In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan
Book Summary Information
Author: Michael PollanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-04-28
ISBN: 0143114964
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780143114963
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Book Review: Absolutely a Life-Changer
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a twenty-seven-year-old male, and before I read this book last spring, I don't think I'd ever thought about food beyond the questions, "Which TV dinner will I have tonight?" and "Papa-John's or Dominoes?" I'm not sure what made me pick up In Defense of Food in Target one day, but needless to say, I now have many more questions about the foods I eat, and that's a good thing.
One question the book will make you ask is, "Is this food?" It's probably not. It's sad that such is a question needing clarified, but it is. Much of what we eat is so processed to have lost its nutrient providing ability. He calls most of what we eat "edible foodlike substances." Pollan illustrates vividly the outcome of our eating habits. Wherever the western diet goes, the diseases all of our family members have died from follow: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, strokes... Traditional diets, even ones with almost no vegetables, tend to produce healthier people.
Fortunately, Pollan's book is not simply intended to scare everyone either. Pollan ends the book with a wonderful chapter of advice, general principles for what food to choose and how to prepare and eat it, for what things to avoid. For instance, Pollan has a pretty simple rule for determining whether or not something is food: Would your great-grandmother have recognized this as food? That and many other principles provide a map for navigating our confusing, and misleading, food culture.
Pollan's book is a life-changer. It's made me so much more conscious of what I eat and has provided me ways to make better decisions about what I eat. Pollan is a fantastic writer (reading In Defense of Food is not unlike reading something by Malcolm Gladwell), and this book also just made me so much more interested about food. I cook more now, for instance. And I'm developing an interest in cook books. And it's not a diet book, but I did lose weight and feel better now once I started following Pollan's advice. I couldn't recommend this much more highly.
Summary of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
The companion volume to The New York Times bestseller The Omnivore's DilemmaMichael Pollan's lastbook , The Omnivore's Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time. Pollan proposes a new answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.
Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture. Many processed foods vie for a spot in our grocery baskets, claiming to lower cholesterol, weight, glucose levels, you name it. Yet Pollan shows that these convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health has a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals. His razor-sharp analysis of the American diet (as well as its architects and its detractors) offers an inspiring glimpse of what it would be like if we could (a la Humpty Dumpty) put our food back together again and reconsider what it means to eat well. In a season filled with rallying cries to lose weight and be healthy, Pollan's call to action-"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."--is a program I actually want to follow. --Anne Bartholomew
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