Kaiser 1

Calie Kaiser
Professor Lohmeyer
Composition 1
12/10/17
Escape from the Western Diet Summary
In the essay Escape from the Western Diet, Michael Pollan gives his input on our diets;

our system of the Western Diet is flawed. Pollan makes a point in his essay that the Western

Diet is fast, cheap, and easy, (425). He believes to escape the Western Diet, we have to rethink

our ways of what we are putting into our bodies and reflect on our ancestors ways of doing

things by eating less processed foods.

Pollan refers back to our ancestors various times during his essay to explain why we do

not eat like they do. We do not put the amount of time into our food that our ancestors used to.

The average American spends less than a half hour a day preparing meals and little more than

an hour enjoying them, (Pollan 425). Our food is fast today versus years ago when our ancestors

would hunt and gather for their food.

Hunting and gathering food is harder than what we are used to. Pollan says the solution to

our problem of the easy Western Diet is to simply avoid any food that had been processed to

such an extent that it is more the product of industry than of nature, (Pollan 424). Pollan uses

the example of a steer. If the steer is fed processed corn, antibiotics, and hormones is its meat

considered a whole food and not processed (424)? The category of where we draw the line with

whole foods and also be deceiving with plants when we use chemical based fertilizers.
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Food and the price of it can be simplified into a ratio: the more industrialized it becomes,

the cheaper it gets. This is where we start to go wrong with what we buy. Pollan states,

Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food, (425). He mentions that other

countries prioritize more of their income to food, and this is why we are prime examples of the

Western diet. Pollan makes a point that when you are in the supermarket to not look at the price,

but rather the grade of processing. To escape the Western Diet, we have to give up some things

that we value; time and money. This is why we have fallen into the great abyss that is the

Western diet.

Overall, Pollan does a great job to convince the reader with sufficient information to

support his views. His plan for escaping the Western Diet is being conscious of what we are

buying and eating. We have to stop falling for the scams of the Western Diet as we have been.

We have to stray away from food that is fast, cheap, and easy, (Pollan 425).
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Works Cited
Pollan, Micheal. "Escaping the Western Diet." They Say I Say With Readings. Gerald Graff, Cathy
Birkenstein, Russel Durst. W.W. Norton & Company, 2015. pp. 420-427. Essay.