In Defense of Food
An Eater's Manifesto
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4.1 • 265 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
#1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of This is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Food Rules
Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?
Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion--most of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American Paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we see to become. With In Defense of Food, Pollan proposes a new (and very old) 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
Customer Reviews
Excellent
Excellent book. Gets repetitive at times in the first half but is reasonable. The premise itself that food is greater than the sum of it's parts is well expounded and leaves it to the reader to act and continue reading, rather than being and anti-nutritionist manifest... Most of the time.
Informative
This book introduced me to some ideas about food that I never would have thought about on my own. It certainly helps to get the backstory on how the food industry's desire for more money has inspired misinformation on nutrition related topics to United States inhabitants over the years. I plan to put many of the author's ideas in to practice.
You are what you read
I am consistently impressed with Pollan's work. His points are substantial and backed with simple and easy to understand facts and opinions. Once again, he has taken the complex issue of the evolution of food and the idea of modern nutrition back to the very basics, and made this accessible to all.