Most popular books on food either promise health and longevity for the nutritional advice they are proposing, or predict dire personal or social consequences if certain types of food choices are made. And one can go on the Internet, Facebook or Twitter and find evidence to support any food attribute or danger in which one is interested or fears. Most have little or no scientifically validated evidence to back up those contentions. Popularly written food books by qualified scientists are rather rare.
Two such books have been published in the last year that deserve to be read by people interested in nutrition, especially in a food and health obsessed community like Durango. One is Something To Chew on: Challenging Controversies In Food and Health, by Professor Mike Gibney, director of the Institute of Food and Health at University College Dublin. The other is One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed The World by Sir Gordon Conway, professor of International Development at Imperial College London. Both authors are internationally known and serve on many high-level advisory committees in the U.S. and Europe that address both local and global food needs. While thoroughly scientific in content, both books are written for the general public and are highly readable and even entertaining.
A few of the controversial topics covered are: organic foods, genetic modification of seeds, safety and wholesomeness of the modern food chain, integrity of food research, consumer perception of food risk, obesity and growing old.
An example of one advice both books reject is that we shouldn’t eat anything our grannies didn’t eat, popularized by authors such as Michael Pollan. Gibney points out that Pollan’s grandmother lived during an era of food shortages, erratic food security, widespread food adulteration, unregulated food control and a diet based on a narrow range of food so that nutritional deficiencies were common. “If Pollan’s granny had a great diet, then she was very privileged and not in any way representative of the great unwashed.”
An example of a contentious technology both authors support, as do almost all scientists, is the genetic modification of seeds. While it occurred too late to be included in these books, the scientific community’s reaction to an act of bioterrorism three months ago at a GMO research center in the Philippines is illustrative of the two author’s position. The incident involved the destruction of a Golden Rice test being conducted by the International Rice Research Institute and the Philippine Rice Research Institute.
Golden Rice is a strain that is genetically modified to produce ß-carotene and eliminate vitamin A deficiency. Rice is the main ingredient in the Asian diet but white rice lacks vitamin A. The deficiency can result in blindness and also contribute to immune system functions. It is estimated that Golden Rice could eliminate between 1.9 and 2.8 million preventable deaths annually, mostly young children and women.
Greenpeace and some other environmental organizations ideologically apposed to GMO technology took credit for the destruction.
The act enraged thousands of scientists globally and led to a scathing editorial “Standing Up for GMOs” in the Sept. 20 issue of Science, one of the most broadly read and respected scientific journals.
The editorial was signed by Bruce Albert, former president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; Roger Beachy, former director of the U.S. National Institute of Food and Agriculture; Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford University; Phillip Sharp, Nobel laureate at MIT; and several other food and agricultural specialists and award winners from England, India, Australia, Philippines and Saudi Arabia.
The overwhelming scientific consensus for GM foods shown in the Golden Rice episode justifies the support expressed by the two authors. It also should be a reason for readers who respect evidence-based research to be more aggressively against those who disparage the technology and attempt to limit or even halt it use.
Other contentious issues where the two books are in agreement are the counter productive consequences of the “buy locally” movement, the various uses awash in contradictions that have made “sustainable” a meaningless term, and the harmful overselling of the virtues of organic produce that has influenced people, especially those on restricted incomes, to believe they cannot safely and nutritiously feed their families unless they purchase more expensive products that are labeled organic.
The purpose of both books is to help non-experts gain an understanding of the complexities and challenges in the field of food and health. Both authors acknowledge that there are some people with an ideologically based opinion on these issues that will not be changed by scientific arguments. For others, they hope to open minds, to surprise and to even shock some readers when scientifically validated evidence is clearly and impartially explained.
Garth Buchanan holds a doctorate in applied science and has 35 years of experience in operations research. Reach him at gbuch@frontier.net.
