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Michael Pollan

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto Paperback – April 28, 2009

by Michael Pollan (Author)

1,435 ratings

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#1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Food Rules

Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion--most of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American Paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we see to become. With In Defense of Food, Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

"Michael Pollan [is the] designated repository for the nation's food conscience."—Frank Bruni, The New York Times

" A remarkable volume . . . engrossing . . . [Pollan] offers those prescriptions Americans so desperately crave."—The Washington Post

"A tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to the proposition that food can be redced to its nutritional components without the loss of something essential... [a] lively, invaluable book."—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"In Defense of Food is written with Pollan's customary bite, ringing clarity and brilliance at connecting the dots."—The Seattle Times

Michael Pollan’s most recent food book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation--the story of our most trusted food expert’s culinary education--was published by Penguin Press in April 2013, and in 2016 it served as the inspiration for a four-part docuseries on Netflix by the same name.

Pollan is also the author of How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Michael Pollan [is the] designated repository for the nation's food conscience."---Frank Bruni, The New York Times

"A remarkable volume . . . engrossing . . . [Pollan] offers those prescriptions Americans so desperately crave."--The Washington Post

"A tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to the proposition that food can be redced to its nutritional components without the loss of something essential... [a] lively, invaluable book."--Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"In Defense of Food is written with Pollan's customary bite, ringing clarity and brilliance at connecting the dots."--The Seattle Times

About the Author

Michael Pollan is the author of seven previous books, including Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. He's also the author of the audiobook Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World. A longtime contributor to the New York Times Magazine, he also teaches writing at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, TIME magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.

Product details

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books; 1 edition (April 28, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0143114964
ISBN-13: 978-0143114963
Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 1,435 customer ratings
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #26 in Vegetarian Diets (Books)
- #77 in Cooking Education & Reference
- #3 in Caffeine

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Olga L. Kramar

Covers the shift from fresh to processed food and its deleterious effects on our collective health

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2018

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Well-organized and well-written, this book covers how we got to where we are, buying processed foods labeled with various health claims that are meaningless. We find out about the rise of the nutrition industry and how they’ve led us astray. We’ve all heard that fresh, less-processed is better, but the author does an excellent job of explaining why. Living in Switzerland decades ago, I said, half jokingly with no scientific basis in my head, that the cheese and chocolate was excellent because of happy cows, all roaming the hillsides looking content indeed. The author validates my offhand comment and explains the science behind it. I’ve been buying eggs from pasture grazed hens, for the sake of the hens. The author tells us that the nutrition content of eggs from grass-grazed eggs is vastly different from those of grain-fed hens. I’ve been buying grass-fed beef after cringing at the conditions in El Paso and Central California feed lots after driving past, again for the cows’ sake. The author explains how the meat from grain fed cows is very different nutritionally from naturally grass-grazing cows. Interesting how consideration and care for the animals in our food supply chain dovetails with our own health. This book is a must read for anyone who believes that what you eat effects your health and wants a simple framework for making better eating choices.

65 people found this helpful

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SPARTY 047

A life changing book...

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2016

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I have a medical and science background...so traced references cited....everything checks out. Recently diagnosed with osteoarthritis at age 63 and weight 284 pounds. Read this book the first week of January.....went shopping for real foods the second week of January. Find it satisfying to eat no more than 4 oz of red meat 2-3 times a week....salmon, mackeral, sardines 2-3 times a week....and a couple of days with no meat...just veggie omega 3 sources. Have re-read the book....highlighted...added notes on all pages...and bought 2 more copies for my 30 and 21 year olds...both who grew up in the age of "nutritionism" with all its false information. Following Pollan's common sense advice....paying the extra for organic basic veggies and olive oil. Decided to eliminate all wheat and corn until I loose the weight I've set as a goal.
Five weeks eating 3 meals a day...and by week two much of the chronic 24 hour a day pain was gone and I began walking the elliptical and the woods. Five weeks and 30 pounds lighter....with more energy than I've had in 20 years. Buy this book, learn it, live it, tell your loved ones.

