Having enjoyed Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, I looked forward to reading In Defense of Food, but was ultimately disappointed. The bulk of the book is a florid history of nutritional science's focus on isolated nutrients--nutritionalism--and how the food manufacturing industry takes advantage of scientific findings in both the development and marketing of their products. But the writing style that worked so well in the Omnivore's Dilemma was far too clever in this book for my tastes.

Pollan writes: "In the case of nutritionalism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. Put another way: Foods are essentially the sum of their nutrient parts." As an example of nutritionism hard at work, saturated fats got a bad rap by Ansel Keys, and so vegetable oil producers capitalized on his findings by promoting polyunsaturated oils, and margarine was touted as preferable to butter. Then when hydrogenation and trans fat took a hit, margarine manufacturers changed their labels to boldly proclaim "NO trans fats." Unfortunately, margin is not a real food. It's a concocted spread.

By capitalizing on science's love for reductionism by isolating nutritional elements from the whole foods package in which they originate, food manufacturers convince us that their highly-processed and nutrient-poor products are "heart healthy," "rich in omega 3s," "contain zero trans fats," "provide daily fiber requirements," or "contain no cholesterol."

It is important to know how we got where we are in our understanding of nutrition if we are to make wise decisions about what to eat. Too many people are informed on diet by slick marketing with little knowledge of real science, and even scientists cannot agree with each other. One report claims saturated fats are bad, another claims they are healthy. How does the average reader and health seeker decide who is right? Pollan feels qualified to advise us on these points. But while he includes the research of some great health educators such as Weston Price and Gary Taubes, he seemingly ignores their contributions when he makes his dietary recommendation of: Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.

Pollan's advice to stick to whole foods--those found along the periphery of the supermarket--is sound, as is his advice to buy directly from the farmer, avoid foods your great grandmother wouldn't recognize, eat slowly and savor your meals at the table with friends or family, grow your own food when possible, eat meat from animals that eat food they were designed to, eat less, etc. (After all that he feels the need to inform readers not to eat at gas stations or avoid foods with health claims on the packaging.) This is all pretty typical advice spurred by the agricultural sustainability movement, but it doesn't really get down to what foods will actually sustain us.

Pollan rightly steers people away from grains and toward eating leaves. But the reason people eat grains is because they were told that saturated fats and cholesterol found in meat will kill them, and grains have a high starch content (as well as opiates), which provides calories for fuel. There just isn't enough fuel in greens. Pollan suggests that eating plants will cause you to eat less. (In actual practice, you might end up gorging on ice cream at the end of the day. Even raw food vegans bulk up on fat by eating large quantities of seeds and nuts.) But then he grants an exception to unrefined grains because their starch content provides needed calories. He fails to give weight to the fact that since the inception of agriculture humans have grown sicker, weaker, and shorter and many people get very sick on certain grains. My own health was immeasurably improved when I gave up gluten-containing grains.

Pollan's advice to eat less is sound, but people naturally eat less when their nutritional and fuel needs are met. As an example, Pollan credits the health of the French to their small portions, leisurely meals, and consumption of wine while seeming to discount the fact that the French eat a LOT of saturated fat, something he concedes elsewhere in the book. Anyone who's eaten a high-fat diet knows how satiating fat is. And low-carb diets work for weight loss precisely because consuming fat and protein provide dense nutrition and sufficient, sustainable fuel, so you end up eating less without hunger. Have a pork chop for breakfast and you can last until dinner; eat a bowl of cereal and you'll be hungry within a few hours.

Yes, he makes suggestions on which meats to eat, but doesn't provide any advice as to why eating meat might be beneficial. Instead, he writes: "Unlike plants, which we can't live without, we don't need to eat meat--with the exception of vitamin B12, every nutrient found in meat can be obtained somewhere else. (And the tiny amount of B12 we need it not too hard to come by; it's found in all animals foods and is produced by bacteria, so you obtain B12 from eating dirty or decaying or fermented produce.)" The Innuit and Masai seem to do fine with a diet very low in plants, and I've yet to read of a culture that is purely vegetarian.

Another common flaw is claiming vegetarian diets are healthier (than meat eating diets is the clear implication). Yes, when you compare them to the standard American diet they are. But where are the studies comparing the vegetarian diet to, say, a paleolithic diet or a diet of whole foods dominated by pasture-raised meats and fats? Frankly, any diet will come out ahead compared to a diet of pizza, pasta, bread, fast food, and beer. Our great grandmothers cooked with lard and tallow. Why didn't they get an honorable mention?

This book is okay if you want a verbose accounting of the history of nutritional science, and Pollan does cover a lot of ground. Serious disconnects occur between the science Pollan writes about in the first two-thirds of the book and the dietary recommendations in the last third. I don't recommend it for dietary advice. If you'd like to learn about better choices in the food you currently eat, I recommend The Real Food Revival, which will provide nonpreachy information on healthier and more sustainable options. For nutritional advice I recommend Primal Body-Primal Mind: Empower Your Total Health The Way Evolution Intended (...And Didn't) or the encouraging The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy.

