In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

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"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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Although he give the disclaimer that he's nobody to be telling anybody what to eat, he does give some good, common sense rules of thumb: Eat mostly plants (mostly green plants). This is not good. That's the simple premise in Pollan's follow-up to The Omnivore's Dilemma. Don't eat things with ingredients you can't pronounce.

Pollan makes the point that if our grandparents walked into the modern supermarket, they wouldn't recognize many of the things on the shelves. Most of what we eat is not food. Eat less. All of these direct us to eat food, not food-like, processed, manufactured food-like substances. It's the Western obsession with nutrients as opposed to food that has led us here.

Think of meat as more of a side dish. It's a great message, and with all the confusing health claims out there, it's nice to have a call for simple common sense. Most of what we eat are food-like substances (and that might be generous), packed with preservatives, artificial flavors, fillers and other chemicals that don't exist in nature. Paradoxically, avoid foods that make health claims on their packaging (which implies, firstly, that they have packaging--something else to probably avoid). Sometimes flaky dietary science, a culture desperately seeking out the "magic bullet," big-budget marketing campaigns from American food manufacturers and laws and regulation that place the financial health of the agricultural industry above the physical health of the population have all contributed to a situation where people really aren't sure what they should and shouldn't be eating.

As Pollan points out, that's a uniquely human dilemma. Shop around the edges of the grocery store.

Read Omnivore's Dilemma, and with the exception of some issues I have with theoretical framing of part of the book, it was a fantastic read and I definitely recommend it to everyone. In Defense of Food was a gift to my sister. We've both read Dilemma, and we have never eaten the same since--we eat better and we couldn't be happier about it. Buy this book and understand your relationship with yourself.

Organic is much more flavorful and nutritional, if you can afford it. A great collection of newer American studies in American nutrition. After watching Food, Inc I decided to spend more time considering where my food comes from. Have done quite a bit of research on food. I think its interesting that we really have no idea where our food comes from.

The purpose of this review is not to talk about the content but to warn you that the index in the Kindle edition does not work -- there are no corresponding links to content. This lack of such an important reference is a real problem for me, especially in a work like this one where you are obviously interested in using it to skip around and read different things on the subject. I'll be returning this immediately and buying the paperback version instead.

Pollan ends by giving his rules of thumb for eating in North America today. I read Pollan's book "The Omnivores Dilemma" about two years ago, and was anxious to read his new one. While very similar in the theme that our food system is industrialized, politicized, engineered, and awash in pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and drugs, this book looks deeper at how nutrition science has been both misleading and wrong. I've read several books in this genre, this was my favorite. This is the best diet book that will never get sold as a diet book.