a term coined in 1996 by American physician Steven Bratman (20). Orthorexia - sounds like orthodoxy: be very afraid!The bogeyman in Pollan's argument is "nutritionism" (a word traced to Australian Gyorgy Scrinis in 2002), the ideology that foods should be understood in terms of nutrients, and that the point of eating is health. This has several baneful consequences. Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to scientists (and to the journalists through whom scientists reach the public) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. In form this is a quasireligious idea, suggesting the visible world is not the one that really matters, which implies the need for a priesthood. For to enter a world where your dietary salvation depends on unseen nutrients, you need plenty of expert help. (28) Don't you love how everything evil is religious? And of course, priestcraft ruins everything: When the emphasis is on quantifying the nutrients contained in foods (or, to be precise, the recognized nutrients contained in foods), any qualitative distinction between whole foods and processed foods is apt to disappear. (32) We know better than to believe in transubstantiation!!
It might seem this is a Protestant sort of argument - no more mystified authority, all power to the laity! - but Protestantism is a problem too: Our Puritan roots ... impeded a sensual or aesthetic enjoyment of food. Like sex, the need to eat links us to the animals, and historically a great deal of Protestant energy has gone into helping us keep all such animal appetite s under strict control. (54-55). In fact, the thrill to Pollan's argument is neo-pagan: back to food, back to the many very different diets which preceded nutritionism, all of which turn out to be better for us. I'm not complaining - my inner polytheist is salivating.
Incidentally, Pollan's starting claim is that none of us eats as our mothers did as children, or even what our mothers fed us when we were growing up - bad news, as "food" (as opposed to the "edible foodlike substances" which cram our supermarkets) is something defined and perfected by culture, and passed down in families rather than through nutrition charts, processed foods, packaging or food journalism. In my case, that's not quite true. To the horror of various orthorexic friends and housemates in thrall to the evil alliance of nutritionists and food industry types, including the health food industry, I enjoy butter, cheese and cream every bit as much as my mother does. And guess what: without a thought to maintaining a "healthy diet," I'm healthy as can be. Enjoy food, too, not too much, and mostly plants.