320 people found this helpful

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Michael Crouch

Mostly reasonable and science-based, but sometimes unscientifically polemical

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2019

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Polan is always a good read. In this one, he offers "rules for eating well" that mostly make a lot of sense. While staying within accepted mainstream science territory for the most part, he occasionally digresses into personal opinions that are not well supported by nutritional evidence. For example, he disparages "oleomargarines" wholesale without acknowledging that some more recent products like Smart Choice are made without trans fat, and with a predominance of healthy polyunsaturated and monounsatured fats. He also does readers a disservice by painting all "manufactured" foods as "not real" and therefore automatically unhealthy, undesirable, and somehow almost evil. This is a ridiculous false-dichotomy generalization (natural = good; unnatural = bad) that ignores the fact that modern fermented foods like wine and beer are also clearly unnatural (but somehow okay anyway, in his book). The generalization also falls apart quickly when you realize that strychnine is natural, but probably not a good edible. Just because our human bodies didn't evolve eating manufactured foods doesn't necessarily mean that at least some such foods can be perfectly safe and quite nutritious. I recommend chewing this book carefully and only swallowing the parts that make sense.

25 people found this helpful

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Amy Lamp

Want to reset your food and eating mindset?

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2017

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This book was life-changing for me! I found Pollan's writing style to be thoughtful, clear, and relatable. And I can't tell you how many times "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." has run through my head in the years since first reading it. I appreciate how he challenges so much of what we hear about diet -- every time researchers think they have the key to nutrition or weight loss, something new is discovered to turn it on its head.

The book helped me explore my interest in more traditional diets made up of pure/whole foods, leave behind food-like (and gimmicky) products in the stores, and switch to cooking & baking from scratch. After reading it, I was inspired to buy a grain mill for my kitchen so I could grind my own flour and truly bake from scratch using whole grain flour (and wrote a get-started guide to help others do the same). Being able to control what goes into my food has improved my health and energy. I can't recommend this book enough.

I also like the companion book "Food Rules" Food Rules: An Eater's Manual , which I'd recommend if you want a brief "just tell me what to do" book. But for more detailed information that may help you change your food and eating mindset, "In Defense of Food" is the way to go.

38 people found this helpful

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One More Time

Inspiring

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2019

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Michael Pollard is opening many people's eyes to the perils of processed foods. I thought I had a lot of knowledge about 'real' food and health, but this book not only taught me much more but also has inspired me to eat better every day. Skip snacks, eat three meals, eat real food (not from a can or package), nothing that contains more than five ingredients or ingredients you cannot recognize/pronounce. Imagine your grandmother standing beside you at the market--would she recognize a food? Industry has brought many wonderful changes to our world, but the food industry changes have made Americans overweight and sick. I'm recommending this book to everyone I like.

15 people found this helpful

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William Jordan

Very persuasive account of the ills of the Western diet and what to do about it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 1, 2015

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A very persuasive treatise on food. Pollan explains why nutritional advice has not worked out well over the years - individual foodstuffs contain so many different substances that it's hard to know what are the active ingredients, as it were, and when it comes to experimenting and leaving something out of a diet or putting something in, there's the whole field of what else we eat or don't eat (to compensate) to consider too. So this is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But then we find that actually there's a lot of skin in this game for food manufacturers who'd like to be able to market processed foods (rather than the simple and pure foodstuffs they are made from) because this is where there's value add in this market and they'd like to market health claims for their processed foods - which also seems generally to be possible…And while humans have evolved to live off a very wide variety of diets in a healthy way, the Western diet hasn't historically been one of them, as we've moved towards chemical treatment of agriculture (impoverishing our basic foodstuffs) and have moved from leaves to grains and then onto refined grains - partly simply for their keeping qualities (if the nutrients aren't there, they'll be easier to preserve from decay)...

The final part says what we can do about all this when we eat. Simple messages: avoid the processed stuff; spend more on food and more time preparing (and you will eat less); eat less meat; go for farm shops not supermarkets; and grow your own….Perhaps a little disappointing, but no doubt true. I will also personally be tucking into cheese and olive oil as recommend in Tim Spector's book The Diet Myth. But that book is rather less of a strong reading experience than this!...

7 people found this helpful

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JoAdores

Making sense out of nonsense.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2014

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Michael's book is witty, informative & simple common sense. It is written in a conversational style & I had a good giggle. I've been concerned & educating myself about food & "nutritionism" since 2005. I am guilty of nutritionism but like Michael's book, I feel like I have come full circle with my eating habits. Eat local, grow your own & eat mainly plants. I always felt so confused about meat, veganism & vegeterianism. Michael gives me some comfort when he says, meat is a side dish. He makes sense of all the nonsense out there & clearly elucidates the links between government agencies, food corporations & marketing. Although the example he gives is mainly about America, being Malaysian I can relate to the underlying & pretty much universal patterns of his book. Malaysians have one of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease & cancer in Southeast Asia. Our sugar is heavily subsidised & I think there is palm oil in virtually everything. We are after all, a major palm oil producer in the world. Thanks Michael for making sense out of nonsense!

