In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto Reviews

• Care for your family? Want to live long and well? This is required reading.

  
  By A1725KPO7A5ULX on 2008-01-09
  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."
  
  
  

• Back to Nature

  
  By AMVYEHWS9V0FW on 2008-02-22
  
  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

  
  By A3KHRGGS52HE8O on 2008-01-06
  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.
  
  

• Disappointing follow up to Omnivores Dilemma

  
  By ARNEUO7BF3J55 on 2008-04-14
  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."

  
  By A1IHT31N8RLPN8 on 2008-02-14
  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.
  
  
• This book is Indefensible!
  By A2JGV13JOP4AD2 on 2008-01-16
  Pollan's In Defense of Food is indefensible! Perhaps because I so thoroughly enjoyed his eloquent Omnivore's Dilemma (except for the last sections that deals with his overwrought angst on killing his very own pig), I was very disappointed in this follow-up book.
  
  Even though Pollan has meager disclaimers throughout the book that he is a Journalist instead of a Scientist, he fails even journalistic standards. I feel his lack of adequately referencing or explaining his statements, is especially problematic. For example, he quotes that 80% of Type 2 Diabetes could be prevented with diet and exercise, yet does not share with us the methodology and reasoning of how that figure was derived. There are a number of references in the Sources section, but will someone really want to read every single source to confirm this?
  
  In multiple areas, he lumps physicians, food producers, and the pharmaceutical industry, as all being solely economically orientated, as if there is a conspiracy amongst them to create disease. I feel his mischaracterization of the motives of physicians is inexcusable, not to mention narrow, inaccurate, and demeaning. He feels they are capitalistic and use illness as a business opportunity. Inexplicably, he does not prominently mention the multiple physicians who are experts on diet and atherosclerosis. Where are the interviews with Dean Ornish, M.D., Ron Krauss, M.D., or John McDougall, M.D.? They are some of the brightest and most informed researchers regarding diet and disease, and are right in his own backyard in the Berkeley area.
  
  As he notes himself, Pollan is certainly is not a true food authority, even though he has many provocative ideas and concepts which may ultimately be true. He resorts to the "pseudo-science" he preaches so strongly against. For example, I was tired of hearing about the "French Paradox" which gained popularity following a 1991 Sixty Minutes episode. The fact that the incidence of heart disease is similar to its other developed neighbors, and the validity of the whole idea has been questioned by Health researchers based on subsequent data, was not commented on. It reminds me of a saying, which I enjoy quoting, and probably applies to this book: "Keep an Open Mind, but not so open that your Brains fall out!"
  
  
  
  
• Simply Not as Good as The Omnivore's Dilemma
  By A35CBCC08H2U0J on 2008-01-06
  This was not a bad book, but the biggest problem I had with it was that it was too short (just over 200 pages of text in large typeface) and it often repeated points without elaborating on them in as much detail as I would have liked. Pollan goes back to the theme of "Nutritionism" throughout his book, and discusses how the interests of food scientists and manufacturers have aligned to create the food environment we have today. This is a very fascinating story, but he seems too narrowminded on the theme of nutritionism and how that has ruined our food system and doesn't detail other potential causes.
  
  Other interests (such as the beef and dairy lobbies, which he briefly alludes to a couple times in the book) have also had a tremendous influence on the national diet. Moreover, the way we live our lives, busily, without time to eat, is a tremendous contributor to poor health that Pollan again only alludes to. Lifestyle is a huge part of the food culture that Pollan encourages, but he doesn't specify what elements of lifestyle are common in the most successful food cultures.
  
  My other major bugaboo with the book was that he barely touched on the notion of vegetarian and vegan diets, which are becoming increasingly popular in the States. The question of whether these diets are safe and healthy was not mentioned much (about a paragraph or so) and some insight into these two movements would have been appreciated.
  
  Overall, it's a quicker read than the Omnivore's Dilemma, but less detailed and with fewer eye-opening moments. A book that should be read, but I recommend you save your money and wait until the paperback edition is released.
  
  
• Nostalgia by a Luddite
  By A21UXY899LBXQE on 2008-01-22
  This book cherry picks nutritional findings when it wishes to add a little scientific credibility to its arguments, but then implies that nutritional science will always get it wrong. In this way it implies there is no difference between the discredited lipid hypothesis and the carbohydrate hypothesis which has so recently been brilliantly documented by Gary Taubes. Pollan then wanders off into unsubstantiated claims that vegetarians live longer and endorses the customary liberal feel good arguments about farmers' markets and natural food. While charmingly written, it is basically a literary work and not a book with useful nutritional information.
  
  
• Naked Lunch
  By A11PKVBGCKRVEK on 2008-04-01
  "In Defense of Food" is a fine book, cleverly written in clear and musical English, and I recommend it to everyone in the hope that the victuals of this benighted land eventually improve.
  
  I go out of my way to obtain decent food, so I'm in agreement with Professor Pollan in much of what he has to say, but as to his central premise, that refined and manufactured food is poisonous to the degree that it is causing the present epidemic of obesity and diabetes -- not to mention all the other maladies he lists-- I remain skeptical.
  
  Certainly there is nothing new about Professor Pollan's hypothesis. Admonitions about the deleterious properties of sugar have circulated for many years; Hitler was said to be a sugar addict, and there is a song of warning called "Poison Sugar" on the Holy Modal Rounders' 1978 album, Last Round
  
  However, I am ancient enough to have lived in a time when the quality of food was even worse than that under which we suffer today. In the 1950s, no food package bore the label All-Natural or No Artificial Ingredients. Instead, food was marketed as being new and improved, modern, and scientifically advanced with secret ingredients such as Platformate. Unlike the culinary utopia that Professor Pollan depicts in those days, television advertising had ensnared American minds, and families were more likely to dine on what were then called TV Dinners (each of which came in an aluminum tray) rather than mother's home cooking. The standard lunch which children carried to school in their Roy Rodgers lunchboxes consisted of a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich on Wonder Bread®. If a child expressed hunger upon return from school, he or she would be encouraged to eat another such sandwich, because the jelly came in decorated glass tumblers which, when emptied, served as attractive tableware in which to serve Kool-Aid®, the standard drink of the day.
  
