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| In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  168 reviews
Sales Rank: 113
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
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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 163 more reviews...
 Back to Nature February 22, 2008
222 out of 222 found this review helpful
It is so good to read a book about nutrition that does not promote any new diet! The author's message is plain and simple: Go back to nature, eat wholesome foods, and don't bother with dieting. Don't overeat; instead eat slowly, and enjoy your meals - such notion has already been promoted by Mireille Guiliano in her bestseller "French Women Don't Get Fat".
Our curse is processed food. The dieting industry completely distorted our feeding process. Our desire to improve everything and to separate 'needed' ingredients from the 'unneeded' ones leads us to refining most of our food products. However, our artificially 'improved' food only seemingly has the same nutritious qualities as natural food. Artificial and natural foods have as little in common as silk roses with real ones.
Processed food is easily obtainable, doesn't require much work to prepare, and, unfortunately, it is often also addictive. At the same time it is full of calories with very small nutritional content.
Like "The Omnivore's Dilemma", Pollan's new book is indeed eye-opening. It makes us think twice about what we are going to put into our mouths the next time we eat. For more reading about the danger of refined foods I strongly recommend Can W e Live 150 - another book devoted to living in agreement with nature, and revealing the secrets of healthy diet.
We truly are what we eat . . . . . or don't eat January 6, 2008
179 out of 251 found this review helpful
Americans are fat.
Who's to blame? The government. Ay, but there's the rub. If the government undoes its mischievous agricultural subsidies, voters in farm states will throw the rascals out of office. Look what happened to Sen. John McCain in Iowa because he wants to end ethanol subsidies. No politician can afford to be public spirited instead of self-centered. The cure is not in government.
Instead, an intelligent solution begins with this book. Pollan goes to the heart of the matter, which is the content of our food. Our consumer society is based on making attractive products. For food, this means added sugar or added fat.
To quote Pollan: ". . . we're eating a whole lot more, at least 300 more calories a day than we consumed in 1985. What kind of calories? Nearly a quarter of these additional calories come from added sugars (and most of that in the form of high-fructose corn syrup); roughly another quarter from added fat . . . "
These extra calories are from nutrient-deficient food. It began with refined flour in the 1870s which removed bran and wheat germ to produce long-lasting snowy white flour. Consumers loved it because flour no longer turned rancid, and it didn't become infected with bugs.
Okay. Why didn't bugs chomp down on this new flour? Quite simply because the nutrients, the bran, wheat germ, carotene, were gone. Pollan explains, ". . . this gorgeous white powder was nutritionally worthless, or nearly so. Much the same is now true for corn flour and white rice." Take a look at a package of white flour and count the additives that make up for the loss of natural ingredients. Then you'll understand the basic thrust of this book and its remedies.
How do refined carbohydrates affect us? They are implicated in several chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.
This book outlines those problems and practical solutions to the lack of nutrients and excess of fat and sugar in our daily food. Quite simply, good health is often less a matter of miracle medicines than of common sense meals. Pollan outlines the problem and offers solutions, as indicated in a University of Minnesota study of natural ingredients in wheat which concluded, "This analysis suggests that something else in the whole grain protects against death."
Protects against death? Did that get your interest? If so, this book is truly a major step toward a much healthier lifestyle . . . . . merely by changing the foods you eat.
Try it. You'll like it.
Care for your family? Want to live long and well? This is required reading. January 9, 2008
167 out of 216 found this review helpful
What's better for you --- whole milk, 2% milk or skim?
Is a chicken labeled "free range" good enough to reassure you of its purity? How about "grass fed" beef?
What form of soy is best for you --- soy milk or tofu?
About milk: I'll bet most of you voted for reduced or non-fat. But if you'll turn to page 153 of "In Defense of Food," you'll read that processors don't make low-fat dairy products just by removing the fat. To restore the texture --- to make the drink "milky" --- they must add stuff, usually powdered milk. Did you know powdered milk contains oxidized cholesterol, said to be worse for your arteries than plain old cholesterol? And that removing the fat makes it harder for your body to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins that make milk a valuable food in the first place?
