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 enlarge | Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $11.76
You Save: $10.19 (46%)
New (67) Used (25) Collectible (5) from $11.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  168 reviews
Sales Rank: 115
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 1594201455
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.2
EAN: 9781594201455
ASIN: 1594201455
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 our diets are sorely lacking because of the process Pollan labels "nutritionism." August 27, 2008
Book Review:
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
New flash: When whole foods are broken down into their nutritional components and then reassembled as processed food, the new product is not nearly as beneficial to our health as the original. In the mid-twentieth century, who would have thought it? Weren't we sold on "better living though science?"
Well, as it turns out, our diets are sorely lacking because of the process Pollan labels "nutritionism." This reductionist way of thinking about food assumes that the key to understanding food is through the individual nutrients it contains. Wrong! Whole food is greater than the sum of its parts!
As a holistic chiropractor and a motivational speaker on health and wellness, I'm excited about Pollan's book. He discusses with clarity, supported by extensive research, something I've been advocating for years: a return to the Paleolithic diet of our ancestors 40,000 years ago! Pollan states it succinctly; Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Furthermore, eat mostly the leaves of the plants, not the seeds. What about meat? Meat is nutritious food, yet when it comes from a highly industrialized food chain, it brings with it extra chemicals and hormones that do not serve us well at all.
If you care at all about the food you ingest, buy this book and get out your highlighter! You'll want to mark passages to refer back to as you become pro-active with your diet!
Michael B. Roth, D.C.
Clear, entertaining, science-based August 25, 2008
Just the kind of information I needed to clear up the murky questions I had about the american diet. A great book for every modern person to read.
AEmeryMD
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
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
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