Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Seven words. That’s it. Back in 2008, when Michael Pollan dropped In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, he basically nuked the entire nutrition industry from orbit. People were stunned. We were so used to obsessing over grams of polyunsaturated fats or the glycemic index of a carrot that hearing "just eat food" sounded like heresy. Or maybe it just sounded like common sense in a world that had lost its mind. Honestly, looking back nearly two decades later, those seven words feel even more radical today.
We live in a weird era. You can walk into a gas station and buy a "protein cookie" that has forty ingredients, half of which require a chemistry degree to pronounce, yet it’s marketed as a health product. That is exactly what Pollan was warning us about. He called it Nutritionism. It’s the idea that the "nutrient" is the only thing that matters, rather than the actual food it comes from. It’s a scam, mostly. It’s how the industry sells us "Heart Healthy" sugary cereals while making us feel guilty about eating an egg or a piece of sourdough bread.
The Problem With Nutritionism
Nutritionism isn't a science; it’s an ideology. It assumes that the point of eating is to maintain health and that food is just a delivery system for chemicals. This mindset is how we ended up with the low-fat craze of the 90s. Remember that? We replaced butter—a food humans have eaten for millennia—with highly processed margarines and "SnackWell’s" cookies loaded with high-fructose corn syrup. We thought we were being smart. We were actually just getting sicker.
Pollan points out that the "experts" have been wrong so many times it's almost impressive. First, fat was the enemy. Then it was carbs. Then it was lectins. Tomorrow it’ll probably be something else. The common thread is that every time we try to "engineer" a better diet by focusing on isolated nutrients, we mess things up. Food is a complex system. A tomato isn't just a lycopene delivery vehicle. It’s a tomato. There are thousands of compounds in a whole plant that work together in ways scientists still don't fully grasp. When you strip those away to make a supplement or a "fortified" snack bar, you lose the magic.
💡 You might also like: How to Treat Uneven Skin Tone Without Wasting a Fortune on TikTok Trends
Most of what we eat today isn't even food. Pollan calls them edible food-like substances. Think about that. If your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, it probably isn't. If it doesn't rot, it's not food. If it has more than five ingredients, or contains stuff like soy lecithin or xanthan gum, you're looking at an industrial product, not a meal. These things are designed by food scientists to hit our "bliss point"—that perfect ratio of salt, sugar, and fat that makes our brains light up like a Christmas tree. It’s not nutrition; it’s engineering.
Reclaiming the Kitchen
The Western diet is the only diet in human history that consistently makes people sick. It’s high in processed grains, added sugars, and industrial oils, and low in everything else. We’ve traded quality for convenience and flavor for "hyper-palatability." But there’s a way out. And it doesn't involve a complicated calorie-counting app or a $100-a-month subscription to a meal replacement shake.
Pollan’s advice is shockingly simple: Shop the edges of the grocery store. That’s where the real stuff lives. The produce, the meat, the dairy. Avoid the middle aisles. The middle is a graveyard of boxes, cans, and bags designed to sit on a shelf for three years without changing. Real food dies. Real food wilts.
Why Plants Actually Matter
He says "mostly plants" for a reason. Not because he's a militant vegan—he’s not. He just recognizes that plants provide the bulk of the micronutrients and fiber we need to keep our microbiomes from staging a coup. But notice he doesn't say "only plants." He’s a pragmatist. A little bit of meat for flavor or tradition is fine. The problem is when the meat becomes the whole plate, and that meat comes from an industrial feedlot where the animals are fed corn and antibiotics instead of grass.
📖 Related: My eye keeps twitching for days: When to ignore it and when to actually worry
Cooking is the ultimate act of rebellion. When you cook, you control the ingredients. You decide how much salt goes in. You decide what kind of oil to use. The food industry hates it when you cook because they can't charge you a 400% markup on a "value-added" microwave dinner. Taking back the kitchen is the single most effective thing you can do for your health. Even if you’re just making a simple pasta or a big salad, you're winning.