  The "peanut butter" in these meals actually contained little that was derived from peanuts, but instead about 60% of the paste was hydrogenated cottonseed or corn oil (as were all foods made by the Corn Products Refining Company and the Union Starch Company). When children drank milk instead of sugar-water, it was often enhanced with Bosco® corn syrup. At my best friend's house, they used Similac® powdered milk, and before corn flakes came encrusted with sugar, it was common to sprinkle granulated sugar (a lidded sugar bowl was always kept at the center of the table) on one's cereal.
  
  Bacon grease was saved in a jar that was kept in the ice box, but later Crisco® and Swift® shortening became more popular for frying. Everything, all cooking, was fried, and the remaining grease was saved like a precious substance. Hot dogs were even more popular than they are today, only then, the casings of these floor-sweepings from the abattoir were supplemented with non-meat extenders -- often cereal or starch byproducts.
  
  Penny candy was sold, and after school, children would load up on it at the corner store. Penny candy was what one might consider to be on the fringe of food. For instance, a common candy was buttons of colored sugar stuck to a tape of paper. Another was tiny wax vials containing dyed (but not flavored) sugar water -- some kids even ate the paraffin wax. One which survives today is bubble gum. Can any of these things actually be considered food? Whatever the answer, many such substances were consumed.
  
  The era of air freight and food transportation had not yet arrived, so it was the utopia of local food that Professor Pollan rhapsodizes over. Unfortunately, this meant that fresh produce was unavailable to most of the country for the winter months. During this time, canned fruits were popular -- all canned fruit having been packed "in heavy syrup."
  
  In short, the American diet of the period (the postwar diet of Europe was far worse, and our family charitably sent canned goods and sugar to the old country) was exponentially worse than even the most egregious crimes against the palate Professor Pollan describes in this book. If refined sugar and the wrong type of fat and artificial food are so patently malefic to the human body, why is it that diabetes and obesity were as rare in those bygone days as appendicitis is today? Since we Americans --obedient as always to the orders of the all-seeing TV eye -- ate nothing but processed food swimming in cholesterol, sugar and number-10 red dye, how is it that any of us lived to tell of it? Why didn't Americans vanish from the face of the Earth leaving the ruins of supermarkets as a warning for future archeologists?
  
  In fact, this worst of all imaginable diets seemed to exhibit no symptoms among the populace. Hyperactive Attention-Deficit Disorder had yet to appear in children. It may be argued that it was there, lurking, but hadn't yet been discovered, but to this I would suggest that it was kept in check by the power of fear. Anyone "acting-out" (as I believe it is now termed) in a classroom would be administered swift and cruelly-painful corporal punishment. Obesity was rare and rarer still in children, because most people were employed in manual labor, and in my city, there were no such things as school buses. For that matter, there were never any snow days. Even in those brutal winters --and this was in the era before Global Warming eliminated winter forever-- we were expected to be in school and on time every day. After school, boys spent most of their free time injuring each other.
  
  On the other hand, in times past the wealthy few who could afford the type of diet Professor Pollan advocates -- unadulterated, minimally-processed, unpackaged, natural food in wide variety; fresh-picked produce and prime meats that had been fed on wild clover and fallen peaches; wines without sulfites -- such gourmands often developed gout (the cure for which was a diet of Jell-O® with the tiny marshmallows mixed in).
  
  Upon casual consideration, Professor Pollan's call for a return to the "good ol' days" is admirable, but for those of us so unfortunate as to have been born before the advent of such food messiahs, how is it that we apparently thrived? Actually, Professor Pollan is but one of a long line of food prophets foretelling our doom if we don't repent, and as with all the others, he's getting rich doing so.
  
  There's the real lesson!
  
  
• Want health?
  By A34645X9ZUS023 on 2008-01-04
  ". . . no people on earth worry more about the health consequences of their food choices than we American do--and no people suffer from as many diet-related health problems."
  
  What to do? Like so much today, food truth is hard to find. We can't trust government to tell us the truth because it is influenced by the industrial agriculture giants that produce most food. We certainly can't trust labels using "natural" to describe chemical agglomerations. And, frankly, we can't trust doctors because they are simply not educated about food. Nutritionists? Many are educated, but how do we learn their bias? And, can they overcome "the pitfalls of reductionism and overconfidence?"
  
  I trust Michael Pollan. He has now written enough books regarding food that we know who and how he is. If he has a bias, it seems to be that he really gives a damn about we American consumers.
  
  Pollan shows how, starting in 1977, government dietary decrees began to speak in terms of nutrients rather than specific foods. This was due to the pushback from the meat industry against the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs. Senator George McGovern's committee had made the fatal mistake of suggesting that Americans should eat less red meat and fewer dairy products. Enter agribusiness lobbyists. And that changed the whole story of the Western Diet. "The Age of Nutritionism had arrived." No longer would certain foods be extolled; now we would be sold nutrients. No matter that these mysterious and unpronounceable ingredients might be manufactured rather than grown.
  
  At the end of the day, and near the end of this most valuable book, is the suggestion: "Cook and, If You Can, Plant a Garden." I relate well to that. I was lucky--I grew up in a poor family that raised most of our food. The proof of the eating is that my parents long outlived their eight younger "buy it at the store" siblings; Dad died at 93 and Mother is still avidly gardening at 94.
  
