good book

i just finished this michael pollan text regarding the industrialization of "food" products, our culture's focus on nutrients vs. whole foods, and the drawn parallels from these market demands as they correlate to western disease-- namely obesity, diabetes, cancer, and hypertension.

in pollan's educated view, he believes that the aforementioned effects of our diet are linked within themselves with a causal relationship.

notable take aways from the book are that as americans, we have a dysfunctional relationship with what we ingest. he states the claim that we are focused on the nutrients that compose an item, rather than the entire food item itself--again, this is a generalization, but i believe it to be true as well. his argument dives further into the contradictory studies that reveal themselves daily from nutrition scientists, which leads to confusion amongst consumers. i would concur. pair these with the eternal shelf-life brought about by over-processing raw foods into either salt-heavy, fat-heavy, or sugar-heavy foods (e.g. white flour, high fructose corn syrup, etc) and add a little hydrogenated oil and you've got a manipulated and (until recent years) non-traditional food products.

all in all, it was a quick read which sums up a good deal of rising concerns about the long-term effects of these processed foods on our individual and cultural health snapshot. 8 of 10.