About chicken and beef: Readers of Pollan's previous book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma", know that "free range" refers to the chicken's access to grass, not whether it actually ventures out of its coop. And all cattle are "grass fed" until they get to the feedlot. The magic words for delightful beef are "grass finished" or "100% grass fed".
And about soy...but I dare to hope I have your attention by now. And that you don't want to be among the two-thirds of Americans who are overweight and the third of our citizens who are likely to develop type 2 diabetes before 2050. And maybe, while I have your eyes, you might be mightily agitated to learn that America spends $250 billion --- that's a quarter of the costs of the Iraq war --- each year in diet-related health care costs. And that our health care professionals seem far more interested in building an industry to treat diet-related diseases than they do in preventing them. And that the punch line of this story is as sick as it is simple: preventing diet-related disease is easy.
In just 200 pages (and 22 pages of notes and sources), "In Defense of Food" gives you a guided tour of 20th century food science, a history of "nutritionism" in America and a snapshot of the marriage of government and the food industry. And then it steps up to the reason most readers will buy it --- and if you care for your health and the health of your loved ones, this is a no-brainer one-click --- and presents a commonsense shopping-and-eating guide.
If you are up on your Pollan and your Nina Planck and your Barbara Kingsolver, you know the major points of the "real food" movement. But if you're new to this information or are disinclined to buy or read this book, let me lay Pollan's argument out for you:
-- High-fructose corn syrup is the devil's brew. Do yourself a favor and remove it from your diet. (If you have kids, here's a place to start: Heinz smartly offers an "organic" ketchup, made with sugar.)
-- Avoid any food product that makes health claims --- they mean it's probably not really food.
-- In a supermarket, don't shop in the center aisles. Avoid anything that can't rot, anything with an ingredient you can't pronounce.
-- "Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does."
-- "You are what you eat eats too." Most cows end their days on a diet of corn, unsold candy, their pulverized brothers and sisters --- yeah, you read that right --- and a pharmacy's worth of antibiotics. And they bestow that to you. Consider that the next time there's a sale on sirloin.
-- "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." By which Pollan means: Eat natural food, the kind your grandmother served (and not because she was so wise, but because the food industry had not yet learned that the big money was in processing, not harvesting). Use meat sparingly. Eat your greens, the leafier and more varied the better.
In short: Kiss the Western diet as we know it goodbye. Look to the cultures where people eat well and live long. Ignore the faddists and experts. Trust your gut. Literally.
In all this, Pollan insists that you have to save yourself. And he makes a good case why. Our government, he says, is so overwhelmed by the lobbying and marketing power of our processed food industry that the American diet is now 50% sugar in one form or another --- calories that provide "virtually nothing but energy." Our representatives are almost uniformly terrified to take on the food industry. And as for the medical profession, the key moment, Pollan writes, is when "doctors kick the fast-food franchises out of the hospital" --- don't hold your breath.
"You want to live, follow me." I loved it when Schwarzenegger said that in "Terminator." It matters much more when, in so many words, Michael Pollan delivers that same message in "In Defense of Food."
 Disappointing follow up to Omnivores Dilemma April 14, 2008
102 out of 147 found this review helpful
I'm a huge fan of the Omnivores Dilemma and recommended it to more people than any other book I've read so `In Defense of Food' had a lot to live up to but somewhere something what badly haywire.
American's are getting fatter and fatter with average life spans that are considerably out of sync with the wealth of our nation. `In Defense of Food' takes an outsiders view of nutrition in the U.S., throwing stones at the establishment including nutritionists, food manufacturers and the FDA. Michael Pollan's argument is that it is our very obsession with food that throws the system off and we need to just relax and enjoy food. It sounds like the same advice being expounded in the book about how French women are supposedly never fat. Unfortunately we can't relax because we are constantly bombarded with calorie dense foods specifically designed for massive consumption. The author's suggestion is to step back, avoid the processed foods and start spending more on `whole foods' and items purchased from local farmers markets.