I was looking forward to this book, but ended up being disappointed and reselling my copy. I've been reading a number of food science books lately, and I was surprised to see that In Defense of Food mostly just references works I had already read, without bringing much new to the table. If this is your first book on the subject it might be a good primer, but if you've read T. Colin Campbell or Joel Fuhrman you can pass.

A sequel to The Omnivore's Dilemma, this work is, by comparison, a real eye-opener, highly interesting, and likely to stimulate much overdue discussion, and wide-ranging changes. The mantra, "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants." is simple, intelligent, and ...... surprising, coming as it does from one who I had imagined to be a great lover/gorger of non-vegetarian fare.
Half way through the book I looked for Ayurveda and Macrobiotics in the index. The author had found no use for these systems, both of which have been prescribing pretty much the same rules of thumb about eating, and which have been quietly making inroads into western lifestyles since a number of decades. The difference is that for these philosophies alcohol would not be considered food. Intoxicant, yes, medicine, perhaps, but food? Indeed it's possible to argue that one thing that's very wrong with the western diet is alcohol, which is considered to be a drink.
Scientists study what they can measure, and journalists see, and write about, what they want to see. Pollan chooses to see the "fact" that a glass or two of alcohol a day is good for health. Few, if any, buddhist, hindu or muslim journalists would share this perspective.
Pollan writes a good deal on the question of why we eat. One would have thought that it's pretty simple: we eat when the body is hungry; we drink when we feel thirst. Unlike us thinking types, when one watches an animal feeding, or a human baby on the breast, or an enlightened being eating or drinking, what we witness is communion. At the end of the book Pollan touches on this word. Perhaps this concept shall be the subject of a future work of his....
And, may I suggest, if M. Pollan really wants to defend food, he needs to take on - in a later edition of the book - Jasmuheen, and breatharians, who have no use for even real food.
He might also wish to consider the possibility that the experience of greedy America (together with those of her rich friends Europe and Oceania) is indeed a deserved one. Through subsidizing their agriculture, and keeping their borders closed to the populations of the poor countries, the rich world ends up creating a mess within itself, as well as extreme poverty elsewhere. Everyone ends up losing....
Let's face it! Certain types of workers in the rich world should lose their jobs and businesses, for the sake of a better world. Most of all, the farmers, who love their machines and bank balances more than their land, animals or plants; the agricultural corporations.........
While reviewing The Omnivore's Dilemma I had predicted that M.Pollan was quite likely to go vegetarian sometime quite soon. This seems to be happening, although he has yet to be convinced that he needs to for reasons of health.
Having been myself a lover of non-vegetarian food as well as alcohol previously, and a teetotaler vegetarian now, my own experience of enjoying much better well-being in this new way of life leads me to give this work a 4 rather than 5-star rating.

Most refreshing way of looking at the whole food, nutrition and diet point of view. Perfect for anyone wanting to eat for longevity and health, but confused by the plethora of diets out there. The journalistic approach allows a review of history, politics and facts regarding foods with most interesting conclusions.

Books, manuals, health guides, nutrition, DIET!!!!....what to eat!!!
Putting all of the above mentioned aside, this is a timely, essential guide to electing proper choices in our health and well being, not to mention our planet.
There is so much misinformation, trend diognostics, nutritional mumbo jumbo, warnings, supplementation, additives, chemicals etc.
It can really be so much more simple...
EAT FOOD, NOT TOO MUCH, MOSTLY PLANTS!
Value your eating time and selections, search it out, prepare and savor, appreciate and you will be healthier, happier and wizer.
This book will spur you on!

