To be fair, Pollan would specifically not consider a bag of potato chips food. It's not included here but he specifically is talking about "real" food and not ultra processed snacks, etc.
I think it's still an oversimplification - people with large amounts of muscle mass, low body fat, and high levels of daily physical activity just don't get a lot of the same metabolic diseases even if they eat huge amounts of animal protein, outside of really poor genetic luck (or complications related to steroid use, etc.) - but it's a pretty good starting point vs. the modern diet.
If he has his own special meaning of the common word "food", then it's no longer a spiffy quote. And now you need to get into all the nitty gritty of this recommendation to actually take any advice from it.
Even this term "ultra-processed" is highly suspect when you start investigating it more deeply. Plenty of traditional foods are quite processed - bread being one of the oldest. Is it better to eat 200g of bread (artisanal, wood fired, using traditionally-milled non-GMO pesticide free grains), or a steak?