  If we can't raise food we can buy from small producers as close to us as possible--we can be locavores. The more we know about the people who produce what we put in our body the more we can trust our food-buying decisions. And when we buy food we vote our values. The shorter the distance from field to plate, the less oil is consumed. Win-win.
  
  So buy from nearby growers. Buy from farmer's markets and CSAs. Spend more money on best-quality food and spend less money on health insurance. It's an essential choice.
  
  I won't be a spoiler and tell you about the new and contradictory information about fats, cholesterol and heart disease. I won't bore you with the stories of how our present unhealthful dietary condition came to be and the many businesses and agencies who have created it. And I won't tell you what you should do, beyond this: read this book and act on the uncommon commonsense knowledge it gives you.
  
  
  
• Ten star MUST READ ..................
  By A1MR1VMK999I6O on 2008-01-12
  Loved his book The Omnivore's Dilemma which I highly recommend. This book is even better, because he doesn't mince words, but challenges the reader especially the American one to stop being a slave to the lies of agri business, and government special interests who because of farm subsidies is easily swayed to play their way not the right way.
  
  Growing up in a family that still hunts, fishes and grows a huge vegetable garden and has fruit trees we have avoided most of what passes as food in the grocery store. But we do see the ads and do see the highly processed over packaged foods when we do shop. And there is where the problem is with the food sold in America. No longer as the author notes, do we have producers selling food we need to sustain ourselves which is healthy, but we have multi billion dollar corporations who sole purpuse is to make a need and fill it, even if they have to play word games and make you think because a processed food loaded with sugar, salt and other non nutritious stuff has a drop of a vitamin in it, its therefore healthy so go ahead eat away.
  
  Was so glad he writes about the cattle industry and how they attacked Senator McGovern in the 70's when he dared move to make it known that we needed to eat less meat, especially red meat. Reminded me of the cattlemen who went after Oprah when she dared say she would never eat another hamburger after the e-coli mess. Although he needed to write more about agri business and the billions in susbides they get. These are OUR tax dollars and we have a right to demand that they NOT be given to businesses that dont produce 100% health food!
  
  Like other reviewers have noted, I to wish this book were longer. Maybe the author will write another book? Hope so. Anyway he gives some excellent advise to those who don't know how to shop in a grocery store because of how its designed to get the buyer to buy junk first. The healthiest items are on the outside areas where they put the produce, organic meats, organic dairy items. And if the food wont spoil within a week don't buy it because its loaded with chemicals to expend the shelf life. Also look at your back yard and find an area where you can at least grow some vegetables. Use certified organic farmers markets and support local growers who have subscription plans where you pay a certain price and are guaranteed a certain amount of fresh produce, fruits, meats, eggs per week.
  
  As another reviewer also noted they play games when it comes to 'low fat' dairy items, because to make dairy items taste as close to the real thing, they add man made ingredients that actually make them more high in cholesterol and harder for the body to absorb. This is why I only buy organic milk from a dairy here in California that raises milk cows the way we did in the 50's and still do today.
  
  Now here's the question to ask in this election year. Which candidate will dare take on the agri business industry? John McCain speaks out against ethanol subsides and Dennis Kucinich speaks out on vegan/vegetarian causes, and Mike Hucklebee has discussed healthy eating in relation to his losing weight. But what about the billions spend on producing unhealthy and unneeded foods in this country?
  
  
• Ugh!
  By A22RY8N8CNDF3A on 2008-01-30
  Nutritionists often change their minds, as new evidence comes in. Thus, per Pollan, we should stop paying attention to them. Doctors and nuclear scientists also sometimes change their minds - should we also disdain their thoughts?
  
  It's true that Americans' health has deteriorated in some ways over recent decades - eg. the alarming growth of obesity. Pollan suggests this also damns nutritionists. Forget about eating TOO MUCH - eg. the larger portions and enticements for super-sizing, reduced physical exertion in our daily lives, and ignoring the universal advice of nutritionists (avoid animal fats, eat a balanced meal, etc.). Pollan also wants to associate (blame?) increasing heart disease on nutritionists - but what about the fact that it is decreasing?
  
  "In Defense of Food" cannot be defended - too much hair-splitting and absurd logic. I cannot be convinced that nutritionists and the marketers that use them do not/can not improve food - eg. niacin added to bread, iodine in salt, etc. We simply don't know enough to do so as well as in animals because the required scientific testing is often not possible or frowned upon.
  
  
• Omnivore's Dilemma Updated In A Quick, Focused, Factual Form
  By A75W6T9I2S8BA on 2008-01-05
  I thought I'd discovered gold two years ago when I chanced upon Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" on the new-book shelf at my local library. I'm a health nut, and what Pollan had to say between the covers of that book was exactly what I'd been looking for. The message blew me away. I started telling all my friends, colleagues, and family about how phenomenal and groundbreaking the book was, and encouraging them to read it. I even went so far as to buy five hardbound copies to give out and loan. But in the end I don't believe I really made any serious converts. Plenty of people wanted to listen! Telling my friends and acquaintances about the content of Pollan's book made me a big hit in social situations, but I honestly don't think many people took the time to read the book or, more importantly, to change their eating habits.
  
  But Michael Pollan's book did convert me. Over the last two years, I have changed my eating habits--not as much as I hoped I would, but significantly nonetheless. The problem is, as I am sure anyone else knows who has also tried to follow his path: eating healthy in modern, urban America is extremely difficult.
  
