In Defense of Food

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Any discussion of In Defense of Food must of necessity start with the author's beguilingly simple summation of the book's central message: "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." These seven words connect in both tone and content Michael Pollan's follow-up to his stunning expose of the American food landscape, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Their simplicity belies a number of challenges readers may face in striving to abide by them, but the words themselves are still a precious gift from Pollan.

The skeptical may ask why changing the way we eat is so important. Well, as Pollan notes, those peoples not wedded to the Western diet have "thrived on seafood diets, diary diets, meat diets, and diets in which fruits, vegetables, and grain predominated." The key to optimal health has been "a traditional diet consisting of fresh foods from animals and plants grown on soils that were themselves rich in nutrients."

So our challenge isn't, contrary to what we've long been told, to consume the perfect balance of vitamins and minerals, fats and carbs. This prevailing logic, which Pollan dismisses as "nutritionism" and the result of an unholy alliance of food scientists and food marketers, has bestowed on us precious little but the misery of "a predictable series of Western diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer." Our challenge is how to break free of a diet that while it may be killing us, is also as American as Hostess Fruit Pie (Apple).

This is where readers may feel Pollan's book is somewhat lacking, since its relatively short length (201 pages) doesn't allow for an in-depth discussion of just how to implement such a wholesale change in the way we eat, particularly given how surrounded we are by what Pollan terms "edible foodlike substances." The facts alone, as compelling a case as is made here, don't diminish the cravings we may have for that Snickers bar or can of Diet Coke, even if the facts do increase our level of guilt.

In fairness, Pollan's "Eater's Manifesto," as this book is subtitled, doesn't claim to offer a prescription for how to eat, much less a rigid diet. Pollan is a journalist, not a preacher, so remaking our own diets may just fall to us. Fortunately, Pollan does help us figure out how to interpret the essential message of the book by offering guidelines which are as useful as they are pithy, and include the following:

• "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." This means you, Go-Gurt Portable Yogurt tubes! Jeez, have an apple already.
  
  
• "Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar, B) unpronounceable, C) more than five in number, or that include D) high-fructose corn syrup." You really don't need 41 ingredients (certainly not azodicarbonamide, whatever that is) to make bread, but that's what Sara Lee uses to create Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread.
  
  
• "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle." You could also put it this way: Food on the outside, fake on the inside.
  
  
• "Pay more, eat less." Sounds backwards, but if you want good, real food grown in healthy soils, you're gonna hafta pay for it. And while no one likes the latter piece of advice, if we all just took a little less on our plates and avoided seconds, we might just be healthier.

I, for one, am greatly thankful for Michael Pollan's efforts in defense of food. To celebrate, I think I'll go have a salad.

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