If my life were to be divided up into story arcs with themes, one of the two themes of this part of my life would be "what do I need to do to be healthy." While researching the answer to that question I came upon this, a list of the ingredients in a Chicken McNugget. I would like to share with you now an excerpt from the notes I took from Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma.
EDIT: Well, it looks like it timed out and cut my poll, sorry folks, no poll today.
EDIT 2: As a number of you have pointed out, and I must admit that perhaps you were right in saying so, that my tactics in presentation here may not have been entirely fair to McDonalds and processed foods in general (though as another poster pointed out, it's amazing how many people will come out in defense of something that's clearly as bad for you as McDonalds is). My hope had been that a conversation about the toxic food environment in America (and increasingly in other industrialized countries as well) would build from an origin of looking at what's in a Chicken McNugget.
For those of you who will do me the kindness of letting me elaborate on some of the points that I felt were implicit in pointing out all of the ingredients in a Chicken McNugget despite my conduct in presenting it, I would like to take a moment to expand a bit here on the original post.
The critique I have received here more than any other (and in the cases of a few posts, in the form of personal attacks on both my intelligence and my integrity) is that I have myself preyed on ignorance by merely pointing out that these synthetic chemicals have seemingly alien names, and at certain doses have toxic affects. That is a valid critique, but I think that implicit in the fact that these synthetic chemicals have seemingly alien names is a much more important point, that being that from an evolutionary perspective, these synthetic chemicals are genuinely alien. Nutrition on a chemical level is a blindingly complex field, because the biological processes that compose the human body are equally complex. We're talking here about mechanisms that have evolved over millions of years, and in the case of omnivorous creatures like humans, they are processes that have evolved to fuel themselves by consuming the other natural things in our habitats, plants, animals, and even some minerals. Evolution has selected for bodies that could fuel themselves with these natural things, because they were the fuel that was readily available, and by taking advantage of their availability, the human organism has thrived.
The synthetic compounds used in processed foods (I used the McNugget here because I feel that it is somewhat of a poster child for processed foods) are relatively new. The industrial food system really started to take shape around the end of WWII, and from an evolutionary perspective the foods it has produced are incredibly new. Our bodies simply were not built to be fueled with these foods. Whether or not any given chemical is genuinely harmful to the human machine is, admittedly, not something that I have the expertise to comment upon, and in implying that these chemicals are dangerous, I admittedly took an underhanded tactic. What I can say is that we simply don't know in any real sense what affect these synthetic compounds have on us. By introducing an industrial food system that is based around their consumption (as well as the consumption of massive amounts of cleverly re-arranged corn) we have begun a massive experiment on a societal level, and the outcome of this experiment would seem to indicate that some part of the industrial food process (whether it's the chemicals, the raising of food in a monoculture, the simple fact that we have made too much food available, or something else) leads to a serious decrease in the health of anyone who eats the food it produces. We do know that there is a very strong positive correlation between the consumption of processed foods and the development of diseases of affluence such as cancer and diabetes, and that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this food has played a large roll in the obesity epidemic that has come to ravage the country that I call my home.
The real question that I'm asking here is, do the benefits of convenience and a cost that is cheap at the register really outweigh the actual toll that the industrial food system has taken on us?
... So now, if I may, let me pose a question. What the hell is wrong with us? Why would anyone eat this? Why would anyone think that it qualifies, even remotely, as food? Considering that statistics say that one in three American children eat fast food every day, shouldn't we be asking ourselves some serious questions like "why is it even legal to serve that to people, nonetheless to children, and on a regular basis?"Ingredients of a Chicken McNugget said:
EDIT: Well, it looks like it timed out and cut my poll, sorry folks, no poll today.
EDIT 2: As a number of you have pointed out, and I must admit that perhaps you were right in saying so, that my tactics in presentation here may not have been entirely fair to McDonalds and processed foods in general (though as another poster pointed out, it's amazing how many people will come out in defense of something that's clearly as bad for you as McDonalds is). My hope had been that a conversation about the toxic food environment in America (and increasingly in other industrialized countries as well) would build from an origin of looking at what's in a Chicken McNugget.
For those of you who will do me the kindness of letting me elaborate on some of the points that I felt were implicit in pointing out all of the ingredients in a Chicken McNugget despite my conduct in presenting it, I would like to take a moment to expand a bit here on the original post.
The critique I have received here more than any other (and in the cases of a few posts, in the form of personal attacks on both my intelligence and my integrity) is that I have myself preyed on ignorance by merely pointing out that these synthetic chemicals have seemingly alien names, and at certain doses have toxic affects. That is a valid critique, but I think that implicit in the fact that these synthetic chemicals have seemingly alien names is a much more important point, that being that from an evolutionary perspective, these synthetic chemicals are genuinely alien. Nutrition on a chemical level is a blindingly complex field, because the biological processes that compose the human body are equally complex. We're talking here about mechanisms that have evolved over millions of years, and in the case of omnivorous creatures like humans, they are processes that have evolved to fuel themselves by consuming the other natural things in our habitats, plants, animals, and even some minerals. Evolution has selected for bodies that could fuel themselves with these natural things, because they were the fuel that was readily available, and by taking advantage of their availability, the human organism has thrived.
The synthetic compounds used in processed foods (I used the McNugget here because I feel that it is somewhat of a poster child for processed foods) are relatively new. The industrial food system really started to take shape around the end of WWII, and from an evolutionary perspective the foods it has produced are incredibly new. Our bodies simply were not built to be fueled with these foods. Whether or not any given chemical is genuinely harmful to the human machine is, admittedly, not something that I have the expertise to comment upon, and in implying that these chemicals are dangerous, I admittedly took an underhanded tactic. What I can say is that we simply don't know in any real sense what affect these synthetic compounds have on us. By introducing an industrial food system that is based around their consumption (as well as the consumption of massive amounts of cleverly re-arranged corn) we have begun a massive experiment on a societal level, and the outcome of this experiment would seem to indicate that some part of the industrial food process (whether it's the chemicals, the raising of food in a monoculture, the simple fact that we have made too much food available, or something else) leads to a serious decrease in the health of anyone who eats the food it produces. We do know that there is a very strong positive correlation between the consumption of processed foods and the development of diseases of affluence such as cancer and diabetes, and that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this food has played a large roll in the obesity epidemic that has come to ravage the country that I call my home.
The real question that I'm asking here is, do the benefits of convenience and a cost that is cheap at the register really outweigh the actual toll that the industrial food system has taken on us?
