Product Description
The companion volume to The New York Times bestseller The Omnivore's Dilemma Michael Pollan's lastbook , The Omnivore's Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time. Pollan proposes a new 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.

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture. Many processed foods vie for a spot in our grocery baskets, claiming to lower cholesterol, weight, glucose levels, you name it. Yet Pollan shows that these convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health has a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals. His razor-sharp analysis of the American diet (as well as its architects and its detractors) offers an inspiring glimpse of what it would be like if we could (a la Humpty Dumpty) put our food back together again and reconsider what it means to eat well. In a season filled with rallying cries to lose weight and be healthy, Pollan's call to action—"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."--is a program I actually want to follow. --Anne Bartholomew

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 304 reviews)

aka "The Neolithic Diet" by cxlxmx

4 Stars
November 05, 2009
This little book, In Defense of Food, is probably better journalism but worse literature than the author's previous The Omnivore's Dilemma. An attempt to summarize our current lack of knowledge about nutrition and health and provide a skeptics' "best hunch" approach to eating, the book provides a brief critique of the "nutritional" approach to food, including critiques of the lipid and carbohydrate hypotheses, and suggests a strategy of turning back to time-tested forms of food consumption like traditional cuisines. Compared with The Omnivore's Dilemma, this book is less sensationalistic and seems to be on firmer footing with regard to the empirical issues it addresses. However, as in The Omnivore's Dilemma, the author's social class and personal biases seep into the recommendations. So, for example, we know from The Omnivore's Dilemma that the author has flirted with vegetarianism, believing it to be a morally superior way of living but unable to square it with his culinary desires. In the current book, he tells us that he can't find a compelling reason to avoid meat for health reasons (obviously he was looking for one), although he immediately qualifies that statement by saying there are good ethical and enviromental reasons for doing so. But his recommendation to keep meat to a minimum comes in the context of one of his main case studies in favor of traditional diet--an experiment in which Australian aborigines reversed disease processes by going back to the bush. He lists their diet as birds, kangaroo, grubs, larvae, fish, shellfish, turtle, crocodile, yams, figs, and honey--a fairly high meat-to-plant ratio. This apparent contradiction between primarily-plant and aboriginal diets points to the biggest bias problem in the book, which is the author's typically leftist anti-self bias. Throughout In Defense of Food, the villain is "the Western diet," although the author commends French, Greek, and Italian cuisines, which are unquestionably "Western." That the author makes spurious comments about traditional Jewish cuisine when orthodox Jews have some of the longest life expectancies is also curious. So, for example, he recommends looking for food our Neolithic ancestors would have recognized, although the archaeological record shows that the transition from Paleolithic life (like that of the Australian aborigines) to Neolithic (the introduction of farming) coincided with worse health and shorter life-spans. However, recommending a Paleolithic diet wouldn't square with any culinary desires for artisanal bread or fit in with the author's California-university-professor social niche. The plant/Neolithic bias also leads him to unfairly criticize Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories, suggesting that Taubes is recommending a nutritional approach to eating that has as little merit as the lipid hypothesis that Taubes criticizes. In fact, Taubes is a science journalist whose point is more about the failure of the science community to approach low-carb and low-fat diets with proper rigor and the medical community's propensity for approaching obesity as a moral/social failure rather than a physiological/hormonal issue. Despite my reservations, I would definitely recommend In Defense of Food. The author's approach to nutrition, which is a post-modern combination of healthy skepticism with pseudo-traditionalism both appeals to my own sensibilities and, as far as I can tell, makes the best of current nutritional science. For those not already immersed in the issues the author addresses like "seeds vs. leaves," this is a quick and worthwhile read.

Sadly I must disagree by C. M. Giebel

4 Stars
November 02, 2009
Great read. Plenty of information, unfortunately I find this to be shameful pandering of a book. Pollan spends quite a while talking about the inabilities of the nutritional industry to accurately tell which nutrients are good for a variety of reasons, says there experiments are inconclusive and inaccurate. He then goes on to use these same types of studies to support his what he says is missing from out diet since we aren't eating "food" anymore. I personally find the assumption that I wouldn't notice the hypocrisy to be offensive. It detracts from his entire point.

great thoughts on food! by Sarah Rempala (IL, United States)

5 Stars
October 26, 2009
Amazing book that everyone needs to read, doesn't matter what your view is on food and agriculture you will find something relevant to you and your health in this book!

Read it, even if you think you know a few things . . . by see jane read

5 Stars
October 25, 2009
I'm pretty savvy about food, the environment, modern agricultural practices, etc., but this book was still worth reading. These are complex issues and Pollan pulls them all together for the reader into one tight, readable, understandable argument for REAL FOOD -- he drives these issues HOME once and for all. It will change the way you eat; at the very least it will reinforce what you already know, and most of us need constant reminders in this convenience food society.

Excellent! Highly recommended by B. Welch (Midwest USA)

5 Stars
October 22, 2009
There's more information in this book about nutrition, foods, diets, and vitamins than anywhere I've read. It's all described in a way that makes the book interesting and enjoyable to read. This is one book that will be read more than once and kept to be read again occasionally to keep important ideas fresh in mind.

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