Book #20: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

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

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

If you've read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (and if you haven't, you should!), In Defense of Food should not come as a surprise to you. It seems like the most natural outgrowth of The Omnivore's Dilemma. The first two sections talk all about how bad the Western Diet is and how people in other parts of the world tend to stay skinnier and healthier eating their native diets, no matter what they are. Pollan really hates preservatives, packaged foods, and anything with "high fructose" and "hydrogenated" in it. In the third section (the most useful and shortest part of the book), he talks about all of the things we should do to eat well in a complex modern world. His definition of food? Things your great-grandmother would recognize as food. Don't fear butter, fear preservatives.

I love the third section of Pollan's book, and felt inspired while reading it to do things like join a CSA, start shopping at the farmer's market, and start making my own bread. But I read it on vacation, and so far I haven't actually done any of those things yet. As Eddie pointed out, Pollan's way of eating is a lot more time-consuming and a lot more expensive. Worth it? Probably, but right now I've got a lot of other things (mostly preservative-filled) on my plate.

I finished the book while we were in Mexico, and just as we were leaving Chichen Itza, in the jungle in the heart of the Yucatan Peninsula, I saw a little store in the village. Seated at a table on the front porch was a whole family-- obese mom, overweight dad, bunch of chubby little kids, sitting with a 2-liter bottle of Coke on the table and a big open bag of Doritos spread between them. So I guess the Western diet really is killing people all over the world, and not just us poor saps in America.