6 people found this helpful

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Baraniecki Mark Stuart

Problems with the Western Diet

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2011

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The author says, "Eat food, not too much and mostly plants" and offers a quick shortcut to healthy eating, suggesting that you shouldn't eat anything that your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

Following the Great Grandmother rule blanks out a lot of options (and removes most of the profitability of the agro-food processing industry) but he shows that it is still just viable if a shopper frequents farmers markets or avoids the packaged goods in the central aisles of supermarkets.

He also interestingly shows how the food industry plays food science marketing with features such as "added fibre", "added omega3" etc. while ignoring the more beneficial natural sources.

10 people found this helpful

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Mel S

if you actually like food read this!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2019

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great book with some interesting insights into how we view and treat food . Fascinating how the big corporations manufacturers and politicians can manupulate science /statistics to their own ends

One person found this helpful

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normj

Good information

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2017

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A book that should be required reading for all, including of school age. Better to read about food facts and fiction before finding out the hard way.

4 people found this helpful

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ANG

A Must Read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 22, 2013

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I kept thinking, as I was reading this, "Wow. I knew this but never acknowledged it." And now I am determined to pay more attention to what I knew. This philosophy of food just makes so much sense it needs to be widely read. There certainly is a movement afoot to change how we eat in the West(eg Jamie Oliver's schools project), but when you are aware of all the pitfalls and the sales pitches, it should make this revolution that much simpler. Boycott the supermarkets, I say, and never go there when you're hungry! A truly inspiring book.

One person found this helpful

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Louisa Philippé

please read this book if you are concerned about getting fat & unhealthy

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2010

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I will give this book full marks - not because its so amazing, as it really just states what I thought was obvious - but because I was so surprised that only a few of his fellow Americans really knew what he was on about. I 've never really been one for conspiracy theories but are there really so many people that are convinced that being obese is simply genetic and not related to eating too many burgers? There are those that want to keep the truth from a public struggling with diet related health issues and this book makes it all surprisingly clear. The French paradox, the Greek paradox (too much fat, alcohol +smoking) - and the elusive American paradox - it will all be revealed.

2 people found this helpful

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Mrs. J. A. Glover

Engrossing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2013

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Very balanced piece of work giving loads of information for the reader to draw their own conclusions, although obviously guided. Really easy for a non-academic to read and understand. I'm so glad I found this book as I was beginning to lose the ability to choose food any more. Every week the media tells us that something else is good for us then the week after it is positively dangerous! This book is a map through the confusion - thank you Mr Pollan

3 people found this helpful

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Sally

Highly recommended to those who are not looking for diet fads

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2017

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The book is very practical; honest views and gives recommendations that lead to a simple nutritious healthy eating habits. Highly recommended to those who are not looking for diet fads.

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Bob

Convincing arguments

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2019

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I'm already well versed in the arguments about fats, carbs etc. However I liked the author's idea on Nutritionism. His book might even get me to buy more local and organic produce

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E. Mathieson

A really interesting read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 21, 2019

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This is a very entertaining book. Just wish there were more books like this about the UK rather than America.

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Jsinclair1987

Thoroughly enjoyed the book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2018

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I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It gives some insight into the health epidemic that is the western diet.

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L. Astbury

Amazing book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 17, 2013

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If you care about what you eat and get fed up of hearing all the do's and dont's surrounding what is purported to be a healthy diet, read this book. It is informative, empowering and reassuring. No lists of hard to find foods stuffs, no tiresome diet regimes - just illuminating common sense. I highly recommend this book, I keep mine in the kitchen!

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Artur Zielinski

this is an amazing book explaining what happened with our food over the ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 28, 2016

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this is an amazing book explaining what happened with our food over the decades. i really enjoyed this book and i am looking forward to read another M Pollan's book.

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Alicja

Eye-opener!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2016

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This book changed my view on food and all things related. Mr Pollan explains things really well and his writing style is great. The book is very captivating. I laughed out loud at some passages! :) He makes lot of helpful suggestions plus has a level headed approach to what a mortal like me can afford.
I love it! I just wish I read it sooner. I recommended it to all my friends!

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