What to eat

The essays “Unhappy Meals” and “Angels and Vegetables” both highlight the conflicts that Americans face today when trying to decide what and how to eat. They both discuss how American culture has stressed different ways of eating and being healthy over time as scientific research and diet fads have caused popular belief to change. Rather than deciding what to eat based on historic cultural norms like the French or the Italian, Americans try to decide based on current and frequently changing popular ideas about what they should eat.

In the essay “Unhappy Meals” Pollan talks about many of the things that American food culture has focused on throughout the years. He first talks about how in the 1980’s food culture shifted to a larger focus on the nutrient content in what people are eating, not just on what foods people are eating. He calls this nutritionism and points to several problems to this approach to food such as the fact that highly processed and well advertised foods often may appeal to the consumer as being healthier than a simple fruit or vegetable. He talks about the focus on a low-fat diet, and on the consequences of this diet, that people simply eat more because they think they can since their foods are low in fat.

Dupuis’ essay goes into the history and social aspects of food culture more than into the scientific aspects that Pollan highlights. He discusses how in the past people have judged what and how to eat on their religion, on figures of authority, on income levels, and also on popular culture. Like Pollan, Dupuis notes that because food and health is so publicized, the way Americans decide what to eat is largely based on conscience rather than tradition. Dupuis writes that “ Rather than making political choices, we pretend, like the vegetarian abolitionists, that our dietary choices will solve our personal and national problems” I think this is an interesting observation which describes how the question of “what to eat” is not just based on what one wants to eat, but on history, popular culture, science, and the economy among other things.