I decide to read up on real food—the kind I (and everyone else) should be eating but, mostly, am not. After a bit of research, I select bestselling food author Michael Pollan as my guide in this unfamiliar territory. I begin with his book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, which I now consider a must-read for anyone seeking true health. Pollan makes many excellent points, among them the following.

Most of what we consume these days is not, by any meaningful definition, what our grandparents (or anyone of any preceding generation) would have recognized as “food.”

This is so because there’s not a lot of money in selling real food—or wasn’t, until the recent organic boom. Instead, the highest profits (even now) are to be gained from “processed” foods. French fries and corn chips, to cite but two examples, sell for a heck of a lot more than potatoes and corn. Same goes for breakfast cereals, and tens of thousands of other modern “foods.”

As a general rule, the more higly processed the food (Pollan calls processed foods edible foodlike substances), the higher the profit—and the worse (or at least less-good) it is for you. Because of this, the food industry is on the whole more interested in selling edible foodlike substances than it is in selling actual food.

To help promote the impression that these foodlike substances really are just as good for us as the real thing, industry is fond of citing nutrient content. But, as Pollan points out, people don’t eat nutrients; they eat food. You can inject every synthesized nutrient in the book into the latest junk food crap and call it nutritious—but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still junk food crap.

And of course, you can’t inject the things you don’t know about. At several points in human history, we thought we had it all figured out—that we knew exactly which substances the body needed to remain healthy or, at the very least, stave off disease. But we didn’t, still don’t, and likely never will.

Both we and the things we eat—or should be eating—have evolved together for millions of years, and we’re constantly discovering “new” things and “new” interactions. A simple thyme leaf, for example, contains no fewer (but possibly more) than 35 different antioxidants. Think you’ll find that in a packet of Twinkies or “fortified” breakfast cereal?

Real food is what it is. Processed foods change with the times, and often for the worse. One example: when studies seemed to show that the saturated fats in butter were bad for us, margarine appeared, replacing those nasty saturated fats with “good” trans fats. Decades later, we find that trans fats are far worse for us than saturated fats ever were. We’d have been better off with the butter. Whoops. Sorry about that, folks; but we’ve reformulated–so give us another try.

Wherever the “western diet” is introduced, western disease (cancer, heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, you know the drill) follows—without exception. When people who adopted a western diet revert to traditional diets, their health improves markedly. In short, what we eat—and don’t—is killing us.

Don’t look to the government for help. They tried to help, once, and learned their lesson. In January of 1977 (20 years late, it should be noted, as the culprits had been identified in the 1950s), the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs issued its Dietary Goals for the United States. The document suggested that Americans cut down on their consumption of red meats and dairy products.

The powerful red meat and dairy industries went berserk. The Senate Committee’s recommendations were swiftly revised. Instead of advising Americans to eat less of something (which was bound to cut into someone’s profits), they now urged consumers to “choose meats, poultry, and fish that will reduce saturated fat intake.” Suddenly all meats were lumped together, and “saturated fats” (as opposed to someone’s literal cash cow) became the villain. We’ve been on the nutrient-centric road ever since.

The Committee’s chairman, three-term North Dakota Senator George McGovern, found himself out of office in the very next election, when the beef industry threw its muscle behind his rival. No one else has dared follow in his footsteps.

Both the FDA and the USDA are—like the recently renamed Minerals Management Service (charged with regulating offshore oil platforms)—completely compromised, and utterly incapable of placing the public good ahead of corporate interests. Put simply, we’re on our own, and we’d best learn what to eat and what not to—because no one else is going to do it for us.

As it turns out, we can eat red meat, butter, and a slew of other supposedly “bad” foods—if we do so in moderation (something we Americans are not, in general, very good at). But we need to eat “good” foods too. Most of all, we need to eat real food.

Which is what Pollan’s book is all about. I think it’s a lifesaver.