Tuesday, December 29, 2015
By Lynn Elber
AP Television Writer
LOS ANGELES
January is looming, and we all know what that means: A resolution to lose weight and get healthy. Just like the 2015 declaration. And the one before that.
What diet to choose this time? Low-fat? Low-carb? Gluten-free or prehistoric? Or just throw out the scale and surrender to fate and French fries?
Stop, take a breath and consider instead a seven-word alternative offered by prominent food writer Michael Pollan that embraces clarity and shuns extremism.
Here goes: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
Behind that advice is a wealth of scientific, medical and anecdotal evidence as explored in the documentary “In Defense of Food,” airing from 9 to 11 p.m. Wednesday on WQED-PBS.
Pollan is an amiable, engaging guide through a buffet line that includes the how and why of the modern diet, the ever-shifting barrage of confusing, conflicting decrees (Don’t eat eggs! Eat eggs!) and, most importantly, realistic alternatives to chew over.
“The more I worked on this issue, the more I realized that painting things in black and white is not the way to help people move, because people move incrementally,” said Pollan, whose books include “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”
“Relaxing about our eating is really important, too. I don’t want to make people more anxious about it,” he added. “We already are made very anxious.”
But there is reason for concern. A sharp rise in U.S. obesity and diabetes parallels our devotion to a diet heavy in meat, white flour and fat.
And sugar. We consume about 1,000 percent more of it per day than we did 200 years ago, Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, says in “In Defense of Food.”
Among the guidelines Pollan offers in the documentary:
“When I say, ‘Eat food,’ I’m basically saying eat the kinds of things that people have been eating for a long time,” including meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and grains, but everything in moderation.
Avoid supermarket center aisles that harbor the processed foods that Pollan labels “edible food-like substances” that don’t deserve to be called food. “If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don’t,” he says.
Use smaller plates and glasses to reduce portions.