In "America's National Eating Disorder", Pollan assumes the role of doctor and neatly lays out what he thinks

America's problem is and what he thinks America's problblem with food is and why it's happened !e ha"e too much food, and too many choices##"$ats or carbs% &hree s'uares or continuous gra(ing% )aw or cooked% *rganic or industrial% +eg or "egan% ,eat or mock meat%"##and no cultural anchor to tell us "what and how and where and when to eat" -Pollan ./0.10.23 &his has brought the 'uacks and snake#oil sellers, who sense "easy marks for food fads and diets of e"ery description" -Pollan ./0.10..3 4ust in case his audience wants to argue, Pollan then walks through some of these fads and diets, from 5ar"ey 6elloggs "legendarily nutty sanatorium" and 5orace $letcher up to the Atkins diet and the war on carbs -Pollan ./0.10.73 Pollan argues that the only reason these gain traction is our "lack of stable culinary traditions" and lab#based "nutritional orthodo8y" lea"e us confused and wandering in the "ast foodscape of modern America -Pollan ./0.10.73 If we were like the $rench, Pollan argues, we would be healthier &hey ha"e a "strict and stable set of rules" that allows them to eat supposedly 'unhealthy' foods while being more healthy than us -Pollan ./0.10.23 &hey en9oy their eating and let taste and tradition guide them, unlike the :; In the :;, Pollan e8plains that the food industry is rather delibriyely creating wa"es and creating fads and fears in order to "sell more food to such a well#fed population", no matter the cost to our health and wellbeing -Pollan ./0.10.23 &5e argument is that food companies are constantly trying to sell more and new foods and thus deliberately "erode the cultural underpinnings" that stand in the way of "the march of commerciali(ation" and eating is 9ust the latest "casualty of capitalism" -Pollan ./0.10.<3 $amily dinner does not mean what it used to= it is not a time of togetherness around a home#cooked meal, because manufacturers can't sell more food like that ;o it is microwa"es and a drifting apart with separate dishes, all -probably3 because we did not ha"e a set of traditions to fall back on Anyway, that's what Pollan is arguing It boils down to three big points1 America has a problem, it's because we are unrooted, and that's a deliberate thing by >ig ?orporations because capitalism ;o America has a problem, a 'national eating disorder', if you will Interestingly, Pollan seems sure that his audience is already aware of this and considers it an issue &his article 9ust launches straight into an argument &here's hardly any build= right away we ha"e "neurotic eating" and are

"tortured" about food ;low down a little, Pollan I 9ust started reading and you are already throwing punches like a madman I'm not e"en sure where I am yet, I 9ust know you're hitting me &his sudden start is a ma9or flaw with the essay, for it's wildly disorienting to begin an article so strongly with so little conte8t 5owe"er, I suspect that may lie not with the author himself, but with whoe"er it was who ripped this essay from &he *mni"ore's Dilemna I sincerely doubt that this was the first part of the book= the audience would already be primed and ready for this rather dogmatic beginning >ut as a standalone piece, this is not good A disoriented audience cannot follow an argument &hey're disoriented >ut the rest of this section is much easier to follow &his does not mean that it is free of the same hea"y#hitting, biased approach &he strong language of the opener continues throughout the piece1 we ha"e "great parao8syms" and "succumbed to the "ogue" -Pollan ./0.10..3 !e ha"e "neo# pseudo#foods" and are "antinomian eaters@struggling to work out our dietary sal"ation"= we hear "seductions" about food from those who are "e8ploiting" us at "a steep cost" and so on and so forth -Pollan ./0.10.23 *ne good thing about such blatant, open bias is that Pollan makes no pretensions that this is an unbiased piece After all, an author absolutely cannot claim we are ""antinomian eaters@ struggling to work out our dietary sal"ation" without showing a "ery strong position As of April 0<, ./07, the ,erriam#!ebster online dictionary defines antinomian as "one who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to sal"ation" or, secondarily, "one who re9ects a socially established morality" -%3 It is impossible to draw the image of a lost and depurate belie"er in food religion with impartiality And so Pollan doesn't e"en try &he tone is not pedantic= rather, it's con"ersational, like the audience and Pollan are ha"ing a con"ersation A rather one#sided one, but still And that might be *6 "America's National Eating Disorder" is not making any pretenses, really $rom the beginning, it's clear how this piece will go And the argument raised is uni'ue Pollan does do a "ery poor 9ob representing the Atkins diet and the carb article, "!hat if It's All >een a >ig $at Aie%", howe"er 5e deliberately brushes them off to gi"e huis argument more weight, and this is one of the few instances I feel his bias is more 'underhanded', so to speak It's not 'uite as ob"ious as before, but still present >ut maybe it has to be this strong to e"en draw someone's attention in a sea of fad diets and nutritional studies and loose regulations and general