Whew, did I write that title? I read this book several times, and I have watched several of his interviews, and yes, he is knowledgeable and charming. In fact, I wanted him to be right and to be widely read. But, after many hard hours -- I have to say, no. He's on the Berkeley campus but he has pseudo-intellectual roots from Stanford, which is the worst elitist school in human history. Pollan in reality is just a very, very silly guy. He's a journalist by choice, which means he's not a real scientist, he does not understand real science, or the history of science. But his great sin is that he does not understand social history or class history or cultural history -- and the struggles and battles fought therein. What Pollan really is frightens me. He's a 19th century thinker. Which means his major fault is to be over-ingenious. He draws conclusions too hastily. He over intellectualizes because he thinks he's being cute or lovable. Yes, he salt and peppers his books with fascinating facts that we all need to know, but his books are not the best source for these necessary food facts, especially when those facts are accompanied by gross misunderstandings about human history, evolution and physiology. He makes grand statements but gets there on tenuous foundations. Example, he says corn has no consciousness then rants about its evolutionary intentions to take over. He's winking at us, but he doesn't understand that evolution means that everything corn does is arbitrary by definition. He doesn't get this, instead he uses all the co-incidents of attributes of plants to suggest a pattern of survival skills that show an intelligence by implication, and thereby there is in evidence this under thread or subtext throughout all his books that plants have an intelligent design -- which, in fact, is the very opposite of evolution. But, so what, why let this bother you, or me? Well, that's not all. In the first several chapters of this book or even in the first 15 minutes of his interviews -- you can count 3,4 or even 5 gaffs. Let's see, he says: (1) nutritionists don't really know anything; then (2) doctors don't understand the digestive system; (3) western diet causes all the diseases of later years; (4) corn syrup is killing us... etc., etc., etc. When in fact, these are all very complex and compound ideas and groups of ideas that Pollan lumps into these over broad assumptions and conclusions. The truth is this: Pollan is the one who doesn't understand. He's unstudied and a middle brow at best. He's popular now because people are worried, he's hit a nerve and will get rich, yes, over-ingenious and rich. Gee, I wish I had thought about that. Hmm... NO, It's really spoliation. Spoliation of difficult taxing subject matter which hasn't been given its rightful due. These topics are multilayered and require years of research to tackle just one of Pollan's many broad assumptions. I wish I had the time and space to tick off all of his mistakes. But here's just one example. Western diet and the spread of classic diseases attributed thereto is only corollary driven. There's no necessary foundational or cause and effect connection between the two. Heart disease and cancer are more prevalent as people age and our population has a much older center than the comparatives Pollan holds us up to. Family/tribal support and its dissipation have as much to do with these "western diet" diseases as does diet. Which came first the inability to digest well because of the loss of a nurturing supportive environment or the low quality of the thing being digested?
Moreover, many of the basic foods being discounted were the staples of human migration. Pollan does not count in lifestyle or lack thereof enough, which by itself can account for the set of western diseases associated with the western diet. Well, then again, there is something to eating cheap processed food, but that goes without saying. Pollan just muddies the waters with his endless 19th century over-philosophizing, without adequate basis in well established facts.
The best advice is, therefore, to find a better resource book for this vital topic, as the hubris of over achievement ruins this one.

When I first noticed the title of this book I couldn't understand why food would be defended but after reading the book I not only understood the title but I discovered why such a defense is vitally important.

You might think of the premise of this book to be a sort of paradigm shift back to the way food should be viewed, not as we've come to misunderstand it. I won't get into the details because I think you should read the book to discover this shift for yourself.

If you have any interest in health, diet, dietary health, or food in general I think you need to read this book.

This book as well as others by Michael Pollan have really opened our eyes to the real food issues in America today. We had already started eating healthier but have now started really looking at what goes on our plates. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in how we got so far off track in our American diet.

I have really learned to read labels - it is shocking and makes grocery shopping difficult at first... but you will feel so much better!

Just look at the label on a can of Baby formula Isomil:
43.0% Corn Syrup Solids,
14.5% Soy Protein Isolate,
11.5% High Oleic Safflower Oil,
10.2% Sugar (Sucrose),
8.1% Soy Oil,
8.0% Coconut Oil,
2.1% Calcium Phosphate,
and a giant list of chemicals...

Over 50% of this is sugar and even worse it is corn (fructose)! For a BABY?? I guess the motto is "get 'em addicted and get 'em addicted early!" I love the way these people say this is the "closest thing to breast milk"... read me that list again? Especially the chemicals?? Woof! Always something new to learn! ( [...] ) or look it up yourself... and I will NEVER touch M&Ms again... woof! Just read that label!

Excellent, excellent book!

I'm a big Michael Pollan fan, and I loved The Omnivore's Dilemma. That book taught me a lot of stuff about the food industry I didn't know, plus it was entertaining to read about this average guy doing crazy things like butchering an entire pig. This book was a little less entertaining, but if you are looking for a few simple rules that will lead to a diet that is much better for you and our planet, this is a great handbook of sorts. I still reference it sometimes when wondering if I should buy this or that.

(audiobook) A great book and I tend to agree with the content, but the style is too polemical for my tastes, yet good, perhaps, if it reinforces one's resolve to eat better.

Unfortunately, Scott Brick's reading sort of piles on in presenting an attitude, and after discussing it with a few friends, we decided "smarmy" best characterizes the audio presentation. One of the very few audiobooks I have considered abandoning - to buy a print version.

It's also somewhat repetitious if you've read/heard the Omnivore's Dilemma, but a tidy crystallization of most of its points can now be found in Pollan's "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual" without the scolding, and can be read in under an hour (if you skip the Preface.)

Many of our social and environmental problems derive from Americans' industrialized realtionship with the soil that produces our food. Pollan shows how we can eat in a healthy way without settling for eating only industrial corn in its many processed food manifestations (chicken, eggs, dairy, beef, pork, etc all fed on corn only in the industrialized food chain. Pollan also resurects the importance of what we eat and how we eat it as a part of our social structure as well as central to our physical health. This book will change your view on what to eat and how to eat it. Excellent!