  "Omnivore's Dilemma" went on to become a nationwide bestseller. Thanks in part to the stir that book caused, and the many newspaper articles and television programs that followed, there has been a small but noticeable difference in the availability of healthier, more naturally produced vegetables, fruits, meats, and fish in the area where I live. Merchants now appear to be very conscious of the fact that many buyers are eager to know how and where each batch of produce was grown; whether fish is wild or farm-raised; and whether meats, dairy products, and eggs come from range-, grass- or grain-fed animals. In our area, the local farmers' markets are thriving, and the supermarkets...well, they don't seem to be doing so well anymore. Instead there are a number of small health food chains opening up that seem to be robbing the supermarkets of a large portion of their business. People are starting to "vote with their forks." They are saying they want better quality food, and slowly, their voice is being heard.
  
  When I heard that Pollan had a new book out--"In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto,"--I jumped at the chance to be one of the first to buy it. It is a small book, easy and quick to read. I finished it in one enjoyable afternoon. Frankly, there is not much in this new book that wasn't already covered in "Omnivore's Dilemma." However, what this new book accomplishes that the previous book did not, is to present the basic concepts--about what is wrong with the modern Western diet and what we can do to eat in a more healthy manner--in a far more concise and readable form. Gone are the stories, the humor, the horror, the amusing dialogue, and the semitravelogue--all that was, for me at least, very delightful--but it also made the book perhaps too long and chatty for some, especially those just seeking a quick, focused, factual read. This book will most certainly appeal to a wider audience. It reads more like a practical manual for the general public.
  
  I was hoping this new book might give me some further clues. It did that, but not as much as I had hoped. Nevertheless, I am happy that I purchased it, and read it. The most important thing it did for me was to reinforce all the lessons I'd learned from "Omnivore's Dilemma," and to present them to me with more justifications and updated scientific findings.
  
  Hopefully, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" will go on to become another national bestseller, and in the process continue to spread Pollan's healthy food revolution. A "Manifesto" sounds serious and political and Pollan speaks in the book about people "voting with their forks." It must be working, because many of the folks in my neighborhood appear to be voting with their forks, and the local farmers, ranchers, and grocery people are listening. There is a small revolution stirring and perhaps this book will help move it along.
  
  I recommend this book highly to all who have not yet read "The Omnivore's Dilemma," and to those that have, I recommend this book as an inspirational updated refresher course.
  
  
• Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Spend more time and money on food.
  By ATSO4KT7OR343 on 2008-03-09
  Not as good as Omnivore's Dilemma by a long shot. A good bit of the content seems to be a rehash of the earlier book (which I do strongly recommend; it's a good read even if I don't agree with all of Pollan's points).
  
  While there are good insights in both Omnivore's Dilemma and this book, at the end of the day one cannot forget economics. In my view, if one follows Pollan's advice, an important practical impact to real people eating the much maligned "Western Diet" is that they will spend more money and time on all activities related to food. Hence the title of this review, where I have added seven more words to the author's seven word, three rule summary of how to eat.
  
  A sentence on page 145 of the hardcover edition sums it up quite well: "In order to eat well we need to invest more time, effort, and resources in providing for our sustenance, to dust off a word, than most of us do today". Yes, both time and money are required, both of which are very dear to most folks in the West, and particularly in the U.S.
  
  Every one of us needs to make a personal decision about investing our own precious time and resources. The question "What should I eat?" does not have a single right answer for everyone.
  
  
• In Defense of Meat
  By A3J5Z958KYBGZG on 2008-01-16
  I do appreciate Pollan's view on eating minimally processed foods, but I cannot understand his stance on meat. If that's not the center of our world-wide human food culture since pre-history then I don't know what is. I think the biggest problem in our so-called "Western" food culture is the weird-science foods that combine sugars, a tiny bit of fiber, trace vitamins and minerals, and call it a health food. Let's not attack minimally-processed meat in the same breath.
  
  
• Everyone should read this
  By A2PZDX0VHEB7WT on 2008-02-14
  It's pretty indisputable that american in general are overweight and not very healthy. Equally, hard to argue that diet is implicated in this (and lifestyle... but diet is a big factor). This book examines how the normal american diet differs from traditional diets that used to keep people pretty healthy, and how we should change our diets to be heathly. The normal american diet is full of processed food, industrially grown, stored forever and trucked across country, lots of convenience food, snacks, soda, big portions, etc.
  
  It has a long detour into debunking "nutritionalism", which an unquestioning faith in the results of attempts to study a very difficult and complex topic, by people who (in too many cases) have good reason for bias. The more people can be convinced to think for themselves about these issues, which is the main point, the better.
  
  The book then hits many nutrition everyone-knows and dicusses their flaws. It doesn't go very much in depth, but just bounces back to the main point, which is (a) we don't really know (b) it doesn't really matter: we do, definitely, know that natural whole foods are good so we should eat them. We can keep trying to find out the exact details of the science and why some specific nutrient is good or bad, but a diet containing natural unprocessed foods is proven to work and the current american diet doesn't, the exact reasons why doesn't need to affect the decision to change.
  
  I've always been suspicious of things made to look like other things, like margarine, so I was predisposed to agree with this book, and we already eat much the way it recommends. This book wasn't as broad/deep/educational as Omnivores Dilemma, it's a pretty quick read, it has a fairly simple message; but it was quite readable and I only hope a fraction of the people who need to read it actually do. The guidelines for eating are simple and memorable and I think do a really helpful job of steering people though the grocery store. And finally, it's so nice to see someone recommending vegetables but encouraging meat and wine; it's refreshingly common sense and without the intolerance of so much writing about eating.
  
  
• Good start, bad end
  By AG1Y2066O12XT on 2008-05-09
  The best part of this book is the beginning, where the author explains the history of the western diet. Then he discredits modern nutrition scientists, or nutritionists as he calls them, putting them in the ranks of alchemists. Also he seems to accuse them of being colluded with the capitalist pigs running the modern food industry.
  
