{"id":3907,"date":"2020-05-26T07:30:28","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T11:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chaneyhealth.com\/healthtips\/?p=3907"},"modified":"2020-05-09T15:28:10","modified_gmt":"2020-05-09T19:28:10","slug":"which-foods-should-i-avoid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chaneyhealth.com\/healthtips\/which-foods-should-i-avoid\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Foods Should I Avoid?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Is Nutritionism?<\/span><\/h2>\n

\"In<\/a>Recently, I have been reading Michael Pollan\u2019s book \u201cIn Defense of Food\u201d. Yes, I know the book has been around for a long time. Normally I read the scientific literature rather than popular health books. However, in the past few weeks I have had a lot more time to read books, so I decided to read this one.<\/p>\n

Some of the things he says are \u201coff the wall\u201d. As he readily admits, he isn\u2019t a scientist or a medical doctor. However, a lot of what he says is \u201cright on\u201d. He echoes many of the things I have been talking about for years. But he does a masterful job of pulling everything together into a framework he calls \u201cnutritionism<\/strong><\/span>\u201d.<\/p>\n

If you have a chance, I highly recommend that you read his book.<\/p>\n

I will briefly summarize his discussion of nutritionism<\/strong><\/span> below. I will also share some scientific support for what he is saying. Finally, I will close by sharing what the Bible says on the subject.<\/p>\n

What Is Nutritionism?<\/span><\/h2>\n

\"Low<\/a>Simply put, nutritionism<\/strong><\/span> is the belief that we can understand food solely in terms of its nutritional and chemical constituents and our requirements for them. I use the term \u201cbelief\u201d purposely. As Michael Pollan puts it: \u201cAs the \u2018-ism\u2019 suggests, nutritionism is not a scientific subject, but an ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Michael Pollan is referring to is taking food constituents like saturated fats, cholesterol, sugar, carbohydrates, polyunsaturated fats, monounsaturated fats, fiber, antioxidants, and probiotics and labeling them as either \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d.<\/p>\n

As he points out, that leads to debacles like the creation of margarine as a substitute for butter. Of course, everyone reading this article knows that we subsequently found out that the trans fat in margarine was worse for us than the saturated fat in butter. He offers many other examples like this.<\/p>\n

He also points out that the nutritionism concept has given free rein to the food industry to replace whole foods with processed foods that are cholesterol-free, sugar-free, low-fat, low-carb, or high in fiber, omega-3s, etc. He says that these foods are seldom healthier than the foods they replace. I agree.<\/p>\n

Finally, he points out that the scientific support for the classification of individual ingredients or foods as \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d is weak. That\u2019s because when scientists design a study that removes a chemical constituent or a food from the diet, they have to replace it with something. And what they replace it with determines the outcome of the study. I give some examples of this in the next section.<\/p>\n

The essence of Michael Pollan\u2019s message is:<\/p>\n