In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan
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Book Reviews of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Book Review: A very important book. Tastefully constructed to hold your attention.
Summary: 5 Stars
'In defense of food' is my first by author Michael Pollan. My criticism of the food industry in the United States was only getting stronger. The unfair agriculture subsidies, lobbyists in the white house influencing the congress to stay bribed for the industry, and the beautiful picture of a green pasture with freely roaming(sometimes, even smiling?)cows on the milk carton that's filled with growth hormones which should have been banned from consumption. I have been a vegetarian my whole life but my knowledge about the food industry and their 'food' products was very miniscule.
With this book, Michael Pollan succeeded in what many authors fail to do so, to make the book personal to you. The clever construction of chapters and the astounding facts about the food industry in this country are just too interesting to ignore. Much of his recommendations on what to eat are nothing I have not heard before. I grew up in India and I don't remember a day when we used anything out of the refrigerator for cooking meals, except maybe ice, and the occasional homemade grape wine. This book taught me what my mom did to my absentee ear when I was growing up: 'Eat what your grandmother ate'. I never understood that better until I read this book. From dental diseases, to coronary disease, Mr.Pollan lays out a list of things that are absolutely unethical and wrong with the western 'food'. It just reaffirmed my belief that the corporations exist for profits and they will do ANYTHING to keep you uninformed and numb to reality. Yes, processed food is economically more accesible. But, is the cost our society's paying in exchange of cheap food, fair?. Obesity, heart ailments, dental diseases, diabetes, extinction of natural resources, death of small farms, and corruption of the children's minds- all related to the monoculture culture, are leading Americans towards a future that is as unhealthy and scary as a 'twinkie'.
If you care about the ethical obligations of your lifestyle, read this book and you decide what to do with your newly acquired knowledge.
Book Review: Absolutely a Life-Changer
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a twenty-seven-year-old male, and before I read this book last spring, I don't think I'd ever thought about food beyond the questions, "Which TV dinner will I have tonight?" and "Papa-John's or Dominoes?" I'm not sure what made me pick up In Defense of Food in Target one day, but needless to say, I now have many more questions about the foods I eat, and that's a good thing.
One question the book will make you ask is, "Is this food?" It's probably not. It's sad that such is a question needing clarified, but it is. Much of what we eat is so processed to have lost its nutrient providing ability. He calls most of what we eat "edible foodlike substances." Pollan illustrates vividly the outcome of our eating habits. Wherever the western diet goes, the diseases all of our family members have died from follow: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, strokes... Traditional diets, even ones with almost no vegetables, tend to produce healthier people.
Fortunately, Pollan's book is not simply intended to scare everyone either. Pollan ends the book with a wonderful chapter of advice, general principles for what food to choose and how to prepare and eat it, for what things to avoid. For instance, Pollan has a pretty simple rule for determining whether or not something is food: Would your great-grandmother have recognized this as food? That and many other principles provide a map for navigating our confusing, and misleading, food culture.
Pollan's book is a life-changer. It's made me so much more conscious of what I eat and has provided me ways to make better decisions about what I eat. Pollan is a fantastic writer (reading In Defense of Food is not unlike reading something by Malcolm Gladwell), and this book also just made me so much more interested about food. I cook more now, for instance. And I'm developing an interest in cook books. And it's not a diet book, but I did lose weight and feel better now once I started following Pollan's advice. I couldn't recommend this much more highly.
Book Review: Absolute must read for anyone who cares about health
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Extremely clear and to the point, and also, very appropriately structured, incredibly informative and well researched.
The human species is extremely capable of adapting to very different diets, living healthy and long enough non-obese lives without diabetes or heart diseases. These diets go from the mediterranean diet, to the Japanese diet, to the Masai diet of just meat, milk and blood, to the eskimo's diet of basically meat and fish, to vegetarian diets; and so and so forth. We can live on significantly different types of diets and food, oddly enough, without eating too much. Yet, what evidence shows is that humans haven't adapted well at all to the so called "Western diet" prevalent in the US. The Western diet aims for quantity and not quality, lacks true variety and lacks sufficient amount of real whole foods, makes people overfed, and at the same time, undernourished, with all its industrialized and processed "food-like things," greatly contributing to the development of the most prevalent western diet diseases: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in nutrition and health. Pollan presents his case against the Western diet and "non real food" so compellingly and so clearly.
Even before I was midway through the book I had already started changing my eating and cooking patterns, for example, by throwing away some some of those food-like substances that I innocently had at home.
Absolutely every person on the planet should read this book, in particular people either in the US or anywhere else eating the "Western diet" of industrialized processed foods which aren't real food. The subtitle of the book says it all: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Highest recommendation.
Book Review: Simple, common sense approach to eating
Summary: 5 Stars
Most of what we eat is not food. That's the simple premise in Pollan's follow-up to The Omnivore's Dilemma. 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. Pollan makes the point that if our grandparents walked into the modern supermarket, they wouldn't recognize many of the things on the shelves. This is not good.
It's the Western obsession with nutrients as opposed to food that has led us here. 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.
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). Eat less. Think of meat as more of a side dish. Don't eat things with ingredients you can't pronounce. Paradoxically, avoid foods that make health claims on their packaging (which implies, firstly, that they have packaging--something else to probably avoid). Shop around the edges of the grocery store. All of these direct us to eat food, not food-like, processed, manufactured food-like substances. 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.
Book Review: Another book that revolutionizes the way I view our interactions with plants
Summary: 5 Stars
Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Michael Pollan begins his book with these especially concise declarations about how to eat healthfully and he then writes a book about how nutritionism, the 'Western diet', and unmindful eating have led many humans astray (often down paths to stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer). Pollan encourages us to shy away from reductionistic dietary journeying towards a fuller and more mindful experience with food and with other humans. He calls for a return to eating whole foods. It's strange that a music festival (Bonnaroo) and then my doctor's recommendation that I take a medication (a $60 a month medication no less!) to try to reduce my triglycerides would lead me on such a dietary quest that my core beliefs about food and meals would be decimated and more humanly primordial food mindfulness would rise from the ashes like a phoenix of health. I grew up very thin and very athletic and figured that I could eat whatever (often highly processed, laboratory flavored 'food-like substances), tons of whatever, and few plants. This was a very important book for me to read considering that a lovely baby boy grows inside the womb of my lovely bride. This book will help me to be mindful of what we as a family eat and what we slowly eat together. This is a very important book that I recommend for everybody to read. I place this book in very high regard and will cherish it along with other books that have helped change my worldview about our relationship with plants. I also recommend that you consider reading _Fast Food Nation_, _Slaughterhouse_, and _What to Eat_.