  Then, he tries to speak with authority about isoflavones, omega-3, and other hard core nutrition knowledge, as if trying to be a nutritionist himself!
  
  The end was the worst, almost unbearable, seriously suggesting that cultivating your lawn or whatever available land you have is a good way to solve the food problem. He becomes very critical, putting down people who "ONLY" take a couple weeks of vacation per year, unlike the French who know more about life than Americans. This was insensitive because, as self-employed that I am, I have not taken vacation in years...aboriginal people, whom he praises, did not take vacations either. In fact, vacations are a modern invention just like the western diet.
  
  I started reading this book with enthusiasm. I liked how he took a step back to look a the whole picture from a broader perspective and shedding some light on how we have ended up where we are. I like his suggestions of avoiding processed food. But the book became gradually disappointing.
  
  That a journalist is now rising as a nutritional authority with best sellers clearly underscores the sad state of confusion and misinformation about food. I was going to recommend it to my wife and some friends, but this book will probably best end up in the recycle bin.
  
  
• Our relationship with food, how it has changed
  By A9A1NYTAR5ZFF on 2008-01-05
  Pollan has written a far-reaching, easy to read and very informative book that breaks through the nonsense of reductionist nutrition or what he refers to as "nutritionism." He steps back from the Western diet to expose how science, industry and culture have created this strange departure of human beings from their historical relationship with food. A radical break from tradition began in the mid 1800's with the ability to grind grains down to their smallest elements. At the same time as the birth of refined grains, scientists declared that metabolism could be explained in terms of a few chemical nutrients. This approach to nutrition continues today with the USDA MyPyramid nutrition guidelines.
  
  But is that how nutrition really works? Pollan exposes many scientific mistakes that have been made since the mid 1800's. In our quest to isolate nutrients from their food, we ignore the reality that nutrition is as complex as a symphony orchestra. Rather than associating a health outcome as the result of including a nutrient in our diet, we are beginning to see that many health outcomes are due to the exclusion of another nutrient we have yet to identify! Heart disease is no longer linked to saturated fat in the diet but more likely due to the fact that the animals we eat no longer eat grass and the non-traditional use of grains.
  
  Why with all of this science and information do we see an increase in chronic degenerative disease throughout the Western world? Could our approach be wrong? What should we do? After Pollan's in-depth look at the progression of medicine, government policy and the food industry over the past 150 years, he gives his solution. "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Sounds simple and it is. Something simple for a complex problem; that's refreshing! But, it's not easy. It requires more time and more money for less food but greater health.
  
  Eat whole foods, traditional foods, avoid processed foods, buy from local producers, eat green (leaves) and eat foods (animals) that eat green. Eat wild foods, game and wild caught fish. Other than his omission of recommending lamb as a source of omega-3 fatty acids, his coverage of omega fatty acids, the latest nutrient `craze,' is one of the best I've seen.
  
  Non-Western diets may be healthier not because of some `magic bullet' in these diets but because they eat more variety (our refined grain diet consists primarily of wheat, corn and soy), they don't snack, they prepare their whole food at home, they sit down together as a family to eat and most importantly... food is a tradition that they love and embrace. If we regarded food with that same joy, rather than fuss over its health consequences, we might even see a reversal in chronic degenerative disease. At the very least, we would once again have a healthy relationship with food.
  
  A good companion book for Pollan's book is "Real Food" by Nina Plank.
  
  
• More Bourgeois Pretention than Analysis
  By A3P8M5WUJ6SOW4 on 2008-01-16
  I liked Pollan's previous works (Omnivore's Dilemma, Botany of Desire) much more. In this book, Pollan talks of the need to ignore the gospels of dieting, nutrition(ism) and other such (relatively recent) trendy fads, and return to eating just plain food. He debunks various claims (such as the lipid hypothesis), and concludes by saying that we (as Americans) should go back to eating slowly, less, more locally, and more communally. All fine advice, except not all of us have (or, for that matter, desire) that privilege. Ultimately, Pollan's book is more about a defense of being bourgeois than anything else.
  
  
• Food, 2008
  By A2ZHB7E544QLLQ on 2008-01-11
  This isn't a particularly good book but it's not bad, either. Much that author Michael Pollan investigates and offers isn't new, but also certainly welcome for a critical review. Nutrition vs. food is his thrust, and to that end, he makes a case.
  
  Pollan may be the Greenpeace candidate on the homefront. His bete noire is nutrition and when it comes to food, well, he has a definitive stand. He has a researched point of view, but the book, rather than swaying people away from the "western diet", becomes muddied in the waters of scientific results. How much more do we need to hear about omega-3s?!
  
  I liked "In Defense of Food", but gather what you will from it. Pollan makes a point, but beyond that, who knows?
  
  
  
• Finally the Truth about Nutritionism
  By A2KUUIJ52MWDAS on 2008-01-25
  Pollan thoughtfully and convincingly explains the many seeming paradoxes of "State of the Art" science about how to eat for good health. He establishes that what you eat may not be as important as the context in which you eat it, and that, as I have come to believe, there is no single universally appropriate healthy diet. He convinced me that the supposedly bad Western Diet is more accurately labeled the modern over-processed, gulped-down diet, and that one is best off, perhaps, eating what one's ancestors traditionally ate a century or so ago. The science analysis is excellent--he confirms my scientist husband's observation that "the great minds do not not gravitate to dietary science" or perhaps more accurately that nutrition reporting distorts what decent science there may be. The proof of the pudding seems to be that as I have returned to the food lifestyle of my German ancestors, I am losing weight and enjoying my food, and more important, enjoying my life.
  