"In Defense of Food" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma" are two books that opened my eyes to a lot of things. What I like about "In Defense of Food" is that it isn't a "diet book." It doesn't say "eat this, not that, carbs make you fat, food mixing, etc." Pollan doesn't try and sell himself as a "diet guru" or "health expert". Pollan simply identifies what the Western diet is, why it's become that way, and what its effects have been. It's really scary to think where a lot of the stuff we call "food" comes from and what's been done to it.

"Dieting", and really "what to eat" makes so much more sense after reading this book. Eat "food" (if it didn't exist 200 years ago, it's probably not food), mostly plants (raw foods contain a lot of vitamins, nutrients, and other stuff to keep us health), not too much (apparently we stop eating based more on visual cues than actual satiety). I've read a lot of "diet books" and this is the only book that makes sense. I think of you follow what Pollan is saying, you'll know what to eat to be healthy.

Why is the Kindle edition priced higher than the paperback? I'm getting disgusted with this.

it doesn't matter what eating background you have, this book will give you great information how our health and our food has become the great mess that what steps to take to improve our health and our food culture!!!

love the book and the title, read the little font as well. The cover is a good presentation of what the book is about. Yes we should eat food for our body to grow, repair and be healthy. However, we should review how and what we eat. we should think twice before buying the process food and using our kitchen a little more often than just for Thanksgiving. Please read this book, it is not just about the "Defense of Food" it is also about the defense of our life on this planet.
Enjoy!

Most of what we eat is not food. That's the simple premise in Pollan's follow-up to The Omnivore's Dilemma. Most of what we eat are food-like substances (and that might be generous), packed with preservatives, artificial flavors, fillers and other chemicals that don't exist in nature. Pollan makes the point that if our grandparents walked into the modern supermarket, they wouldn't recognize many of the things on the shelves. This is not good.

It's the Western obsession with nutrients as opposed to food that has led us here. Sometimes flaky dietary science, a culture desperately seeking out the "magic bullet," big-budget marketing campaigns from American food manufacturers and laws and regulation that place the financial health of the agricultural industry above the physical health of the population have all contributed to a situation where people really aren't sure what they should and shouldn't be eating. As Pollan points out, that's a uniquely human dilemma.

Although he give the disclaimer that he's nobody to be telling anybody what to eat, he does give some good, common sense rules of thumb: Eat mostly plants (mostly green plants). Eat less. Think of meat as more of a side dish. Don't eat things with ingredients you can't pronounce. Paradoxically, avoid foods that make health claims on their packaging (which implies, firstly, that they have packaging--something else to probably avoid). Shop around the edges of the grocery store. All of these direct us to eat food, not food-like, processed, manufactured food-like substances. It's a great message, and with all the confusing health claims out there, it's nice to have a call for simple common sense.

Read Omnivore's Dilemma, and with the exception of some issues I have with theoretical framing of part of the book, it was a fantastic read and I definitely recommend it to everyone. In Defense of Food was a gift to my sister. We've both read Dilemma, and we have never eaten the same since--we eat better and we couldn't be happier about it. Buy this book and understand your relationship with yourself.

A great collection of newer American studies in American nutrition. After watching Food, Inc I decided to spend more time considering where my food comes from. Organic is much more flavorful and nutritional, if you can afford it. Have done quite a bit of research on food. I think its interesting that we really have no idea where our food comes from.

I read Pollan's book "The Omnivores Dilemma" about two years ago, and was anxious to read his new one. While very similar in the theme that our food system is industrialized, politicized, engineered, and awash in pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and drugs, this book looks deeper at how nutrition science has been both misleading and wrong. Pollan ends by giving his rules of thumb for eating in North America today. I've read several books in this genre, this was my favorite. This is the best diet book that will never get sold as a diet book.

The purpose of this review is not to talk about the content but to warn you that the index in the Kindle edition does not work -- there are no corresponding links to content. This lack of such an important reference is a real problem for me, especially in a work like this one where you are obviously interested in using it to skip around and read different things on the subject.

I'll be returning this immediately and buying the paperback version instead.

This book is the most well-written and enlightening book that I have read in years. I recommend packaging it with the documentary Food Inc. (which Michael Pollan narrates).

My husband and I now know that we DO have a choice about where our food comes from and what goes into our kids' mouths. We will join a local CSA this spring and begin to buy our beef from a local farmer. We will teach our children that food comes from the earth, not a flourescent-lit grocery store.

Perhaps the statistic that startled me the most is this: in 1960 "Americans spent 17.5% of their income on food and 5.2% of national income on health care." Today, "spending on food has fallen to 9.9%, while spending on health care has climbed to 16% of national income." We have our priorities mixed up!

And, interestingly, the obesity of children is widely blamed on television and video games -- not the food industry's mindless injection of sugar and chemicals into our food.

