The rise of the food like substance

In Defense of Food:
An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan

If you've read Marion Nestle or any number of other critics of the American "food culture", you'll find nothing new here. But Michael Pollan is a great synthesizer and writes a snappy prose. I enjoyed it so much I listened to some parts twice or more.  (Okay, I was walking on busy city streets at the time--I had to double-up sometimes to hear what the noise of motors drowned out.)

Some points of note:
According to Michael Pollan, in 1977 when the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs first attempted to publish its recommendations, it was blasted for saying that Americans should eat less red meat and dairy products. It had to change its recommendations to, "less cholesterol and saturated fat."

Nutritionism is the word used by Marion Nestle (I think) to describe the way of thinking that says that foods with similar nutrients are identical, whatever their origins or other ingredients. Of course this falls short in the easiest example: baby formula. Even when formulated with the same relative proportions of protein, fat and carbohydrates, then fortified with every "known" nutrient, it still fails to keep babies thriving as well as mother's milk.  What we don't know will hurt us.

America's lack of a traditional food culture may owe something to the puritan doctrine that forbade taking pleasure in food.  Bless it, eat it, and get back to work.

You'd have to eat three of the apples of today to get the same nutrients as one apple of the 1940s.

And to top them all, "Organic oreos are not health food."

His personal recommendations for how to shop and how to eat are summarized at the end.  After reading them, I took a look at some of my cherished pantry staples. Most were (reassuringly) actual foods--not food-like substances.  But my organic vegetable broth?

Cane sugar, dextrose, molasses, and pear juice concentrate.  aka, sugar, sugar, sugar, and sugar. Organic, of course.