Our National Eating Disorder

In Michael Pollan’s article “Our National Eating Disorder,” he talks about America’s national eating disorder through discussing carbophobia. He believes that carbophobia is the most recent food fad, which hits the American population. He states that many Americans are obsessed with their appearance, which lead to the eating disorder. In addition, the omnivore’s dilemma is the other cause, which leads to America’s national eating disorder. Pollan states that as an immigrant country, it is difficult for Americans to find “a strong, stable culinary tradition to guide us.” It means that America does not have a traditional eating habit. Moreover, more and more people begin to rely on the introduction of food labels instead of scientific research to tell them what to eat.

I find the most interesting point of the article is that people may get lost in the idea of calories, taste, and “healthy” diets among the many options for meals. People pay more attention to labels on the food rather than scientific research. They look at the advertisements which emphasizes their products are healthy; however, they ignore that there may be other harmful and unhealthy ingredients adding to their food. Scientific studies and researches play a small role in guiding what we should eat today. Thus, I think it is important to improve the influence of scientific studies and researches about food in people’s minds.

            Personally, I always think about “healthy” when I eat even though my parents ask me to eat well balanced. I used to eat whatever I want to eat; however, after I have read some journal articles on newspaper about food, I began to change my eating habits.  I began to believe that there would have many negative effects on me if I eat whatever I want to eat. In China, a lot of foods are below the global standards. Thus, I suggest that people, whether in America or in China, should decrease their attention on food labels and pay more attention to scientific researches about how to eat healthy.