Download Guide to – Unhappy Meals

IS9 – Guide to Unhappy Meals
Name(s) ______________________
Unhappy Meals
(introduction – the whole team answers before you read the article)

What types of nutritional advice have you heard before? Provide two or three
examples.

Elaborate (write two or three sentences explaining what you think he means) on
each of Mr. Pollen’s three fundamental rules of eating.
o Eat food:
o Not too much:
o Mostly plants:
(From Food to Nutrients – Partner 1)
1. What is the difference between food and nutrients? Why have nutrients come to
replace food in grocery stores?
2. In 1977, in an attempt to slow the alarming rise in heart disease amongst
American’s, a Senate panel tried to recommend that American’s consume less
meet and dairy products. Explain what happened to this recommendation?
3. Read about the rise of “nutritionism.” What did the rise of this ideology do to the
distinction between real foods and processed foods?
IS9 – Guide to Unhappy Meals
Name(s) ______________________
4. As “nutritionism” creates one new food fad after another. What is difficult about
marketing a banana?
5. In the late 70’s and early 80’s the US government recommended a diet low in
saturated fat. What happened to average weight of people in the US? Why?

What types of nutritional advice have you heard before? Provide two or three
examples.

Elaborate (write two or three sentences explaining what you think he means) on
each of Mr. Pollen’s three fundamental rules of eating.
o Eat food:
o Not too much:
o Mostly plants:
(Bad Science – Partner 2)
6. What does Mr. Pollan mean when he calls science “reductionist.” Why does
reductionist science have problems studying the effects of food?
7. Why do food scientists study foods one nutrient at a time, even though they know
that nutrients may behave totally differently when removed from the context of
their food?
IS9 – Guide to Unhappy Meals
Name(s) ______________________
8. Provide one example of how a nutrient behaves differently when you take it out of
the food it normally occurs in and give it to someone in a supplement.
9. Provide one example of how lifestyle bedevils (messes up) studies about the
impacts of different foods on people’s health. What does this have to do with the
scientific process and the need to study one variable at a time?

What types of nutritional advice have you heard before? Provide two or three
examples.

Elaborate (write two or three sentences explaining what you think he means) on
each of Mr. Pollen’s three fundamental rules of eating.
o Eat food:
o Not too much:
o Mostly plants:
(the elephant in the room – partner 3)
10. What is the elephant in the room?
11. What was the result (on the health of Americans) of several decades of nutrientbased advise?
IS9 – Guide to Unhappy Meals
Name(s) ______________________
12. What has been the result of large scale use of chemical fertilizers on the
nutritional quality of food?
13. How many species did human’s used to regularly eat? How many species do they
regularly eat today? Why does this change matter?
14. Explain one consequence of the transition from eating lots of leaves to eating lots
of seeds?
15. Michael Pollan asks – “Are we better off with these new authorities (science,
journalism, and food advertisers) than we were with the traditional authorities
they supplanted?” What do you think.
IS9 – Guide to Unhappy Meals
Name(s) ______________________
(conclusion – the whole team answers after all other questions have been answered)
16. Listed below are Mr. Pollan’s list of recommendations for healthy eating. Each
partner should rank their self on a scale of 1 to 10 (ten being the most like what
Mr. Pollan describes) for each of these. I know that your parents make some of
your eating choices since they buy your food, but if you did it all on your own,
realistically where would you land on a scale of 1 to 10 with regards to the
following habits?
a. Eat Food
b. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims.
c. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are...
d. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.
e. Pay more, eat less.
f. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
g. Let culture be your guide, not science (eat more like the French).
h. Cook, Garden, Hunt and Fish (my addition based on other research).