In his bestselling book In Defense of Food, journalist Michael Pollan reminds readers who are confused and anxious about fad diets that there is a simple solution: Good nourishment is about relationships.
Granted, he is talking here about the relationships between the food and its soil, the soil and the farmers, the farmers and the customers, and the customers and their families. He reminds us that the food needs to be understood in the whole ecological web of relationships.
The problem with so much food consumption today, he tells us, is that the idea of nourishment has been taken out of context. Seeking the perfect solution to production and distribution of food, big business has tried to extract components of food that seem to bring health, like Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids. They then breed food to produce more and more of these, but need to add preservatives to keep pests off unnatural crops and extend travel and shelf-life of the food. In the end, he tells us, we are eating "food-like" substances that bear little resemblance to the whole foods of our grandparents. These foods are actually unhealthy, as it turns out. Follow-up research on margarine and other substances, unbalanced diets promoting all-proteins or carbohydrates, has been linked to heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other modern Western ills.
Further, the whole ideology underlying the diet crazes follows what he calls "nutritionism." This is a pseudo-science in which breaking down a substance into its component parts is supposed to help understand the whole. It allows agribusiness and politics to "predict and control" outcome research. However, the outcome may point to higher nutrition, but not better health; more calories, less substance.
Forgotten is the whole food chain in which whole foods contain elements necessary to metabolize other elements, or that elements are important more in their balance than in isolation. Nutritionism ignores the roughage needed to give eaters a feeling of fullness so they don't eat as much, and sells food with addictive tastes like salty and sweet that make consumers also need to eat more and more of it. Discouragingly, these products are endorsed by the FDA and other quality control government agencies with ambiguous labels like "conditional approval"; thereby, heightening consumers' confusion and anxiety.
Finally, nutritionism ignores the cultural context of eating well. It promotes efficiency at the cost of attachment, leading to fast foods, fast preparation, and eating in cars and out of the context of families and community. It ignores the ritual of eating, the satisfaction of shared work, good smells in a nurturing house, and the brakes on overeating by having people eat together and not in isolation. People are lonely, overstuffed but empty in mind and body.
What does all of this have to do with psychology and feeding of the soul?
First, of course, we psychologists see many of these patients. They are overweight, hate their bodies and themselves, and are anxious, depressed and lonely. We are supposed to cure them with techniques to improve motivation and self-discipline. Implant positive suggestions.
Second, much modern psychology-I believe-suffers from the same malady as our food malnourishment.
People who suffer human problems are bombarded with a bewildering multitude of possible solutions. The equivalent of fad diets are fad therapies, what I call the alphabet soup of choices-ABC, DEF therapies-these therapies have been tested with the same Western pseudo-science that aims for prediction, control and efficiency at the expense of contextual understanding and wisdom. Although accountability in terms of what therapies work and what are worth funding is indeed important, the politics of psychotherapy research is unfortunately like that of food. It breaks therapy down into component parts, and those therapies that can afford large randomized controlled studies oddly end up being the ones that work. Although the newer trend in evidence-based research includes the clinical judgment of the therapist and the subjective experience of the patient and is therefore more well-rounded than the previous empirically-based research, it nevertheless does not tell us much about how patients' evidence of change plays out in real time and in real life contexts. It gives us matrices about symptom reduction, but does not tell us about meaning and purpose. It leads to a proliferation of fragmented "cures" rather than understanding of the human condition. It gives us more information, from which we are already suffering an overabundance and indigestion, but not wisdom.
Much of the best wisdom about how to nourish the soul comes from our grandparents and cultural traditions, just as it does with food. Some of the best research in couples therapy, for example, tells us that all relationships have ups and downs, but a good relationship has more positive than negative moments. Our grandmothers taught us never to go to bed angry, and to remember to keep the relationship and love fresh.
As the healthcare debate rages with stakes for insurance reimbursement of psychological problems, it may be advisable for us to keep in mind that nourishment of the soul is, like food, essentially about relationships, culture, and the health of the whole person.
