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In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Thorndike Press Large Print Nonfiction Series) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Category: Book
Buy New: $30.95
New (14) Used (7) from $30.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  194 reviews
Sales Rank: 656092
Format: Large Print
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 331
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1410405370
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.2
EAN: 9781410405371
ASIN: 1410405370
Publication Date: March 19, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture. Many processed foods vie for a spot in our grocery baskets, claiming to lower cholesterol, weight, glucose levels, you name it. Yet Pollan shows that these convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health has a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals. His razor-sharp analysis of the American diet (as well as its architects and its detractors) offers an inspiring glimpse of what it would be like if we could (a la Humpty Dumpty) put our food back together again and reconsider what it means to eat well. In a season filled with rallying cries to lose weight and be healthy, Pollan's call to action"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."--is a program I actually want to follow. --Anne Bartholomew
Product Description
What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 189 more reviews...
 nice one November 21, 2008
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 November 20, 2008
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 November 18, 2008
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 November 14, 2008
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. November 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"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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