confusion ;o the article starts strong and rushed, but it work well enough to introduce the idea that America is 9ust as much country of neurotic eaters clinging to fad diets as it e"er was 5istory will gi"e us perspecti"e, and we'll see what we do now is 9ust as silly as what we did way back when &he second big point Pollan raises is that our digressed and distressing eating, as Americans, comes from our lack of stable dietary traditions Pollan seems to belie"e here that if we had only had a really strong set of cultural beliefs, then we would be healthier, almost no matter what they were as long as we has strict traditions to tell us "what and how and where and when to eat" -Pollan ./0.10.23 &o pro"e this, he cites the $rench, who eat wine and bread and cheese but are o"erall healthier than us because they ha"e &)ADI&I*N -to be said like &e"ye in "$iddler on the )oof"3 In America, we ha"e "the omni"ore's dilemma -Pollan ./0.10.23 *r so says doctor Pollan >ut it would be far easier to agree with his diagnosis if he actually told us what an 'omni"ore's dilmna' is. Aooking at it in conte8t, I decided it probably meant that we ha"e AAA the options in our local supermarkets, so then we ha"e to chose what we actually want to eat from the endless aisles. ?lose, but not 'uite right In his conclusion, Pollan references that the omni"ore's dilmna is actually a prehistoric one, form back when we were "an8ious omni"ores struggling@to figure out what is wise to eat" -Pollan ./0.10.<3 *h !ell, that would ha"e been nice to know Prehistorically, they had to worry if berries were literally poison, as in "if I eat this, will I fall down and foam at the mouth in the ne8t few minutes%" and not "!ill eating this gi"e me high blood pressure andBor cancer in twenty years%" Admittedly, this is almost certainly not Pollan's fault= this essay is taken from a book that is actually called The Omnivore's Dilemna I'm sure e"en the back co"er e8plained 9ust what that was, so the original audience would know 9ust what he meant when he brought the term up >ut it was confusing to me without prior knowledge ,oreo"er, our diagnosis with this gra"e affliction is based off of only one e8ample1 $rance Now, I'm sure there are more, but Pollan doesn't e"en point us in the right direction for further research Not e"en, "&his principle holds true in these fi"e other countries &heir names are@" and then we could look them up Instead, he 9ust goes, "Aook at $rance and take my word for it " No counterarguments are raised, like "!ell, in this country they ha"e customs but they are realy actually pretty unhealthy" or anything I would definitely ha"e appreciated seeing more research for this point in the argument I mean, it's

