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

by Michael Pollan (Author)

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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Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion--most of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science.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 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 serves as the inspiration for a four-part docuseries on Netflix by the same name.

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Editorial Reviews

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"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, recently featured on Netflix in the four-part series Cooked, is the author of seven previous books, including Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all New York Times bestsellers. A longtime contributor to The New York Times, he is also the Knight Professor of Journalism at Berkeley. In 2010, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.

www.michaelpollan.com

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books; 1 edition (April 28, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780143114963
ISBN-13: 978-0143114963
ASIN: 0143114964
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 1,053 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #59 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking Education & Reference
- #65 in Books > Self-Help > Spiritual
- #98 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Nutrition

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SPARTY 047

A life changing book...

February 22, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

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.

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Olga L. Kramar

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

June 15, 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

16 people found this helpful

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Amy Lamp

Want to reset your food and eating mindset?

July 10, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

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Laura Smith

Tight, concise, well-written guidebook on what to eat

July 26, 2012

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

If you've read other books on food, you'll find this to be written better but not containing much new information. It's as if Pollan took the other information out there and regurgitated it in a more digestible format. Which can be a good thing, if you consider the huge tomes out there that are difficult to read.

Pollan covers baby formula and how it's essentially an experiment (p.32). Techno-foods: "modern cornucopia of highly processed foodlike products." (p.14) Public confusion: "thirty years of nutritional advice have left us fatter, sicker, and more poorly nourished." (p.81) This first section covers monocultures, the industrialized food model, distraction of the real message, and detachment from our food. Pollan seems to be driving home the message that any food that purports to have health benefits really ought to be avoided, that it's "a strong indication it's not really food." (p.2) Later he tells us quite simply to "watch out for those health claims." (p.40) This really got my mental juices flowing and made me consider the counter arguments to that.

The most impactful take-away as I finished was the idea that we really don't need books on what to eat. At one time, he tells us that nutritionism has done us no good, "At the behest of government panels, nutrition scientists, and public health officials, we have dramatically changed the way we eat and the way we think about food [...this] has done little for our health, except possibly to make it worse." (p.40) Gee, that is so inspiring. As a parent, I think I'd rather take this message, with a nice positive spin and which reinforces the message that we're smarter than we think we are, "most of what we need to know about how to eat we already know." (p.13)

He tells us that "seventeen thousand new food products" are presented to us every year (p.133) "Although an estimated 80 percent of cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented by a change of diet and exercise, it looks like the smart money is instead on the creation of a vast new diabetes industry." (p.136) "Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick." (p.135) "Don't eat anything incapable of rotting." (p.149) "Ordinary food is still out there, however, still being grown and occasionally sold in the supermarket, and this ordinary food is what we should be eating." (p.147) Don't eat anything my great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. (p.148)

This book boils down to a lot of rules for better eating. Some of them, for me, are doable. Some of them are not. What I can adopt is a mesh of several of his uidelines... "eat meals" and "try not to eat alone" and "do all your eating at a table." My great grandmother would think it silly, though, if those were guidelines at all.

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