In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

By Michael Pollan

 

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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.”
One of the most brilliant diet and health writers of our day has got to be Michael Pollan. As a worthy follow-up to his instant classic The Omnivore’s Dilemma, this book comes strongly to the defense of REAL food as opposed to the heavy reliance on packaged creations that dominates the typical American family dinner table. What if most of the diseases we are dealing with have more to do with the diet we are consuming in the fast-paced lifestyle of the 21st century and less to do with whatever the latest nutritional flavor of the day advice is out there? It’s a rather thought-provoking exercise that is worth reading every glorious one of these 230-something pages of text. Pollan is on to something HUGE her and I can’t wait to see what else he comes up with if he keeps writing about diet in the future.

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