What can I say? This is an absolute page-turner of a book - easy to read and understand, and I hope, easy to respond to with direct personal action.

I suggest making a prompter sign to stick up everywhere that you make food choices, eg the fridge, the dashboard of your car if you still have one, and all over your re-usable shopping bags:

'Eat food (not "edible food-like substances"). Not so much. Mostly plants.'

I'd also add: 'Home-grown or locally grown whenever possible.'

A book that is filled with common sense about food, wow, such a novel idea these days. If you are interested in the health of your family, the planet, and/or yourself this book will change your mindset and quite possibly how you live your life.

The author tells us, and rightly so, that it's hard to eat well in this country. While the grocery store shelves are full to the brim, they're full of processed food. No, it's not the food that's causing our growing obesity problem. It's what's put in the food to preserve it and to make it taste better. This book is the beginning of a much needed conversation about food.

Highly recommended.

- Susanna K. Hutcheson

Practical, insightful and really instructive. Pollan should be on a national FDA board to help curtail wreckless diet practices perpetuated by the government, communities, corporations, and individuals. We have forgotten where we came from in the world and this book along with Omnivores Dilemma go a long way toward putting the American diet back on track. Awesome recital of food facts, environmental issues, and dietary history of the contemporary American diet.

On the yellow band across the lettuce it says: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." That is the entire message of the book. That's it, you now know the point of the book.

Was debating on this book or "Food Rules" however read this one first and am starting on the other. For the scientific searching mind, this book will give you all that you will ever need to know about the theory, history and science of food and for the simple layman just wanting to know what, when, how and why they should change their eating habits, the words became a little too technical and I kept reaching for the end for the answers to my questions. Facts are very beneficial but just needing the "bottom line", I then reached for "Food Rules" and am finding just what I need by focusing on how all this relates to my daily life and practices by getting off the Western Diet. As the author said "Food Rules" is a radically pared-down book and am looking forward to it. In the meantime, I am not sorry about reading "In Defense of Food" and might venture into again some day when I feel I need a dose of scientific intelligence.

Michael Pollan does a good job in the this book showing how people with good intentions (and some with just profit-seeking ones) have changed how food is produced, distributed, and consumed in the post-1985 United States of America. This book begins by following the historical events that brought the US food industry and American eating habits to their current state as described in Polland's previous book, The Omnivore's Dillemma (sorry, I can't underline the book title). It goes on to help the reader navigate the current supermarket and farmer's market offerings to find their own place somewhere between impossibly expensive sustainably-grown farm products and mass-marketed potentially harmful processed food-stuffs.

It is a short book, but it does not cost much, either. They acknowledgements at the end are extensive. Pollan appreciates the people who help him produce a quality book, and they should be mentioned in it.


Richard

I first purchased the author's newer book, "Food Rules," and I liked it a lot. But I found myself wanting a bit more depth, as that book is very high level. This book provides what Food Rules is missing, and I will likely purchase the author's earlier books after reading this one.

I have been looking for a book like In Defense of Food for several years, as I suspected what the author is confirming for me.

If you are concerned about your diet, how to shop for groceries, how to eat more healthy foods, etc., then both In Defense of Food and Food Rules offer great tips and suggestions. They will also likely get you upset about how much crap is in the grocery stores today, and how hard it is to find real food (versus what the author calls edible food-like substances).

Great writer with another great book. Bought this for my brother-in-law for Christmas and for myself on iTunes. Have listened to it twice since. Great ideas, great logic, great read.

I couldn't think of a "title" for my review that would do this book justice. It is life-changing. The author gives the best arguments, that I have ever read, for changing the way we eat. And we are, indeed, in the process of changing! The intertwined relationship of the food industry, government, media and science when it comes to 'nutritionism' is a puzzle I wouldn't have thought to piece together on my own. I'm so thankful Mr. Pollan did and that he so eloquently explained it for us. His scattered references to the theory of evolution are unfortunate and far-fetched, but I don't think they nullify his arguments as a whole.

My husband has been to France. He said there are absolutely NO artificial sweeteners anywhere to be found. Outdoor markets are the norm. In many restaurants all the place settings at the tables are set up. When you are finished, they don't set up for following customers (first come, only served). It may take 10 minutes before your water is refilled. In other words, they expect you to take your time.

I can't say enough good things about this book. First, Michael Pollan is a TERRIFIC writer. Secondly, he handles the subject matter extremely well. What could be another boring diet book is incredibly insightful and well researched and put together. My suspicions about how food has changed have been confirmed, especially by date. Now I know I was correct in sensing that food doesn't taste the same as it did in the early 80's and now I know why.
Everyone who cares about their health, their family and the planet would do well to read this book and follow the guidelines. Best of all he proves how important it is to eat with pleasure!
He is also featured in the movie "Food Inc." and I highly recommend that as well, in addition to his new book, "Food Rules," which is a pocket guide of his suggestions at the end of this book.

