Michael Pollan always provides a good read and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto is no exception. The Manifesto is embodied in the first paragraph: ”Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”. You might think something like food would not need defending, but Pollan’s definition of food is anything that is not processed, and the American diet is chockablock with processed “food”. Food is replaced by nutrients and, more and more, is becoming not a product of the natural world but of the scientific world. Pollan refers to the American Paradox: “The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become. Hence, his Manifesto. Pollan is entertaining and witty in his critiques of the food industry and the health industry. He provides simple and cheap solutions to the problems of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. But his solutions aren’t easy because “fast food is precisely the way you’d expect a people to eat who put success at the center of life, who work long hours (with two careers per household), get only a couple of weeks vacation each year, and who can’t depend on a social safety net to cushion them from life’s blows.”
Tags: Health, Nonfiction, Nutrition