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In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

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Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The

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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."

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.


PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.2
EAN: 9781594201455
ISBN: 1594201455
Label: Penguin Press HC, The
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2008-01-01
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Studio: Penguin Press HC, The


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
• The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
• Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
• The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

nice one -
This book has amazing information but i wish a bit more time was spent on its layout. It is very hard to read back when using it for quick refernce, and there are no graphics, it is just written as though its one big essay. Unfortunate because it has so much good informatin but is wasted with its hard-to-use format.

good info to learn at 42 -
a little filler in the begining. great info for someone that has grown up eating processed junk my whole life, wish i would have read this at sixteen.

Beyond eye opening... a must read for food consumers -
What has happened to the food over the past 50 years? Plenty. This book outlines in great detail the ol'mighty dollar and its influence on our food chain. Food is no longer food.

This book breaks down in detail what happened (which by the way is never boring) and ways for your family to eat healthy and partake in REAL FOOD.

The advice is sound. This is something you need to read. It is time to understand what has happened to FOOD and in a small way, account for the many alignments we face with modern western diets and the society who eats it.

Ayurveda and Food equals Health & Longevity -
This book is welcome. I use it together with the Yale University School of Medicine Dr. Frank John Ninivaggi book: Ayurveda: A Comprehensive Guide To Traditional Indian Medicine for the West. Both give practical info about how and what to east for great health in body, mind, and spirit. I recommend them both.

Just Eat Food. Real Food. -
"Don't you want any of this good food?", my Great Aunt Margaret beams at me over the buffet aisle. I answer, "If any of it were good, I would want it."

It is the 1970's and a new kind of restaurant came to our rural county: the smorgasbord. Adult eyes widened at the sight of aisles of food, a melange of red, orange, brown and white gooey side dishes punctuated by varieties of tough grisly meat. They wonder that I don't want to load my plate as they do. I equally marveled over their reaction. The food tasted off; powdery when it should be toothsome, salty where it should be savory, and blandly gelatinous when it should be creamy.

Anything Aung Margaret cooked was a hell of a lot better than this and now I know the reason behind what even my uneducated seven year old palate was perceiving. Aunt Margaret's meals were simple, always a meat, potato and vegetable, cooked simply; but the meat was fresh from the butcher's pack, the potatoes from the bag, and the vegetables from our garden in summer, or from the can or freezer in winter. At my uncle's request, Aunt Marg cooked just like his mother did, and his mother was born in the 1890's. Unknowingly we were living Michael Pollan's dictum to only eat food that our great grandmothers would recognize as food.

Throughout the work Pollan explores how our Western understanding of food has been reduced to calories and nutrients, a movement he calls nutritionism. He asserts that Westerners have forsaken and maligned the social, emotional and sensory aspects of eating and asked science to dictate our diets. But science has not been successful at curing our ills and limiting our waistlines through diet due to the inherent reductionism necessary to most scientific research. Also, so much of the processing of food has brought with it ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup and hydrongenated vegetable oils, ingredients that are not doing us any favors.

Pollan cuts through the proliferation of dietary advice based upon managing various nutrient levels, and calls us to a simpler, more enjoyable approach to food: just eating food. Real food. Food that you don't have to add water to and stir. Food that doesn't come in a plastic bubble pack. Food that looks and smells and tastes like what it really it. What could be better?

If you are a bit of a foodie already, you will be nodding your head in agreement all through this this book. If you are tired of trying various dietary regimens to no avail, then this work will set your heart at ease. If you are the impatient sort, skip the chapter on nutritionism's history and delve right into the guidelines in the final chapters. However you use this book, it definitely serves up food for thought. Bon Appetit!

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