study of food itself, writes Michael Pollan, commanding the cover of the NYTimes Magazine. It has led to the near disappearance of food from the American diet.

It was in the 1980s that food began disappearing from the American supermarket, gradually to be replaced by “nutrients,” which are not the same thing. Where once the familiar names of recognizable comestibles — things like eggs or breakfast cereal or cookies — claimed pride of place on the brightly colored packages crowding the aisles, now new terms like “fiber” and “cholesterol” and “saturated fat” rose to large-type prominence. More important than mere foods, the presence or absence of these invisible substances was now generally believed to confer health benefits on their eaters. Foods by comparison were coarse, old-fashioned and decidedly unscientific things — who could say what was in them, really?

Pollan offers us a screed, 10 action items on what ought to be considered fit to eat, culturally and ecologically, a kind of global kashrut for the conscientious diner:

Cook.

Grow.

Remember the farmers.

Pay a little more.

Think about what your great grandmother ate.

The thing I like about religion – not just Judiaism, but religion in general – is that it’s a set of instructions for the big questions. When the Big Questions hit, we need a roadmap. Catholics have even divided an entire life up into Big Questions with the notion of the sacraments, offering a recipe for each and every one. It’s intensely comforting: when you’ve delivered your first child, or lost your parent, or found your bashert, it’s beyond you, bigger than you, and it’s nice to have instructions on what to do next.

Pollan, by showing us how our food choices effect the health of the planet as well as our own, demonstrates brilliantly that What to Eat fits squarely and firmly into the Biggest Question of all: How to Live. (which, I suppose, the rabbis have known all along…)

[NYTimes]