"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.