P6: Diets: Good or Evil?

As humans we have the ability to think about the things that we do, and this includes eating. However, this can cause us to overthink something as simple as food. We can’t just eat the foods that give us pleasure anymore; we have to eat the things that we have decided will make us healthier and live longer. This stems from something Pollan calls “the omnivore’s dilemma.” This means that with the ability to eat many different kinds of food we are faced with the problem of deciding for ourselves what to eat. As Pollan explains this causes problems like our susceptibility to diet fads. Any one that has a medical degree immediately becomes an expert that we think that we can trust to know what is best for us. As we have come to an era where most of the foods that we eat come prepackaged with the nutritional facts across them, we are forced to think about whether this is going to be detrimental to our health or not. I found it very interesting that people like the French who eat their food with more regard towards taste rather than health tend to be healthier than the health conscious people of America.

                I can see this phenomenon of eating for health in many places in my life. I have been an athlete all of my life and this is very closely tied to the nutritional values of the foods that I eat. I have been a competitive swimmer since I was eight years and I have always watched the health values of the foods that I eat during the competition season. I feel that these healthy foods help me to perform better than if I were eating junk food. However, when I look at other people I can see that they do not have the same standards of health as me. People who are obese will do things like go on diets to become healthy. They will do things like eat more salads and fewer desserts, but they will not put in the work that is required. They think that this change of eating habits will by itself cause them to lose weight and become healthier, but they forget about exercise. This means that when they fail to lose weight at the rate that they desire they drop or change the diet rather than add exercise.