Customer Reviews

The Gospel of Food: Why We Should Stop Worrying and Enjoy What We Eat (P.S.)

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The title sums up the premise of Glassner's book fairly accurately. He makes several valid points throughout the book, but they ultimately get lost, due to a lack of organization, signposting, and an overarching tendency simply to pick holes in the arguments of others without really stating his own position very clearly.

The book lacks structural coherence - the chapters resemble scattered essays without a unifying concept. The opening and closing chapters are generally concerned with establishing that much of the received wisdom about food is highly questionable (e.g., recommended daily allowances, nutritional guidelines, epidemiological claims that a given food is harmful, the demonization of McDonald's and fast food generally, overblown claims linking obesity to mortality). But two chapters in the middle of the book - "Restaurant Heaven" and "The Food Adventurers" - seem completely out of place, being little more than a catalog of memorable meals the author has been privileged to enjoy in various fancy restaurants. One doesn't begrudge Glassner his dream dinners prepared by Daniel Boulud or Thomas Keller, but the rapturous descriptions included here are a pointless self-indulgence, which seem to have little to do with the rest of the book. And I think most of us don't need to have it pointed out that restaurant critics are likely to get better meals and service than your average nondescript diner.

In the end, the book is disappointing, in that the valid points that Glassner has to make get lost in a welter of irrelevant detail and poor organization. Nonetheless, his overall message, that it is perverse to obsess about food to the extent that we no longer enjoy it, is an important one.

The author makes several thought provoking points and takes a definite Devil's Advocate approach to the current cultural obsession with "food is bad." I quite enjoyed the read, despite the lack of organization mentioned by the other reviewers.

Barry Glassner's book is well-researched, and Glassner knows how to bust a study. But Glassner also tries to cover too much ground.

It's just the ticket for readers who have grown tired of the handwringing over the so-called obesity epidemic. And it's a wonderful antidote for anyone who's tired of being excoriated for eating processed food, refined sugar or daring to ingest high fructose corn syrup.

Three generations ago, most people ate local, organic food. And they died a lot earlier than we did.