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Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan Quotes

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Famous Michael Pollan Quotes

“But carbon 13 [the carbon from corn] doesn't lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn.... Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar. So that's us: processed corn, walking.”

PeopleStillsTodayLyingAnimalHairWalkingFleshGrassDietsReportsSugarCarbonFeedingCornResearchersProteinTissuesBeveragesLivestockSacrilegeTrue PeopleIsotopes
Author:Michael Pollan
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“You may not think you eat a lot of corn and soybeans, but you do: 75 percent of the vegetable oils in your diet come from soy (representing 20 percent of your daily calories) and more than half of the sweeteners you consume come from corn (representing around 10 perecent of daily calories).”

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Book:In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
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“The sheer novelty and glamor of the Western diet, with its seventeen thousand new food products every year and the marketing power - thirty-two billion dollars a year - used to sell us those products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and government and marketing to help us decide what to eat.”

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Book:In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
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“...There's a lot of money in the Western diet. The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes. The healthcare industry makes more money treating chronic diseases (which account for three quarters of the $2 trillion plus we spend each year on health care in this country) than preventing them.”

YearsCountryCareThreeProcessIndustryDiseaseAccountsWesternHealth CareDietsPlusQuartersHealthcareMore MoneyLots Of MoneyProfitablePreventing
Book:Food Rules: An Eater's Manual
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“That eating should be foremost about bodily health is a relatively new and, I think, destructive idea-destructive not just the pleasure of eating, which would be bad enough, but paradoxically of our health as well. Indeed, no people on earth worry more about the health consequences of their food choices than we Americans-and no people suffer from as many diet-related problems. We are becoming a nation of orthorexics: people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.”

PeopleThinkingShouldWellsIdeasEnoughProblemWould BeEarthSufferingChoicesNationsPleasureWorryBecomingHealthyEatingConsequenceObsessionDietsRelatedDestructiveNutritionUnhealthyHealthy EatingFood ChoicesUnhealthy Obsession
Author:Michael Pollan
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