Michael 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.
Reviews
In his hugely influential treatise The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan traced a direct line between the industrialization of our food supply and the degradation of the environment. His new book takes up where the previous work left off. Examining the question of what to eat from the perspective of health, this powerfully argued, thoroughly researched and elegant manifesto cuts straight to the chase with a maxim that is deceptively simple: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." But as Pollan explains, "food" in a country that is driven by "a thirty-two billion-dollar marketing machine" is both a loaded term and, in its purest sense, a holy grail. The first section of his three-part essay refutes the authority of the diet bullies, pointing up the confluence of interests among manufacturers of processed foods, marketers and nutritional scientists-a cabal whose nutritional advice has given rise to "a notably unhealthy preoccupation with nutrition and diet and the idea of eating healthily." The second portion vivisects the Western diet, questioning, among other sacred cows, the idea that dietary fat leads to chronic illness. A writer of great subtlety, Pollan doesn't preach to the choir; in fact, rarely does he preach at all, preferring to lets the facts speak for themselves. (Jan.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
Our obsession with nutrition is ruining our health, argues Pollan-and it makes for some really bad meals. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
" Michael Pollan [is the] designated repository for the nation''s food conscience." -Frank Bruni, "The New York Times"
" A remarkable volume . . . engrossing . . . [Pollan] offers those prescriptions Americans so desperately crave." -Jane Black, "The Washington Post"
" "In Defense of Food" is written with Pollan''s customary bite, ringing clarity and brilliance at connecting the dots." -"The Seattle Times"
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Reviews
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An important and facinating book, that I am so glad to have discovered.
Pollan starts out by ripping apart food science, or what he calls "nutritionism." He states that analysing food like we do... putting it into catergories, like fats, carbohydrates nutrients is wrong and we as a culture have fallen in to the trap of believing the ideas of nutritionism. By doing this, we've actually become less healthy, replacing much of the traditional foods our ancestors ate with food-like substances fortified with the supposedly essential nutrients.
Pollan suggests that rather than dividing foods into their various parts, we should focus on the whole food. Like we don't eat a carrot for beta carotine, we eat a carrot for the sum of its parts. He also pushes that we should be eating more plant-based foods, get rid of processed foods, and enjoying food as a social and cultural action. The slow food movement gets kudos here from him!
He also pushes the consumption of wild meats, and how lucky are we to be in Australia and be able to have kangaroo, the most uncontaminated meat in the world. Humanely slaughtered and not farmed.
One of the biggest revelations in the book was a slight comment made in the first few chapters. The food pyramid, created in America, but adopted by most Western countries was in part influence by the "science" of a certain individual who believed cereals and grains should take up a huge amount of our diet. His name? Kellogg
Pollan intelligently addresses our present confusion about “what to eat (?)” and suggests this confusion is product of the new era of “nutritionism”. – The ideology that our species has lost touch with our traditions, our food culture and our ancestral roots, all of which had the answer to this question.
We focus on nutrients, not foods, and while science is all-powerful, we just don’t know enough, certainly not more than Mother Nature herself. Instead of looking at our heritage, we turn to nutritionists, scientists, journalists or government food pyramids.
I particularly relished Pollan’s unyielding conviction to relevant and recent research that supported his position. Moreover, he devotes an entire chapter to explaining nutritional scientific research, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses.
Pollan aim is to help us “reclaim our health and happiness as eaters” (pg 7) by providing the reader with recommendations “more like eating algorithms, mental devices for thinking through our food choices.” (pg 12)
This was a great read, one for the library. As put by The Boston Globe, “Pollan’s accessible, meticulously researched book will be essential reading for anyone who takes food seriously.”
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Michael Pollan starts with the simple answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we should eat in order to be healthy. Dig a little deeper and you soon realise that even the apparently simple suggestion to ‘eat food’ is more fraught than it first appears.
Once we humans knew how to eat well, but the knowledge passed down through the generations has become complicated and confused. Thanks to modern food science and the rise of the ubiquitous western diet, most of us no longer eat what our mothers ate as children, or even what our mothers fed us as children.
Visit your typical modern supermarket and you’ll find vast quantities of so-so food sold in tremendous packages at terrific prices. Look closer, and you’ll notice that what’s on offer increasingly consists of cleverly flavoured and configured arrangements of refined carbohydrates, hydrogenated oils, corn sweeteners and salt.
Consider the basic loaf of bread. Once upon a time, the humble loaf consisted of flour, yeast, water and a pinch of salt. A modern industrial loaf might contain ten times more ingredients and include things even the most health-conscious shopper would have trouble identifying.
One problem with these ingenious products of food science is that they lie. Their artificial colours and flavours, synthetic sweeteners and novel fats confound the senses we rely on to assess new foods. Such food products leave us little choice but to eat by numbers, consulting labels rather than our senses.
Pollan’s book is filled with sensible advice for choosing healthy food.
-reviewed by Sarah Heeringa for Good magazine, NZ's guide to sustainable living www.good.net.nz
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