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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 (11) Used (5) from $30.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  161 reviews
Sales Rank: 1246618
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
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Amazon.com
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
"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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 156 more reviews...
 Fresh Perspective on Food August 17, 2008
This is likely the most useful book I have read in a decade. Having grown up in the clean-your-plate-get-dessert era I greatly appreciate Pollan's fresh (pun accepted) perspectives on food and eating. Despite a medical background, I have long been perplexed by food and the many products now available that masquerade as food. If Pollan is right, it's not so complicated after all. This diligently-researched book explains the origins--government, food industry, junk science--and motivations behind commonly held myths about healthy and not healthy. He does a masterful job of presenting evidence, but avoids a know-it-all attitude common among so-called experts of the modern era. Though I find the evidence-based nutrition science to be fascinating, the book is filled with practical, applicable advice that anyone can understand, like Pollan's recommendation to avoid products with more than five ingredients or those with ingredients that are tough to pronounce. Though I still eat more than I should, I have drastically changed what I eat. More importantly I am using the book's concepts to gradually, persistently re-educate my high-fructose-corn-syrup-craving teenagers. Hopefully it's not too late.
 Over-Written And Preachy August 15, 2008
Pollan starts his book with sage advice: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Any of Pollan's readers will know that what he means by "food" isn't what most of us eat. He means unprocessed locally produced food.
He spends a couple of hundred pages beating a dead horse about problems with scientific studies about what we should and shouldn't eat. He makes his point again and again and again. Nutritional studies are faulty. Food is more than the sum of its parts, and research about what we eat tries to reduce food to its nutrients, thereby enabling food processing companies to add and subtract what nutritional gurus are promoting at any given time.
To be healthy, he advises, eat traditional diets from virtually any area of the world, and avoid processed foods.
"The Omnivore's Dilemma" is a great book, that makes the points raised in this one, but is much better written.
After Omnivore's Dilemma August 5, 2008
This is the answer to "So now what do I do?" that one may ask after reading Omnivore's Dilemma. There is some new material and information, but if you are freshly finished reading OD, you could just give it a skim. It makes a great gift from readers of OD to those who want an action plan but aren't interested in all the juicy details in OD.
 Best information on nutrition I've read in years August 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm still not sure what made me buy this book, as I consider myself fairly well educated on food and nutrition; perhaps just the catchy "don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognise as food" line. I am glad I did as it not only reinforced and gave reasons for much that I already knew, but opened my eyes to much that I hadn't. I've been growing steadily more interested in food issues ever since a lactose-intolerant colleague made me realise how many food products have milk powder added to them, for no very apparent reason. I have struggled with my weight for years; after reading this book I finally understand WHY eating bread twice a day makes me fat within a few days, while cutting out the bread makes my waist slimmer just as quickly. For the first time I've been given a plausible theory explaining the sudden and simultaneous rise in obesity and diabetes type 2 in western countries.
I live in Australia so our situation is not quite as dire as the USA's: for example we don't have a corn lobby so the use of HFCS is much less common, and most of our cows and sheep still eat grass, not grain. I was flabbergasted by Pollan's revelation of just how much of the foodstuff sold in a US supermarket contains corn in some form or other. I've always avoided grain-fed meat on environmental grounds; now I know to also avoid it because this unnatural diet forces the animal's meat to be much higher in omega-6 than it's meant to be. Despite knowing quite well that "you are what you eat" and that cows and sheep aren't meant to eat grains, somehow I had failed to make the connection that this would have an inevitable effect on the nutritional makeup of the animal's flesh. That, to me, is the real power of this book - that it makes connections between numerous facts that I'd been individually aware of, but had failed to put together into a larger picture. Pollan does this for us.
Not that I'm complacent about Australia as our obesity rate is on par with the USA's. Today's newspaper had an article supporting Pollan's claim that the more nutritional claims a food makes, the less healthy in reality it is likely to be. More than half the food ads on tv that trumpeted nutritiional claims such as 'low fat' or 'high fibre' were for junk food ( http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2008/08/04/1217701950053.html)
Another reason I liked this book was that it put me onto some other very good books such as Wansink's "Mindless Eating" and Taubes' "Diet Delusion" (sold as "Good Calories, Bad Calories" in the US) neither of which I'd heard of but have found just as illuminating as "In Defense of Food". Pollan is generous in crediting other people's work, something a lot of authors fall short in.
The only reason I'm giving this 4 stars rather than 5 was because I found the final chapter on how to eat better somewhat slight compared to the preceding chapters. It's no news (to some of us) that agribusiness needs serious reform and I would've liked Pollan to discuss how this might be done instead of just saying it's needed. But I liked the way he pointed out that so many of us say we eat poorly because we can't afford to eat better, yet can find the money for a bigger tv or faster internet connection. In my experience a lot of people need to be reminded that they are indeed making a choice when they spend money on one thing rather than another.
Great Info August 4, 2008
Great book, gets the point across and really makes you think. I'm glad I purchased and read it. It has already been passed on to a friend and two others are waiting in line.
Everyone wants to know "what should I eat?", but as the author details, should we really have to ask such a basic question... I believe the answer is yes and no due to the craziness which has been created with the "Western Diet".
Hopefully food choices will change for the better, but I'm not counting on it happening anytime soon.
Read this book and pass it on, it will benefit us all...
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