The Cultural Connection
Food is more than fuel. This is where Pollan really gets it right. In many cultures, eating is a social ritual. It’s about family, history, and pleasure. In America, we eat in our cars. We eat at our desks. We eat while scrolling through TikTok. We’ve turned eating into a chore or a guilty secret.
One of the best rules in In Defense of Food is to "eat at a table." It sounds stupidly simple. But when you sit down, without a screen, you actually pay attention to what you're putting in your mouth. You stop eating when you’re full. You enjoy the experience. The French eat tons of saturated fat and drink wine, yet they have lower rates of heart disease than Americans. Why? Because they eat slowly, they eat high-quality food, and they don't snack all day. They have a culture of food, not just a system of consumption.
We need to stop worrying about the "latest study." Nutrition science is notoriously difficult to get right. Most of it relies on food frequency questionnaires, which are basically people guessing what they ate three weeks ago. It’s messy. It’s often funded by the very industries trying to sell you the food. Instead of looking at the latest headline about "the miracle of kale," look at what your ancestors ate. They didn't have nutritionists, and they did just fine.
👉 See also: Ingestion of hydrogen peroxide: Why a common household hack is actually dangerous
Practical Steps to Defend Your Food
If you want to move away from the industrial food system, you don't need a total life overhaul overnight. It's about small, deliberate shifts in how you perceive "fuel."
- The Grandmother Test: Pick up a package. Imagine your great-great-grandmother standing next to you. If she’d ask "What the heck is that?", put it back.
- Pay More, Eat Less: High-quality food costs more because it’s actually food. If you buy a $12 dozen of pasture-raised eggs instead of the $3 factory ones, you’ll value them more. You’ll taste the difference. You’ll eat more mindfully.
- Treat Meat as a Side Dish: Instead of a giant steak with a tiny bit of broccoli, try a giant pile of roasted veggies with a little bit of high-quality bacon or chicken mixed in for flavor.
- Grow Something: Even if it’s just a pot of basil on your windowsill. When you grow your own food, you reconnect with the reality of where nutrition comes from. It doesn't come from a factory; it comes from dirt and sun.
- Don't Get Your Fuel Where Your Car Does: Convenience store "food" is almost exclusively processed junk. If you’re hungry on the road, wait until you find a grocery store or a real cafe.
Understanding the "Not Too Much" Part
The "not too much" part of the mantra is the hardest for most of us. We are biologically wired to crave calorie-dense foods because, for most of human history, calories were scarce. Now, they are everywhere. The trick isn't willpower; it’s environment. If you don't have Oreos in the house, you won't eat Oreos at 11 PM. If you use smaller plates, you’ll naturally eat smaller portions.
Pollan also suggests "leaving something on your plate." In a world where we’re told to "clean our plates," this is hard. But it’s a way of proving to yourself that you are in charge of your appetite, not the portion size served by a restaurant. Stop when you are no longer hungry, not when you are "full." There’s a big difference between the two.
Ultimately, defending food is about defending your humanity. It’s about refusing to be a passive consumer in a system that views you as a walking wallet. It’s about choosing flavor over chemicals and community over convenience. It’s not always easy, and it’s certainly not always the cheapest option in the short term, but the long-term cost of the alternative is a lot higher.
How to Start Today
- Audit your pantry. Toss anything where the first three ingredients include "high fructose corn syrup" or "hydrogenated oil."
- Visit a Farmers Market. Talk to the person who grew the onions. It changes your relationship with the meal.
- Drink water. Most of the "hunger" we feel is actually thirst or a craving for the hit of dopamine from a soda.
- Eat slowly. Aim for 20 minutes. It takes that long for your brain to realize your stomach is satisfied.
Real health doesn't come from a pill or a powder. It comes from the garden, the farm, and the kitchen. It’s time we stopped listening to the marketing and started listening to our bodies and our history. That’s the core of the message, and it’s a message that isn't going out of style anytime soon.