As someone who already buys organic, avoids the center aisles of the grocery store and heads to the farmer's market whenever possible, I wondered whether I would really gain anything from this book. While Michael Pollan's overall message is not new to me, many of the reasons Michael puts forth to support this message are.

For instance, I never realized that organic produce is not just chemical-free, it's also higher in most measured micronutrients PLUS some of the plants own defenses against pests (polyphenols and carotenoids) also help the human body fight inflammation and aging. Naturally, when we spray plants with pesticides, they need, and therefore produce, fewer of these compounds.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. This philosophy is based on good science, logic and the clear empirical evidence that our diet is making us sick. Michael build a strong case, and then provides some clea, concise rules of thumb to help us get back to old ways of eating without selling our house and moving back to the farm. Along the way, he's full of tongue-in-cheek remarks that had me laughing out loud (like another good rule of thumb for how to distinguish between food and the thousands of other foodlike substances sold in the supermarket - "Never eat food that's incapable of rotting")

Makes a great case for the food that has no PR department. Being a fan of Food Inc., much of this was not a surprise (especially the ravages of high fructose corn syrup) but I still found a lot of useful and eye-opening information to make even better choices for myself and my family. In particular, the distinctions about "free range" and "grass fed" as well as what organic really means and what it takes to qualify as organic was helpful.(Some foods labeled organic are not the best quality and are shipped from far away while small farmers may not have the resources to jump through the official hoops but nevertheless produce better food.) I am armed with better distinctions, and that is well worth the read.

I won't claim that this book changed the way I eat, but it has reinforced a lot of things I've been trying to do. Eating foods that are organic, grown naturally and as close to the farm as possible. By this, I mean, in it's natural state, as opposed to processed and made with artificial ingredients.

What I really learned and didn't know before was how much farming, specifically corn, has changed over the last 50 years. It makes so much sense. In our rush to add nutrients to food, we are also deleting nutrients we don't know about. Somewhere along the way, the body suffers a deficit of nutrients and an over-abundance of others. And our body keeps eating, as a result, looking for those missing foods.

This is a well-written book, something that makes you go "hmmm". Even if you can't adopt everything he asks, it makes you think and hopefully helps you a little bit along the way towards living a healthier lifestyle.

This is precisely why you should read this book. Sadly most people lack even a minimal amount of skepticism which is largely due to the subconscious belief of cleverly designed marketing.

The book is amazing, but hello Amazon & Mr. Bezos...how is the digital version more expensive than the paperback??
Its amazing how monopolists act like monopolists.

"The human animal is adapted to, and apparently can thrive on, an extraordinary range of diets, but the Western diet, however you define it, does not seem to be one of them." Although this statement is on the hundredth page of the book, it may as well be on the first since our diet -- the "Western diet" -- is largely responsible for the decline in consumption of "real food", the preoccupation with nutritional content, and increasing rates of chronic diseases. Pollan's "In Defense of Food" breaks down into three broad sections: (1) the introduction of "nutritionism" & it's history; (2) the negative consequences of adhering to nutritionism; and three, what we -- as eaters -- can do to avoid the pitfalls of nutritionism, eat better, and become healthier.

Pollan attributes the emergence of nutritionism to five factors: (1) a shifting from whole foods to refined foods; (2) the deliberate simplification of our food stuffs; (3) the increase in quantity at the expense of quality; (4) the over-reliance on seeds instead of leaves; and (5), the undermining and replacing of food culture for food science. Although the reversal of these trends on a global scale may be slow and incremental, the changes made at an individual level may be immediate, insofar as the eater recognizes that "in order to eat well we need to invest more time, effort, and resources in providing for our sustenance...than most of us do today" (pp.145).

Some of the suggestions proffered:
1. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, number more than five, or that include high-fructose corn syrup.
2. Shop the perimeter of the supermarket and stay out of the middle (the processed foods populate the middle of the market).
3. Frequent farmer's markets or subscribe to a community-supported agriculture (CSA) organization.
4. Eat a lot of leafy plants.
5. Be the kind of person -- but not the actual person -- that takes supplements.
6. Eat more traditional foods: French, Italian, Mexican, Thai, Japanese, etc.
7. Drink a glass of wine with supper..."people who drink moderately and regularly live longer and suffer considerably less heart disease than teetotalers" (pp.181).
8. Eat less by paying more.
9. Eat meals, not snacks: Don't graze all day -- we aren't cows.
10. Try not to eat alone.
11. Eat slowly...as promoted by the slow food movement and that which is antithetical to American fast food and the way of life it propagates: "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" (pp.195).
12. Cook.

This book is nothing short of concise, pointed, powerful, and...necessary. Highly recommended.

