QuoteProject
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.
Michael Pollan
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The Western diet is characterized by overwhelming choices and marketing that complicates our food decisions.

Michael Pollan highlights the impact of modern food marketing on our dietary choices, noting that the vast array of new products and advertising have overshadowed traditional eating practices. As a result, people increasingly depend on external sources like science and media to navigate their food decisions rather than relying on cultural traditions.

Themes

DietMarketingTraditionNutritionFood Choices

In practice

Example use cases

Discussing food choices at a health seminar.

More from Michael Pollan

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Michael PollanRead
You look how much sugar is in a typical supermarket loaf of bread: it's a lot of sugar. It's just become one of those sugar delivery systems in our food economy.
Michael PollanRead
There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we're eating them every day.
Michael PollanRead
Meat is a mighty contributor to climate change and other environmental problems. The amount of meat we're eating is one of the leading causes of climate change. It's as important as the kind of car you drive - whether you eat meat a lot or how much meat you eat.
Michael PollanRead
[Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa.
Michael PollanRead
He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.
Michael PollanRead

Similar quotes

Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.
George CarlinRead
My diabetes is such a central part of my life... it did teach me discipline... it also taught me about moderation... I've trained myself to be super-vigilant... because I feel better when I am in control.
Sonia SotomayorRead
Most aid agencies do not even consider proposals to treat mental health problems; those that do think of it as a minor player, overshadowed by the pressing need to save lives by treating physical illness.
Vikram PatelRead
To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.
Francois De La RochefoucauldRead
We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.
Elisabeth Kubler-RossRead
We are all dietetic sinners; only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us; the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.
William OslerRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.