  A recovering orthorexic
  
  
• The Emperors of Nutrition Have No Clothes
  By A2AXVGUXCZNIMO on 2008-02-10
  Ironically, a lot of what we have been doing as a nation in our quest for the healthy diet during the past 30 years has not really helped us become any healthier. In fact, it could be argued pretty easily that America has more health problems than ever.
  
  The reason? The author traces the roots of the health movement back to 1977 when a committee was formed to look at the rise of heart disease. The committee came to the conclusion that Americans should "cut their consumption of red meat and dairy products." The red meat and dairy industries went totally ballistic, and gunning for the Senate Chair of the committee, George McGovern, used their wealthy and powerful influence to have the wording changed to "choose meats, poultry, and fish that will reduce saturated fat intake."
  
  Thus began a trend to focus on nutrients, not food.
  
  So, the scientists and nutritionists began to break food into its nutrients and divide them into the good ones and the bad ones. Apparently, you can attack a nutrient, but not a food because the industry that produces that food will come after you (George McGovern was voted out of office during the next election thanks to the efforts of the beef lobby.)
  
  We embarked on our quest to eat the good nutrients, and limit the bad ones, but the problem is that foods are so complex that when you break them down into their parts, nothing necessarily behaves in the same way it did in the original food. In addition, some nutrients that we thought were bad turned out to be more complicated than at first glance. Turns out, there are good cholesterols and bad cholesterols, good fats and bad fats. As Americans attempted to eat what we thought was good for us and avoid what we thought was bad, we ended up eating foods that were unhealthier than the supposedly inferior foods they were designed to replace.
  
  Take for example the butter vs. margarine experiment. Back in the 70's, the American population was encouraged to replace butter, full of saturated fat, with margarine. We all believed that we were reducing our health risks for heart disease by making this scientifically approved choice. Ironically, scientists are now discovering that the only fat that can show a proven link to heart disease is trans fat. Trans fat is the partially hydrogenated oil that is the source of margarine and shortening. Gee, I'm sure glad we listened to the nutrition "experts" all these years. Apparently, trans fat is so bad for you, major cities are passing laws to ban the substance.
  
  As Michael Pollan says several times in his book: "Watch out for health claims."
  
  As scientists and nutritionists continue to experiment with nutrients and improve the foods we eat, they are coming to realize that nutrients do not behave the same in isolation as it did in the original food. So, it follows that you cannot take healthy whole grain complete with many healthy nutrients, then mill it, bleach it and basically reduce it to an unhealthful white powder, then just add a pile of vitamins and other stuff that is supposed to be good for you, and end up with something just as healthy again. Baby formula is an excellent example of a food that has been reengineered countless times to perfect the formula, yet breast milk still cannot be duplicated or replaced for its superior nutritional value. It turns out that we are unhealthy simply because we have been on a quest to eat healthier. We've been duped by the claims of processed foods, instead of just by eating the healthy whole foods the processed foods claim they can replace.
  
  I have to point out here that the only beneficiaries of the Western Diet are the processed food manufacturers that continue to reap huge profits from the latest box of cereal with its claim of "whole grain goodness." Fruits and vegetables in the produce section have always had the nutrition we seek, but it's harder to plaster a health claim on a carrot than a bright and cheery box of cereal. And, there is just less money to be made selling carrots instead of cereal.
  
  Michael Pollan advocates a number of thought processes that should occur in the quest for a healthy diet, starting with eating like our ancestors ate. Stop buying processed foods, eat whole foods, eat less meat and more plants, especially leafy ones. Remember, you are what what you eat eats too. In other words, if you eat beef from cows pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, well, you get hormones and antibiotics in your fast food hamburger. Organically grown produce from rich soils has more healthy nutrients than conventionally grown produce grown in petroleum-based fertilized soil.
  
  Finally, eat meals until you are about 80% full. And for goodness sake, stop snacking. That's the problem with convenience foods. They're too convenient. You can eat them in your car or at your desk and everywhere we never used to eat. I read another book that Michael Pollan references here called Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, and you would be amazed to learn that a great deal of the eating you do is in response to social and cultural cues. We eat way more often than we are really hungry. I recommend that book as excellent reading as well.
  
  This book is an excellent resource to help you stop listening to the hype surrounding healthy eating, and just start eating healthy. I highly recommend this book.
  
  
  
  
• Eat Local
  By A1ZPWZI3OWYZE5 on 2008-01-10
  This little book is very insightful and entertaining. It presents a compelling case for eating whole foods. Could this be Pollan's atonement for the damage he did to big organic and Whole Foods Market in the Omnivore's Dilemma?
  
  It's ironic that, as a farmer, I am surrounded by fresh produce all season long, but no time to cook it. I suppose this is typical of most families that gravitate towards quick, processed foods. If our eating habits are a pendulum, it has swung too far and this book might help bring it back.
  
  Physical exercise is as important as diet in maintaining health, but there was not one word about exercise in this book (okay, one word at the end). I understand that this is a book about food, but we should also acknowledge the relative benefits of physical activity. Americans have become increasingly sedentary, as their diets have become increasingly processed. So what is the relative contribution of physical inactivity to the so-called western diseases? 10%, 90%? I hope this is the subject of Pollan's next book.
  
  "... a diversified farm usually has little need for pesticides" (p. 159). Similar claims were made in the Omnivore's Dilemma. I wish this were true, but it's not based on my experience. In any case, such claims should be substantiated.
  
  
• Not without flaws
  By A231DIA1Y9U6NR on 2008-02-07
  About: Pollan picks apart the Western diet, saying that the industrialization of food as well as nutritionism (paying more attention to the nutrients in a food rather than the food itself) has destroyed our health. He then offers suggestions on how readers can change their own diets (Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants, which he elaborates on in the final section of the book)
  
  Pros: Quick read, well written, interesting topic (I happen to agree with his main points), presents a nice overview of flaws in nutrition science, acknowledges that people's bodies are different (i.e. some folks can't digest lactase), nice resources section at the back.
  