The main emphasis in the book is on eating a `traditional' diet. Something great-grandmother might have created. The author blames `western diseases' on a `western diet' but it's hard to know what constitutes a western diet, after all, three of the countries he suggests emulating are France, Italy and Greece. Are they not western? American's are definitely growing fatter but if it's due to synthetic substances like Margarine, Crisco and Nutrasweet why have American waistlines continue to grow as these substances have grown decreasingly popular? And if eating natural food is the magic elixir why do I find overweight farmers at my local farmers market? Shouldn't they all be aglow with vitality living to 120?
My wife is from Malaysia and her fathers' parents consumed a very `traditional' Chinese diet all their lives and yet died in there early 60's. Her grandmother passed away from a stroke brought on by high blood pressure and her grandfather by a heart attack. The way Michael Pollan talks this doesn't sound possible. I would also say that for an author who insists on taking a holistic view of eating as opposed to a reductionist one he completely omits taking into account cultural lifestyles in people heaths. Perhaps it's the high quality health care system in France that makes the difference or perhaps not but the author never even considers anything but consumption.
The advice that Michael Pollan gives is sound but most of it is so simple that it could probably fit into a pamphlet rather than a 200 page book which may explain why the book seems to veer off into unnecessary directions. Eating more vegetables is always good advice and the author even admits that every hated nutritionist he's talked has offered exactly that advice so how exactly is Mr. Pollan different from nutritionists? He lambastes nutritionists for taking a reductionist view of nutrition but then goes on at length about maintaining a proper balance of Omega-3 and Omega-6 in your diet. Did great-grandmother worry about the ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 in the food she served?
Morgan Spurlock of `Supersize Me' probably hit the nail right on the head. It's the amount of calories that American's eat that's doing us in. Avoiding synthetic foods is probably good advice but it's advice like avoiding swimming after eating a meal and not likely to make much of a change in your life. I lost 50 pounds last year and it had nothing to do with eating traditional meals or avoiding margarine. I reduced my intake of calorie dense food including soda and fast food. This is the kind of advice any nutritionist will give out.
What bothered me most about this book was how Michael Pollan went on the attack when none of his advice is that far off from what other nutritionists and dieticians are recommending. It's a decent book but lacks focus and has difficulty defining what he's talking about when he uses terms like `Western' and `Traditional' diets. Quite frankly, this book is more of just a subset of Omnivores Dilemma and if you've read that one you could probably skip this one.
 "200 Informative Pages, Eat More Produce." February 14, 2008
56 out of 130 found this review helpful
First, I have not read "The Omnivores Dilemma" but I eventually will. This book is divided into three interesting parts. "In The Age of Nutritionalism," we get a history lesson on how our diet has changed roughly since the post world war two era. It illustrates how well intentioned scientists & politicians tried to create a culture that put far more emphasis on consuming nutrients{vitamin C, Protein, etc}, than on whole foods{ Orange juice, meat, etc}.
The second part, The Western Diet & The Diseases of Civilization," reveals how our modern diet has led to huge increases in obesity, tooth decay, cancer, & heart disease. The last part "Getting Over Nutritionalism," gives advice on how to move from this negative diet. The author believes that we should focus more on the portions of food that we consume rather than obsessing over fat & carb content.
He points out that the Japanese on the island of Okinawa who live very long lives, focus on "Hara Hachi Bu," which means you stop eating when you are eighty percent full. Another fine example, is of the French who avoid huge portions & snacking while eating very rich meals on small plates. Yet, they are some of the thinnest & long lived folks in Europe. From personal experience I know this to be true because, I worked in a French restaurant as a kid & had two French roomates in College.
The only negatives of this book is that it is devoid of any charts, graphs, pictures, & illustrations. The readers will certainly learn things that can help them live a healthier & longer life.
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