ENGWR 301
13 February 2014
In Defense of Pollan When Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma was published, many readers began questioning him for advice on what they should eat in order to stay healthy. In his more recent book, In Defense of Food, he responds with three rules, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants"(Pollan 1). This seven word response seems too simple for a relatively complicated question, but as he further elaborates these rules into specific guidelines, this summary turns out to be surprisingly complete. Using inductive and deductive reasoning, he debunks the ideas behind nutritionism and food science, and proves that the western diet is the cause for food related diseases. Inductive reasoning is when a
He further elaborate on this, explaining how there was a study done on a group of Aborigines that had adopted the Western diet which caused many of them to suffer from type 2 diabetes. In the study, the group was asked to return to their traditional diet for seven weeks, too see it had any effects. "After seven weeks, O'Dea drew blood from the Aborigines and found striking improvements in virtually every measure of their health [...] all the abnormalities of type II diabetes were either greatly improved or completely normalized "(Pollan 87). With this, Pollan creates a deductive syllogism to link the Western diet to food diseases. A syllogism is a form of reasoning which connects two supporting premises that lead to a conclusion (Griffith 270). His first premise is that the Western diet causes food related health problems. The second premise is that the Aborigines adopted the Western diet, which leads to the conclusion that the Aborigines will face food related problems. His deductive syllogism is sound because both premises were true, and the fact that many Aborigines had diabetes proves that the conclusion is also true. This study also proves that the inverse of this syllogism is also valid and sound. The first premise is that abandoning the Western diet and adopting a