A few years ago, Michael Ruhlman shared with me a copy of a truly original and captivating book written by Chef Dan Barber and called The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food. You may have heard of him; in 2009, Time Magazine named Dan Barber one of the 100 most influential people in the world. It took me a long time to get that through book, primarily because it made me think so hard that I could only read a chapter at a time before I had to set it aside and think about what the author had just said.

Third Plate got me thinking about the fact that mainstream America is surviving not on nutritious food but, instead, on a commodity-based diet. 

The salient characteristic of a commodity is that its price is determined not by quality, but by quantity. Commodity markets grow with the ability to meet the demand for product. A particular commodity meets explicit contractual requirements that generally have no relationship to either the product’s nutritional value or taste. The source and nutritional quality of the product become, essentially, irrelevant. Examples of commodities include white flour, sugar, soybean oil, “degerminated” corn meal, corn syrup, and corn starch. The value of a commodity is based not on quality but, rather, on quantity. You have to choose one or the other, and you cannot have both at the same time. When you eat a commodity, you are choosing quantity.

We can grow a commodity, we can eat it, we can export it, and we can feed it to animals. We can modify it chemically to remove a significant part of its nutritional value, and then use words like “enriched” and “fortified” when epidemics of anemia (iron) or beri-beri (thiamine), and birth defects such as spina bifida (folate) lead governments to require replacement of some of the nutrients whose absence was the cause of those epidemics. But sending commodities around the world under the guise of preventing hunger does not make them nourishing. The short cuts created by commodity-based eating are manifesting themselves in a worldwide epidemic of a different kind of malnutrition than we humans have ever before seen. The most visible symptom of this malnutrition? Obesity. Obesity is not the problem; it is a symptom of the problem.

Considering obesity to be a symptom of malnutrition is a major frameshift in the way we think about food. I would suggest that the best way to get around it, for now, is to ask yourself whether you will be nourished by the item that you are lifting to your mouth. If you are unsure, then consider this possibility: Even though it is edible, that does not necessarily make it food. If it’s commodity-based, it’s not food, but rather — as Michael Pollan calls it — a “food-like item.” Go ahead and eat it, if you’d like. But then go find something something nutritious to eat.