Simple secrets to better eating

Best-selling author Michael Pollan talks about real food, his new book, and why grandma was right. How do you define "food"? What's better, eating organic or eating local? How does the average person afford farmers' market produce? What about growing your own food?

The dangers of "nutritionism":

Nutritionism is the ideology of food in America today. It's our unexamined assumptions about food, one of which is that nutrients matter more than foods. You reduce a muffin to how many grams of fiber, how much cholesterol, and so forth, and the reason it's a poor way to think about food is that it encourages us to think about food as medicine rather than as pleasure and culture.

Obsessing about food and health doesn't necessarily make us healthier. It's what I call the American Paradox.

Also, as soon as you think about food in terms of nutrients, then you need 'experts' to tell us how to eat. They're invisible and unseen, these nutrients.

Nutritionism mystifies food; it makes it scary and intimidating and confusing.