It seems obvious enough -- how to eat, that is. You'd think that, of all things, eating would be the one thing that we humans could do without an instruction manual. But in fact, scientists, the food industry and "(ahem) journalists", have taken great care in convoluting things so completely that an instruction manual is exactly what we need in order to learn--or rather, re-learn--how to feed ourselves. The commercial on television purporting a bottled food substitute as being a better choice for your child than anything that can be found in the produce section of the grocery store is as stark a reminder as any.

Michael Pollan is precisely the man to write such a manual (manifesto). After reading Pollon's prior book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, I found myself struggling with the dilemma of figuring out what to eat next. How good is organic after all?! Is 'free range' really any better? This book takes you into heart and mind, not to mention the historical context of how food has transformed into product, and what that really means for us as eaters turned consumers.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is a must-read for anyone who has ever been concerned about what they put into their bodies. It is a must-read for anyone who hasn't. Even if it changes little about the choices one makes as an eater and consumer, there is infinite value in the the knowing. And after reading this book you will know a whole lot more!

I'm a twenty-seven-year-old male, and before I read this book last spring, I don't think I'd ever thought about food beyond the questions, "Which TV dinner will I have tonight?" and "Papa-John's or Dominoes?" I'm not sure what made me pick up In Defense of Food in Target one day, but needless to say, I now have many more questions about the foods I eat, and that's a good thing.

One question the book will make you ask is, "Is this food?" It's probably not. It's sad that such is a question needing clarified, but it is. Much of what we eat is so processed to have lost its nutrient providing ability. He calls most of what we eat "edible foodlike substances." Pollan illustrates vividly the outcome of our eating habits. Wherever the western diet goes, the diseases all of our family members have died from follow: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, strokes... Traditional diets, even ones with almost no vegetables, tend to produce healthier people.

Fortunately, Pollan's book is not simply intended to scare everyone either. Pollan ends the book with a wonderful chapter of advice, general principles for what food to choose and how to prepare and eat it, for what things to avoid. For instance, Pollan has a pretty simple rule for determining whether or not something is food: Would your great-grandmother have recognized this as food? That and many other principles provide a map for navigating our confusing, and misleading, food culture.

Pollan's book is a life-changer. It's made me so much more conscious of what I eat and has provided me ways to make better decisions about what I eat. Pollan is a fantastic writer (reading In Defense of Food is not unlike reading something by Malcolm Gladwell), and this book also just made me so much more interested about food. I cook more now, for instance. And I'm developing an interest in cook books. And it's not a diet book, but I did lose weight and feel better now once I started following Pollan's advice. I couldn't recommend this much more highly.

In Defense of Food is a very worthy successor to The Omnivore's Dilemma, although by comparison it's quality did fall short in a few ways.

The mantra for the book is "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much." Don't we all eat food already? Not food as your grandmother understood it, Pollan argues. The industrial food system has processed and refined our "food" so much that ingredient lists have become paragraph-length bodies of incomprehensible chemical names and additives, rather than the whole foods which we ate in the pre-industrial food era. This is the era Pollan would have us return to. In doing so, we would reverse much damage caused by Western diet-related diseases--cancer, cardiovascular disorders, adult-onset diabetes, obesity, etc.

What led us to the current state of unhealth, Pollan argues, is an ideology he terms nutritionism: the belief that the key to understanding food is the nutrient. While this seems like an intuitive approach to understanding food, this reductionist thinking can be dangerous. If we're not careful, it can lead us to narrow-minded, over-reaching conclusions like the Carbohydrate Hypothesis (he argues), which places the blame squarely on carbohydrates for most of our health woes, while neglecting other factors. Or worse, we develop entirely erroneous ideas like the Lipid Hypothesis, the current mainstream view which blames dietary fat and cholesterol for causing cancer and cardiovascular disease, and which spawned the flood of low-fat, processed foods which inundate our grocery stores--much to the satisfaction of the industrial food chain, who simply re-engineer the old fatty foods by substituting the fat with additives and artificial flavors, then re-marketing these new foodish substances as low-fat and healthy.

Pollan's chief criticism of reductionism is that it's a divide-and-conquer approach, as opposed to a holistic, big picture approach, and is therefore succeptible to forest-for-the-trees errors--making dietary recommendations based on discrete nutrients while being susceptible to missing the synergistic inter-relationships in actual,
real foods which contain many, interacting nutrients.

Let's accept this argument for a moment. If food us too much of a complexity for our understanding now, and we should probably wait until the science sorts out all these nutrient intricacies before we can fully understand food (I disagree, but that's ok) what is the strongest line of reasoning to take in terms of present dietary recommendations? Pollan says listen to your mother. In other words, return to a pre-industrial, agricultural-based, whole-foods diet. While I think this suggestion would be an indisputable improvement over our present dietary state, I think the line of reasoning is weak. He even admits repeatedly throughout the book that diseases of the western diet existed pre-industrial food era--they were just less prominent and not the epidemic they are now. A much stronger line of reasoning would be to return to a pre-agricultural, Paleolithic, hunter-gatherer diet, in order to completely rid ourselves of western diet diseases. This approach is never even cursorily mentioned, for whatever reason, even if it's impractical for many people (most couldn't be bothered or have the means to take such an approach).

