Basically, what Pollan is trying to say to us is that we should go back to the traditional way of eating. None of this business about vitamins, nutrient-enriched and omega-3's. Back to a time when dinner was about good food and good company--not how much protein and vitamin A is in the meatloaf. As a nation, we need to stop processing, altering, and genetically engineering our food in the quest to make us "healthier" but instead take food for its face value.
Pollan makes a point with the idea that we should stop trying to adjust the things that should already be healthy for us. After all, do cows really need to eat flax seed so that they have the same nutrient quantity as fish? Every other nation gets along fine without feeling the need to do any of this, yet health-conscious America is so focused on inventing new ways to become healthier. Instead of focusing on one specific nutrient or vitamin, for example in an orange, that could possibly play a part in preventing heart disease (and then of course adding that one specific nutrient or vitamin to everything we eat), thought should be put into the concept that it is more than just that one thing that could make the orange so beneficial to our health.
Another side to this argument is that the changes intended to help our food become better for us, may in fact be doing the opposite. The need for hydrogenated vegetable oils that were supposed to revolutionize healthier cooking, we are now finding out may actually be harming us in the long run. In fact, they may be a contributor to the problems with our health. This could mean that some of the other developments being made are just as damaging, scientists are just not yet aware of the long term effects.
*Picture taken from Google images