interesting, but a whole case can't be made from one e8ample $or all the audience knows, $rance is actually the unusual one Pollan's last argument is that all this badness and confusion and an8iety -up to and including actual eating dieoreders3 is pretty much delbritey caused by the food industry so they can sell us more crap food, not matter what the cost to our health or society &his last bit "eers off into Pollan's personal diatribe on big business, specifically food marketers !ell, *6 Didn't see that one coming, Pollan *f all the points, this is perhaps the strangest Pollan warnsBinforms us that all of these food fads are pushed by the market because how else do you sell food to people who already ha"e it% >y telling them what they ha"e is poisen and they need something different, ob"iously And so Pollan includes a heartrending anecdote about "the state of the American family dinner", where e"eryone is off doing their own things, maybe sort of together, maybe not= this is how we "sit down to a family meal" now -Pollan ./0.10.2#0.<3 +ery scary, "ery biased !e don't see the flip side A& AAA, we only hear that capitalism will "erode the "arious cultural underpinnings that steady a society but often impede the march of commerciali(ation" and our eating is 9ust he latest "causaly of capitalism" -Pollan ./0.10.<3 Pollan needs to slow down. &his is so left field, politically and argument#wise that I got whiplash 5e outright accuses capitalism of "throwing us back on a perple8ing, nutritionally periods landscape deeply shadowd again by the omni"ore's dilemma" -Pollan ./0.10.<3 And that's it No e8amination of anything else that could possibly ha"e contributed to this state E"en those sacred food traditions from earlier might not ha"e sa"ed us from the e"il of capitalism##e"en $rance is falling Pollan doesn't mention how America is a uni'ue situation= a "ery young, affluent country of immigrants, going through the Information Age where there is more knowledge a"ailable than e"er before and few regulations or industry guidelines or about a million other things that might ha"e fed into this problem 4ust capitalism $urthermore, I keep calling Pollan a "doctor" because he seems to be playing that role, but he falls down on the 9ob here !e got our symptoms and diagnosis, an e8amination of a cause, so what should come ne8t% A treatment, right% Nope !e're told that someone poisoned us, then left hanging Pollan offers absolutely nothing in the way of a cure Cip, nada, (ilch &hat's helpful I belie"e a strongly opinionated essay like this should end on an action note I was e8pecting a, "5ere's the ne8t

step" spiel, but that didn't happen Instead, capitalism >ut Pollan doesn't do anything with the capitalism angle 5e 9ust kinda lets us know it e8ists= he doesn't call for more regulations, or a more caring form of go"ernment -socialism, maybe e"en communism%3, or widely a"ailable and repeatable nutritional programs for all, or an "e"erything is good in moderation" or anything Di"e me something, Pollan Don't lea"e me and the rest of your audience hanging &5is is a ma9or flaw1 he chooses a diatribe o"er aid of any sort &his can't be a hopeless situation, so where's the hope in this essay% It seems that the only point was to raise awareness, which isn't good enough I chose this piece because I en9oyed reading it the first time, and because I ha"e personally witnessed America's eating disorder ,y sister, 6aitlyn, hung out with a "ery competiti"e young woman back home $or a long time, e"ery week 6aityln would come home with stories about whate"er health cra(e ,aya was into at the time or how ,aya would belittle my "ery slender and healthy sisters "terrible" eating habits ,y baby sister ended up becoming se"erely anore8ic and was almost taken from us to be placed in a residential hospital $illed with conflicting ideas about what was good to eat and what wasn't, she chose simply to a"oid the issue by not eating at all ;o, an une8amined reading of this appealed to me It touched on familiar aspects, played a tune I knew and we were both righteously indignant about 5owe"er, as soon as I began to look at this piece with a critical eye, it seemed to fall apart &he bias is too strong ;ometimes that works, like in A People's History by 5oward Cinn &hat is e8plicitly leftist, for the purpose of balancing all the right#wing histories &his@ I don't know It doesn't beha"e in a proper way It makes some of the bias ob"ious, so other bits can sneak in under the radar And I don't e"en know what was up with the ending It starts fast, speaks with familiarity about unfamiliar topics and is 9ust "ery angry without focusing the power of anger &his article was a good stopping off point, but it needs more Aike, about a book more ,aybe the whole rest of The Onmivore's Dilemna is like this, but probably not It would probably ha"e a lot of the e"idence, conte8t and calls this essay needs Alone, this essay doesn't go anywhere when it should build to something, because it does a "ery "ery good 9ob of riling up its audience along with it, but then it 9ust lea"es us with all that energy instead of focusing it Actually, that's rather ironic &he essay about the omni"ore's dilemma lea"es us with an omni"ore's dilmnema1 the audience is now angry, but without

someone to tell them what to do and when, there are too many options !e are again lost in a sea of supermarket aisles without a compass &hanks Pollan :ntil someone gi"es better some answers, I guess I'll listen to my -much much healthier and well#educated3 sister1 "&here are no bad foods, only too much food "