  Cons: While Pollan does provide sources, they are not linked to individual sentences in the book, just listed alphabetically by chapter, leaving the reader wondering where he specifically got some of the information he states. He states that his authority to write such a book is "tradition" and "common sense" which seems to me like saying "anyone could have written this book". Although he admits it in a later chapter, some of his prose smacks of the nutritionism that he rails against (i.e. he seems smitten by omega-3 acids). Uses "more on this later" frequently enough that it becomes annoying. Although he says he's just providing "suggestions" and that he doesn't want to tell people what to eat, I see little difference between the two.
  
  
• Not Bad, But Not His Best Book
  By A3J2JJIV2VH4LJ on 2008-02-24
  I read and loved Pollan's THE BOTANY OF DESIRE, an accessible and fascinating book. But frankly, I was disappointed by IN DEFENSE OF FOOD, which seemed to glide onto the best-seller list on the strength of his previous work. It seemed a bit "phoned-in," with highly technical passages punctuated by a few jokey comments and bits of simplistic advice. What he has to say is good as far as it goes, but a broader-ranging and more convincingly argued book is GOOD FOOD TASTES GOOD, by Carol Hart. Although far less publicized, Hart's book is far more clear, compelling, and informative.
  
  
• I Just Don't Know
  By A37UXQ0JLQOO0F on 2008-01-27
  I'm a working woman - I have four jobs and they take up all my time. I am also overweight and in recovery from so much abuse - my whole life has been abuse. So I try to treat my body right and do what the good Lord intended me to do with it - after so many years of abuse and trrible behavior it shows. So i like to read books about food and such. Maybe I am ignorant - it wouldnt be the first time some big shot man has made me feel that but this book was hard to read. The whole first part just talks about all these historical facts about food. I wanted to know what i shoudl and shouldn;t eat - and he does say that later on but I was so confused and lost by the time I was done that i don't think I got much out of it. My sponser Pam said I needed to have patience and read it again - but she doesn;t work four jobs to try and stay off welfare and food stamps - and I am pretty sure most of what he tells you to eat instead in here I can;t get on food stamps. So i gave Pam her book back and said I woudl rather hear about it on Oprah. If you went to Harvard maybe this is for you, but I work all the time and try to behave righteously and am not a liberal so this wasn't for me.
  
  
• Food for Thought
  By ADQR7Y6GIKSDL on 2008-02-06
  On the heels of his best-selling THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA, Michael Pollan has written a much smaller, more user-friendly book that serves as a "Cliff Notes" to Big Food Corporations and why they're bad for not only your body, but your wallet (do the words "health costs" mean anything)?
  
  IN DEFENSE OF FOOD is divided into three parts: "The Age of Nutritionism" (which defines and explains what scientists have done with your food while you were dozing for a few decades on that "sugar high"); "The Western Diet and the Diseases of Civilization" (which convincingly connects the dots between the western diet science and Big Food have teamed up to give us and sickness); and "Getting Over Nutritionism" (which sets out a game plan for you to turn over a new leaf -- then eat it). If you know someone who would never in a million years pick up (much less finish) a book about something they'd rather eat than read, I would at least suggest they look over this third part, which is all of 61 pages.
  
  If we have any chance against the one-two punch of Big Food and Big Pharma (one to make us sick, the other to offer nostrums to "heal" -- or not -- these sicknesses), then we should be educating ourselves by reading books like this. The science part might be a little dry, but the advice, such as don't eat a food that didn't exist when your great-grandmother ate, OR one that has more than five ingredients, OR one that has words you cannot pronounce among its ingredients, is sound enough.
  
  Pollan even argues (against all odds) why we should be paying MORE for food, not less. For one, bad "food" is cheap because Big Food mass produces it and, in the case of corn and soybeans, our government subsidizes it. Good food (produce) is expensive -- but in the long run, you'll save money on all the health bills you'd be sure to accrue if you just ate blindly as Big Food would have you.
  
  Clear and concise, IN DEFENSE OF FOOD is a call to the ramparts. Buy it, read it, live it. When you're kneeling in your new garden this summer, you'll be glad you did.
  
  
• In Defense of Food Science
  By A2P3DFS1ZK2WR on 2008-03-13
  Food scientists make "fake foods" or "foodlike substances" through the process of adulteration. The most important thing about any food is not its nutrient content, but its degree of processing, and "refining" is especially deleterious, or so says Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food. For Pollan, refined flour is the first industrial fast food.
  
  But the desire for white bread predated the invention of roller mills, as did processes for separating the starchy endosperm from the bran. In a recent paper in the Journal of Food Science, colleagues confirmed consumer preferences for refined over whole wheat bread. We make white bread because that's what people want.
  
  Pollan erroneously believes that grains are refined to extend their shelf life by making them less nutritious to pests. However, refining was often initially done to remove anti-nutritional factors from plant foods, and to his credit, Pollan provides the example of soy processing to inactivate trypsin inhibitor. Cassava, the third largest source of carbohydrates for human food, is poisonous unless processed properly.
  
  Pollan believes that we have an ancient evolutionary relationship with the seeds of grasses and fruits of plants. Anthropomorphically speaking, "I'll feed you if you spread around my genes." With the exception of succulent fruits, the co-evolution of plants and animals has been a struggle, with plants doing their best to evolve ever greater defense mechanisms to deter animals from eating them. Man has an ancient relationship with the plant genus Nicotiana, having been smoking it since 2000 B.C.E. Should we accept then that smoking is healthy?
  
