The God Nutrient

I thought the articles brought up some interesting points about my own eating habits. Being a vegetarian I often find myself eating for nutrients instead of for the food itself. It is hard to maintain a healthy and active lifestyle if I don't watch how much protein I intake. However at the exact same time during the summer I love to go to farmer markets and find fresh raw unadulterated foods. I go to a local urban farm every weekend to pick up a dozen hormone free eggs. I plant my own garden so that I can have my own fresh herbs, tomatoes, carrots, peppers etc. But in the end even when I am eating raw and hormone free I am still focused on the nutrients I am consuming not necessarily the food itself. I think it is interesting that that the ideology of nutrientism has peculated its way into all levels of food consumption. 

I also found the way scientist individualize nutrients instead of studying how they work together to be interesting. The nutrients that we eat go to work in an extremely complex system and work together in extremely complex ways, why therefore can a scientist say that a single nutrient minus all of the other factors be such a god send? Perhaps the term "god send" is exactly the right term. Perhaps scientist really aren't that far removed from the John Smith the founder of Mormonism and his vision of perfect health, after all if a scientist can find that one special nutrient which extends life by 10 years, is he really any different?