In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
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.
Customer Review: Pollan Does It Again, Shows Why He’s One Of America’s Top Health Science Writers
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.
Customer Review: Let Food Be Your Medicine Bottle
As this book is a well written, enjoyable, enlighening read, to see so many positive reviews is wonderful. The author’s message really needs to be read and embraced by every American, especially those with the strongest Puritan ethics, who really believe that food isn’t meant to be savoured or celebrated. Our Creator gives us all things richly to enjoy. Mouth watering real food is meant to be eaten with gratefulness, leisurely enjoyed with family and friends as the good gift that it is to us from an all loving God. Also, our bodies are more than a machine, and food is more than the fuel. Our bodies are a fearfully and wonderfully made creation and food is a gift meant to enjoyed as it nourishes us. After reading the review, I’m sure you’ll understand why my main disagreement with the author concerns his evolutionist viewpoint.
For years my philosophy concerning food has been to “Let your food be your medicine bottle.” To finally have an author echo these beliefs and give additional insight as to how to walk them out is truly refreshing. According to Pollen, we should shop for fresh, locally grown foods as much as possible. When going to the supermaket, we are to shop the outside isles of the store, where the whole foods such s meats, eggs, dairy,fuits and vegies are found. It’s also important to buy 100% free range meat, dairy and eggs, which don’t have growth hormones or antibiotics, aren’t crowded into farm factory facilites or fed species inappropriate food and are slaughtered most humanly. Also, it’s important to purchase Salmon and other fish from Alaska that aren’t tainted with mercury and other industrial waste poisons. I buy organic grains and produce whenever I can, because they are grown on healthier soils. But if the organic produce at the supermarket is wilted, I buy the freshest produce I can find. As Chief Seattle said, “How we treat the land, we treat ourselves.” This is also true of how we treat our animals.
The author speaks out against “nutritionalism,” which invloves getting so engrossed in the nutritional components of food that we fail to enjoy real food for the sensory delight that it is. Real food isn’t a fast food meal eaten on the run, nor is a T.V. dinner eaten alone in front of the television or while working at your desk. Real food is the kind our Grandmother’s would have recognized as food and is meant to be enjoyed as a communal dining experience. While not obsessing over the individual nutrients, real food is nutrient dense. Different whole foods provide different nutrients, which when in eaten in combinatiion nourish our bodies most abundantly. Real food definately isn’t the refined, nutritionally depleted “edible food like substances” so many people eat today.
If you are wondering why food would ever need to be defended and from whom look around you at the processed junk we call food that most Americans consume. We have been deceived by both the food industry and nutritional science with the approval of the federal government. Also, the drug companies aren’t crying all the way to the bank over the billions of dollars sickly Amercians spend on toxic medical treatments and drugs. Our sckyrocketing rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and a long list of other degenerative diseases is the price we are paying for this travesty.
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