I recently read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Pollan recommends eating “real” food, which he defines in detail (if you want the details, read the book). It’s a safe bet that eating real food will be better for you and better for the planet.
Enter the health fair I worked last week. Since I knew I would be working late, I lack a good excuse for being ill-prepared, but I found myself in desperate straights, food-wise, with a bag of Sun Chips in my hand. There I was, a health educator, working at a health fair, eating chips. Suffice it to say that I consumed said chips surreptitiously.
To further torture myself, I could not help but look at the nutrition label, which broke Pollan’s, “less than five ingredient,” guideline by, oh, about 30 ingredients. This included some special ones like Yellow 5 Lake (artificial color) and the ever ubiquitous, “natural flavor” — ingredients that clearly put this “food” outside of the real food realm.
Her Green Life 