Critical Review of Pollan's "Escape from the Western Diet"

Author’s critique “Escape from the Western Diet” by Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan is an activist, journalist, and is also a professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Michael Pollan wrote a persuasive article, titled “Escape from the Western Diet”, which presents a personal point of view on how our diet can affect our lives and the lives of others. According to Pollan, what we eat has a great impact on our personal health; if we keep eating junk food from chains like McDonalds, BurgerKing etc., we are most likely to develop serious diseases and conditions like diabetes and heart related conditions. Most authors offer some advantages and disadvantages, so does Pollen. He shows spends too much time discussing food processed, and doesn’t have good support for arguments, which is a disadvantage of this article. Pollan says that “we should simply avoid any food that has been processed to such an extent that it is more the product of industry than of nature”, which is a good idea; however, is very hard to put that in effect, especially when the that average American spends only 10% of their income on food. This would be a problem for us, especially because healthy foods are typically very expensive, versus getting premade food or a fast food meal. Pollan is a well-educated American, and he knows what he is taking. However, he focuses on processed food as being the really big issue. Processed food is not that bad in itself, the main thing is what is being put in processed food. There are some processed vegetables that are providing the same or close to the same nutrition, but there are also processed meals that have good balanced nutrition and vitamin content in them. Pollen has a lot of points regarding how bad processed food is for us. However, he doesn’t really have good support from the cultural environment. Yes, processed food is not typically good for us because we don’t really know what’s in it, and of course, fresh homemade food will always be healthier for us because we are preparing it, not some main agricultural business.

Pollen does have a great point about cultural input on our diet and how we react to it. He stated that cultural input has dramatic output on our dieting and how we implement the top pop culture views. It is most likely that we will fail trying to improve our diet based on the environment we are in; for example, if you are trying to lose weight and you’re trying a more balanced diet while your co-workers are eating junk food, you’re more likely to fall into the category of cultural and environmental eating habits, which not only ruin your diet but also you will most likely follow your co-workers because of the environment you’re in.

This point links to something I have done in Criminal Justice class; that if you put a person in a hostile environment, he is most likely to become hostile, and it is the same with food. If you’re in an environment that only presents healthy food habits and dieting, you are most likely to become successful in it. I believe this theory does work, not only in dieting, but also overall in all aspects of human psychology; we are what we are in. We, as humans, have been adjusting to too many different environments throughout the evolution of our race. Michael Pollan has a great point that I can support from both personal experience and psychology that I have learned through my college experience. The author clearly makes some good points. However, there are some weak points that lack evidence. Pollan spends too much time on companies input and overall personal opinions that are not quite proven points, but overall the author presents a decent balance of facts with personal opinion.

In conclusion, I believe Pollan is “Escape from the Western Diet”, presents an objective point of view on the cultural influence on our dieting, which in turn can have an enormous impact on the outcome of our health. This author influenced me because of a theory that has been prove has a fact in one of my Criminal Justice classes that I have taken. Overall, the environment is the main factor of the outcome.