The most balanced, least sensationalist Netflix Health show I’ve found is “In Defence of Food” by Professor of Journalism, University of California, Michael Pollan. That’s not to say there are not frightening claims made, there are but they are not sensationalized like in most other Netflix videos.
I’m going to list my takeaways here to tempt you to watch the video. Follow the link above if you have a Netflix account.
- It’s hard to know what is healthy. There is so much information out there.
- what are the links between diet and health.
- however, the answer is not that complex.
- The western diet is not sustainable
- eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
- eat what people have been eating for a long time.
- don’t eat edible food like substances from the center supermarket aisles.
- eat around the outside of the supermarket
- here is Prof. Pollan’s lecture on the topic from University of California TV from 10 years ago.
- the food we eat today is very different from what it used to be.
- childhood obesity has more than doubled
- childhood diabetes is on the rise, (more than tripled)
- chronic disease linked to diet is the top 4 things that will kill us.
- labels are hard to read and understand
- people who eat a lot of processed food struggle with health problems.
- advertising has learned that mentioning health and vitamins in food works. Problem is those man made vitamins are probably not available to our bodies.
- the biggest threat to our health is probably sugar. We consume about 1000% more than we did 200 years ago.
- white flour breaks down into glucose when we eat it.
- diabetes is hitting low income communities the hardest.
What can we do?
- wait for evolution to change us to thrive on the Western diet. 🙂
- change the way we’re eating
- eat food, not too much, mostly plants
- avoid “nutritionism”. The ideology that the nutrients are the key to eating. That experts need to tell us what to eat.
Eat Food, not too much, mostly plants.
Stephen Ritz and Tower Garden are featured in the Netflix film. If you don’t know who he is and what he is doing to introduce real food to the Bronx, watch this video.
- building a garden in Canada’s North using Tower Garden.
- building gardens in the Bronx for food insecure Cancer patients.
- cheapest food in the supermarket is the worst for us.