In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
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Book Summary Information

Author: Michael Pollan
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008
ISBN: 1594201455
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The

Book Reviews of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Book Review: Has changed the way I choose what to eat
Summary: 5 Stars

I've had a strong, intuitive sense for years that nutrition guidelines were arbitrary. It started when I began reading about the Atkins Diet, tried it and by reducing the refined carbohydrates in my diet, easily lost 25 pounds. It continued when I noted the nutrition establishment's reversal of hydrogenated vegetable oil as healthier than animal fat to heart attack in a bottle. Pollan's The Omnivore's Delimma made me further question processed foods and industrially produced whole foods and examine how far we've strayed from our recent ancestors' diets.

Since reading In Defense of Food a few days ago, I've been reducing the amount of meat in my diet, and as he advises, trying to eat more plants, especially the leaves (it is incredible what proportion of plants we eat are either seeds or seed pods, or worse, highly refined extracts from those). I hit the farmer's market on Saturday for some bundles of fresh, local kale, and with this knowledge in mind, it never tasted better.

Pollan's a wonderful thinker and fantastic writer. I look forward to his next effort.

Bryan Gilmer, author of the new crime thriller Felonious Jazz

Summary of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the questions posed in the bestselling The Omnivore's Dilemma. Humans used to know how to eat well, Pollan argues. But the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused, complicated, and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists-all of whom have much to gain from our dietary confusion. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not "real." These "edible foodlike substances" are often packaged with labels bearing health claims that are typically false or misleading. Indeed, real food is fast disappearing from the marketplace, to be replaced by "nutrients," and plain old eating by an obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically, ruining our health, not to mention our meals. Michael Pollan's sensible and decidedly counterintuitive advice is: "Don't eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize as food."

Writing In Defense of Food, and affirming the joy of eating, Pollan suggests that if we would pay more for better, well-grown food, but buy less of it, we'll benefit ourselves, our communities, and the environment at large. Taking a clear-eyed look at what science does and does not know about the links between diet and health, he proposes a new way to think about the question of what to eat that is informed by ecology and tradition rather than by the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach.

In Defense of Food reminds us that, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, the solutions to the current omnivore's dilemma can be found all around us.

In looking toward traditional diets the world over, as well as the foods our families-and regions-historically enjoyed, we can recover a more balanced, reasonable, and pleasurable approach to food. Michael Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we might start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives and enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy.


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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