In the end this is a very insightful, thoughtful book, and even though i disagree with some of his conclusions and sometimes his line of reasoning, this book is very accessible and many people would benefit greatly from the knowledge and recommendations here.

The book was brand new and in great condition. I have not had a chance to read 'In Defense of Food' but I am looking forward to reading it since I thoroughly enjoyed reading Michael Pollan's books.

I have always been cautious about eating processed food, but after reading Michael Pollan"s latest book - In Defense of Food - I have plenty of evidence to back up my eating habits. My husband and I took turns reading the book to each other before bed. We are now big advocates for eating naturally. Every packaged item, dish made with white rice or white flour, and artificial vitamin pill is rapidly losing any appeal it may have had to us before.

In the Defense of Food discusses first, the history of food and nutrition; second, the fallacies of nutrition in the western diet which contribute to diet related health issues; and third, the author's suggestion for a healthy diet. Michael Pollan examines the United States government policies related to recommendations for a healthy diet such as the food pyramid and the FDA qualified approval of nutritional health claims. He discusses the government committees that have been formed to address diet related health issues, their original findings and how their final published findings were influenced by particular food markets.

This book is jam-packed with scientific specifics of nutrition as well as a significant amount of history and anthropology. It is well organized and persuasive. It is written for educated seekers of the truth about diet and health. I partially support the author's position. I believe his conclusions may be accurate, but I find it disconcerting that he quotes experts and studies of nutrition with disdain in one breath and marvel in the next. It appears dependent on whether or not it supports his conclusions. I would need to review the studies for myself before giving my full support.

I would like the opportunity to ask the author a few questions such as: What drove you to study this topic? How has it changed your eating habits? Were the changes difficult? Are you healthier now?

I give this book four stars. It contains some fascinating history and good suggestions. I feel motivated to try and keep this book in mind as I do the grocery shopping for our family and prepare our meals. However, it is a little a repetitive and dry. I am planning to pass, the book around to my family and friends to help them make better informed decisions about their diet and health as well. I especially would like my children to consider it as they are soon to embark on their on lives and raise their own families. I would love to see them start with wise choices.

Well, this book changed how I eat, and therefore presumably changed my life :) Basically I read it as an extended argument that good food ("real food") is worth paying for or worth the effort to grow/harvest/obtain. That is a big change in attitude. I wish I'd read this book 20 years ago.

I really liked the historical perspective on the food industry and our relationship to food. I never thought about how chemically complicated real food is and how many risks we take by simplifying it through industrial processes. All current controversies about food and nutrition seemed silly after reading this book -- we should eat what we evolved to eat.

What the world needs to know about food! Don't take for grantedthat food found in the grocery store is good for you, our goverment seems to care more about industrial marketing and greed of human beings that the goodness God provided with "natural" whole food in its original state. It is time to spread the word, educate people and take back our health and lives and participate in this wonderful operation of caring what we eat!

Read this book and finally understand our food. With over a hundred thousand man made chemicals, and most of them ending up in the food, or engineered food products we consume Michael Pollan steers us through the confusing maze of what to purchase, and what and how to eat our food. Great book.

Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Michael Pollan begins his book with these especially concise declarations about how to eat healthfully and he then writes a book about how nutritionism, the 'Western diet', and unmindful eating have led many humans astray (often down paths to stroke, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer). Pollan encourages us to shy away from reductionistic dietary journeying towards a fuller and more mindful experience with food and with other humans. He calls for a return to eating whole foods. It's strange that a music festival (Bonnaroo) and then my doctor's recommendation that I take a medication (a $60 a month medication no less!) to try to reduce my triglycerides would lead me on such a dietary quest that my core beliefs about food and meals would be decimated and more humanly primordial food mindfulness would rise from the ashes like a phoenix of health. I grew up very thin and very athletic and figured that I could eat whatever (often highly processed, laboratory flavored 'food-like substances), tons of whatever, and few plants. This was a very important book for me to read considering that a lovely baby boy grows inside the womb of my lovely bride. This book will help me to be mindful of what we as a family eat and what we slowly eat together. This is a very important book that I recommend for everybody to read. I place this book in very high regard and will cherish it along with other books that have helped change my worldview about our relationship with plants. I also recommend that you consider reading _Fast Food Nation_, _Slaughterhouse_, and _What to Eat_.

Very informative book. I found out that lot of things I was eating I thought were "healthy" actually aren't. I've never struggled with weight, so I don't really care about calories, and most "eating healthy" advice focuses heavily on calories and not so much on what's actually in the food. I try to eat healthy, but this book also made me realize that food isn't just the sum of its parts.