In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Book Review: Paradigm Shift!
Summary: 5 Stars
Loved it. Changed how I eat - completely! Not about which fats or carbs you should or shouldn't eat. Fantastic. READ THIS BOOK! then grow your own veggies!Book Review: A Must Read: And here is why
Summary: 5 Stars
Healing the Rift: Merging Science and Spirituality
Michael Pollan chronicles the dogma and misconceptions concerning food and food nutrition. With tens of thousands of books published each year on cooking, diet, food, and nutrition, few really give readers the information they need about healthy eating.
Like a trial lawyer systematically building his case to a jury, Pollan walks us through why our Western diet is killing us prematurely and what to do about it.
Although Pollan summarizes his book with: "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" this page turner will first convince you to abandon the Western diet and then pave the way for understanding what and how to eat.
This is a perfect follow up to his The Omivore's Dilemma.
Book Review: Well Written and Thought Provoking
Summary: 5 Stars
I'll never feel the same way about food ever again. This isn't an "eat this, don't eat that" kind of book -it's much better! I had no idea that the food industry is so political and that nutritional science is, well, not so scientific.
This is an easy read without being dumbed-down. I like the casual and sometimes comedic voice of Michael Pollan and I have been inspired to change the way I eat. In fact, I already have!
Book Review: Against 'nutritionism'
Summary: 4 Stars
Michael Pollan, professor of journalism at Berkeley, is a prolific writer on food and food-related issues, which have drawn much attention in the United States in recent years. After his more historical and philosophical works, "In Defense of Food" is a practical guide to and defense of food. To be precise, food as opposed to processed, additive-filled, can-conserved and/or microwavable goo that passes for food in most of our Western supermarkets.
Pollan uses a pleasant style and a usefully skeptical attitude towards the faddish nutritional science of the past decades to launch a critique on the industrial process of food production in the Western world, which has made us at the same time less healthy, fatter, and less nourished. As Pollan shows, typical 'rich' diseases such as cancer, type 2 diabetes, coronary disease, stroke and so forth are directly and invariably correlated to following the broadly defined 'Western diet' (which despite Pollan using this name is really mostly the American diet). This, in turn, is caused partially by an excessive focus on single 'good' or 'bad' nutrients in food science, which eliminates both the interplay of various elements in given foodstuffs as they relate to our health, partially by the social and cultural contexts of food being ignored in such science, leading to useless and confusing study results, and finally in part by the food industry bribing and cajoling governments and researchers alike to make these practices suit their profit needs. He calls this 'nutritionism', following an Australian researcher on the same topic.
Although Pollan's critique is backward-looking in the sense of supporting traditional conceptions of food, where food is healthy qua food, not because of one or another 'good' nutrient du jour being part of it, its radical nature is by no means to be underestimated. Consistently, at times even repetitively, Pollan shows chapter after chapter how all the negative effects associated with the American way of eating as well as the 'food' consumed are the result of the modern agrocapitalist food industry and its unrestrained victory over any standards of healthcare or regulation other than removing explicit poison (and even that not always).
As alternative, Pollan proposes methods of food production that eliminate the artificial focus on individual nutrients as well as restoring the social context of meals in the classic sense, which implies eating natural, unaltered foods (organic or better), eating them in normal quantities, and taking your time with the meal to enjoy it. He summarizes his basic viewpoint as "eat food, not too much, mostly plants", but expands upon this in the final chapter to give some more detailed considerations on what kind of attitude to take to choosing food in our kind of society.
In a pleasant change from the normal faddish type of diet advice book, he actually looks at the structural issues around the production of food, not just choice of specific nutrients in them, and he gives tips on what kind of things to consider when choosing rather than telling the reader specifically what kind of food to eat. This is indeed a great advancement and for that reason this book is certainly to be recommended. The only downsides are a gratuitous and unnecessarily anti-socialist attitude (he repeatedly compares things he doesn't like to Marxism or the Soviet Union, even though that has no relation to the topic whatsoever), and the fact his critique gets a little repetitive over time.
Book Review: In Defense of Food a Winner
Summary: 5 Stars
The book was a requirement for a college class. This was the easiest purchase of material yet! No searching in a bookstore or standing in lines. Just get on the computer and click...it's done. The book arrived quickly, was very reasonably priced, and in great condition. I see an A in my future.