  It's ironic that the book's cover illustration is of lettuce, which we eat at a very young stage to avoid an abundance of bitter compounds produced by the plant as it matures. Pollan suggests we eat only those items that would be recognized as food by our great-great grandmother. Many of the plant foods my great-great-grandmother ate were made edible through selective breeding programs to detoxify them. The 14 or so thousand years since the Neolithic revolution is but a blink in evolutionary time. The co-evolution of plants and humans during this period has largely been directed by the later, as was so eloquently explained in Pollan's Botany of Desire.
  
  The book certainly is a manifesto, and an upper-middle class one at that. Oh that we could all live in Northern California, where fresh fruits and vegetables are available locally and year round.
  
  My great-great grandmother, and I suspect Mr. Pollan's too, survived the winter months mainly on stored root crops, lots of onions. With the invention of canning, generations from my great-grandmother to the present have "put up" more perishable fruits and vegetables to extend their seasons. But despite the provenance and the satisfaction one derives from it, home canning is hardly an option for many.
  
  One non-food, as defined by Pollan, that my great-great grandmother certainly did not eat often or at all is chocolate in its present form. Perhaps I'm partial to this one as chocolate making is among my professional expertise. You see, chocolate is "refined" using steel roller mills, and despite cacao's ancient origins predating the Maya culture, solid eating chocolate is a "food-like substance" as defined by Pollan.
  
  Pollan impugns scientific research suggesting cacao may have health benefits, referring sarcastically to the Mars Corporation's endowment of a faculty chair in "chocolate science" at the University of California-Davis, but readily accepts "abundant scientific evidence for the health benefits of alcohol." My biggest criticism of the book is Pollan's selective use of science to support his opinions.
  
  Though critical of the methodology used in the Nurse's Health Study and the Women's Health Initiative, which involved over one hundred thousand women followed for eight years or more, Pollan accepts unquestioningly the science of Kerin O'Dea, who observed ten Australian aborigines for seven weeks. The apparent genius of the study was that when it was over, Dr. O'Dea had no idea what caused the improvements in the group's health, though Pollan readily accepts the diet-disease link, ignoring the possibility that an increase in physical exercise or even the placebo effect could have explained the short-term results. An alternative hypothesis is that the group's health improved because they gave up alcohol and ate foods mostly of animal origin, contrary to Pollan's dietary suggestions, but we will never know since "we can't extract from such a study precisely which component of the Western diet we need to adjust."
  
  Along with the Neolithic revolution modern food preservation seems to have become man's second fall from grace. But with an expanding world population, food science will become increasingly important for better utilization of finite resources. That's why the World Food Prize selected Dr. Phil Nelson as its 2007 laureate.
  
  The complexity of human-food interactions is undeniable, but the same science that led to the solution for deficiency diseases has also implicated trans fats in present maladies, and can contribute to improved health. Though he plays fast and loose with the science, Pollan's dietary advice - eat food, not too much, mostly plants - will probably do no harm. Thirty years ago, a food science instructor of mine needed only two words - variety and moderation - but added that two words hardly a book make (and they certainly cannot be sold for $21.95). However, for what it says about the profession, it's a book every food scientist should read.
  
  
  
• For Natural Foods and Against Nutritionism
  By A3Q04XXGGED746 on 2008-07-17
  Instead of repeating other reviewers, let's focus mostly on other content. Our need for constant dental care stems from our western diets (pp. 96-97). Oddly enough, our digestive tract has as many neurons as the spinal column (p. 63). This suggests that the digestive process is a much more complex one than simply the breakdown of foods.
  
  What if "western diseases" occur simply because people now live long enough to develop them? Pollard rejects this thinking, and presents evidence that a 70 year-old today is more likely to have diabetes or cancer than his counterpart a century ago. (p. 93)
  
  Pollard notes that the Polish biochemist Casimir Funk discovered vitamins. In this book, he takes a middle view of them. He suggests taking supplements, but also warns that they may be ineffective when out of the context of their foods.
  
  In fact, Pollard's warnings about "nutritionism" may be illustrated by one common natural food: "Milk through this lens is reduced to a suspension of protein, lactose, fats, and calcium in water, when it is entirely possible that the benefits, or for that matter the hazards, of drinking milk owe to entirely other factors (growth hormones?) or relationships between factors (fat-soluble vitamins and saturated fat?) that have been overlooked." (p. 31)
  
  Pollard generally agrees with those who suggest that overconsumption of nutritionally-barren refined carbohydrates is harmful (p. 59, 112-113). However, he cautions that the scientific reductionism of low-carb thinking as the full answer should be avoided.
  
  There is no single "natural diet". Evidently-healthy diets centered around seafood, meat, dairy products, and vegetarian products, have all been found worldwide (p. 97).
  
  Although Pollard recommends the "Avoid eating anything that your great-grandma wouldn't recognize" rule, the "Don't eat anything incapable of rotting" rule, and the "Eat more vegetables rule", it may not be so simple. For one thing, farm vegetables may be short on nutrients because they had been bred for rapid growth, and because chemical fertilizers indirectly deplete nutrients (p. 115). In fact, the obesity in the west may be partly the result of the body attempting to accumulate enough nutrients through the overconsumption of low-nutrient foods (pp. 123-124).
  
  
  
• I couldn't put it down
  By A3HRFH52UB70L7 on 2008-01-06
  I love the whistle-blowers; I love the truth. I had just read, "Good Calories, Bad Calories" which was great. Michael Pollan is another fantastic author to be applauded. The information he shares is so important...you must read it or you may be left out in the cold - the dead cold! It is well written and you can't deny the sincerity of his intention. Please check it out. Everyone would be better off reading this book - for a healthier life that can actually result from finding pleasure in eating once again, as it should be.
  Thank you, Michael Pollan.
  
  

• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
• The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
• Second Nature: A Gardener's Education
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
• The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution