In Defense of Food [electronic resource] : An Eater's Manifesto

Title:

Author:

Pollan, Michael.

Description:

Publisher:

Penguin Random House,

Date:

2007

Digital Format:

CLOUDLIBRARY MP3

Language:

English

Summary

Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it? Because most of what we're consuming today is not food. Instead, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances"-no longer the products of nature but of food science. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become. Real food-the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food-stands in need of a defense from the food industry and nutritional science. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat. Yet thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals.

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. Urging us to once again eat food, he proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, and unprocessed food. IN DEFENSE OF FOOD shows us how we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. Michael Pollan's last book, 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.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Pollan provides another shocking yet essential treatise on the industrialized "Western diet" and its detrimental effects on our bodies and culture. Here he lays siege to the food industry and scientists' attempts to reduce food and the cultural practices of eating into bite-size concepts known as nutrients, and contemplates the follies of doing so. As an increasing number of Americans are overfed and undernourished, Pollan makes a strong argument for serious reconsideration of our eating habits and casts a suspicious eye on the food industry and its more pernicious and misleading practices. Listeners will undoubtedly find themselves reconsidering their own eating habits. Scott Brick, who narrated Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, carries forward the same tone and consistency, thus creating a narrative continuity between the two books. Brick renders the text with an expert's skill, delivering well-timed pauses and accurate emphasis. He executes Pollan's asides and sarcasm with an uncanny ability that makes listening infinitely better than reading. So compelling is his tone, listeners may have trouble discerning whether Brick's conviction or talent drives his powerful performance. Simultaneous release with the Penguin Press hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 26). (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

An anemic follow-up to The Omnivore's Dilemma examines food in a nutritional rather than an environmental context. As Pollan (Science and Environmental Journalism/Univ. of California, Berkeley) acknowledges on the first page, his thesis is simple. "Eat food," he writes. "Not too much. Mostly plants." Of course it's not as easy as all that. Like many modern nutritionists, Pollan is critical of what he calls the Western diet, which has been responsible for widespread obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer. To blame for this, Pollan argues, is the fact that in the last century in particular, Western societies have replaced natural, whole foods with processed food products increasingly loaded with sugars, fats and sodium. We have rationalized these decisions not only by blaming cultural changes, efficiency and convenience, but also by pitting the damages against one another in a health war. Blaming fats, for example, takes the pressure off of carbohydrates, and vice versa. But hope is not lost, says the author. With a newfound emphasis on locally grown agriculture and organic farming, Pollan claims that it is more possible than ever to avoid the problems of the Western diet without sacrificing quality of life. The author backs his theories with a variety of research, including a particularly compelling study from 1982 that sent Westernized Aborigines in Western Australia back to their natural diet in the outback, and found a drastic reduction in every typically Western health problem. While his research is sound and well-organized, the academic, secondary source-reliant text lacks the punch of the author's usual hands-on approach. Solid advice for healthy eating, but lacks Pollan's arrestingly original journalistic flair. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Expanding on a theme from his popular The Omnivore's Dilemma (2007), Pollan mounts an assault on a reigning theory of the relationship between food and health. For Pollan, nutritionism offers too narrow a view of the role of eating, confining its benefits solely to food's chemical constituents. This has resulted in an unnatural anxiety about the things we humans eat. To counteract this, Pollan appeals to tradition and common sense. The Western diet, with its focus on meat as the principal food, produces cardiovascular problems, and nutritionists' attempts to correct this with a high-carbohydrate and sugar regimen has served only to spawn a generation of obese diabetics. Although Pollan doesn't advocate eliminating meat or any other whole food, he wants to place vegetables and fruits in the center of things, reassigning meat to the status of a side dish. Given the continuing fascination with Pollan's earlier work, this smaller tome will surely generate heavy demand.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2008 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Starred Review. Journalist Pollan argues that we should only eat the sort of things that our great grandmothers would recognize. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.