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In Defense of Food
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
There, in seven simple words, is the diet you need, not just to lose weight, but to be healthy.
That’s the gospel of Michael Pollan, whose new book, “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” has been in the Amazon.com Top 10 bestsellers for the whole month of January. This book, which I devoured like a can of Pringle’s (my personal problem food; yours may vary), is a smart look at eating badly, eating well, eating smart, and eating healthy.
It is not a diet book. But if you do what he says, you will probably lose some weight.
Pollan is a journalist and author who has become a leading expert in nutrition, food culture and agribusiness. His last book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” was a grand tour of how food gets to be be food in this society, from the chickens that end up in a bucket of KFC to small family farms that will graze their cattle only on fine grasses. For people who care about food, it was eye-opening. And, at times, disgusting.
In “Defense of Food,” Pollan covers the rise of what he calls “nutritionism,” the notion that we need to be consuming specific nutrients rather than a balanced, healthy diet; the so-called “Western diet,” heavy on red meat and high-fructose corn syrup; and finally, his advice on how to counter those two.
There’s a lot to chew on in Pollan, but here’s an appetizer. When he says “Eat food,” what he means is eat real food, that came from plants or animals instead of a factory. “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” (That would be those Pringles.) “Avoid food products that make health claims.” “Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.” And so on.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough. To get the commenting rolling, I’d like to hear stories about the food you eat that your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize, and/or food products in your pantry that make health claims that you don’t really believe (cereals are great ones for this). And go buy Pollan’s book and follow his advice. You’ll be glad you did.
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By Thomas
January 24, 2008 8:16 AM | Link to this
I can second this recommendation easily. My wife and I read In Defense Of Food less than a week ago, and now I’ve moved backwards to The Omnivore’s Dilemma. In Defense Of Food is a quick read, written in a conversational style that’s intelligent without being too academically arid (though Pollan does dive occasionally into more detail than expected when discussing how America’s food policy has evolved in the 20th century).
One of the simplest bits of advice from the book is Pollan’s recommendation that we keep our grocery store shopping to the perimeter of the store, like the produce, the meat counter, and the dairy case. It’s an easy way to avoid the preservatives that allow the rest of the store’s inventory to wait for weeks or months on a shelf.
So after reading, what do I still eat? Well, I’m still a Coca-Cola consumer, in spite of the fact that Coke strays far afield of one of Pollan’s other rules: Try to eat/drink things with less than five ingredients on the label.
By Jeff
January 24, 2008 8:46 AM | Link to this
Phil, it seems that you have just added ANOTHER book to my ever growing list!
(Picked up two books recently in addition to all the ones I’ve already told y’all about, finished one 300 pager in 48 hours, starting on the second one. Then I get back to the books y’all know about. All told, in 2008 I’ve already downed 7 books for a total of something around 1800 pages. And I still have at least that many in my current ‘to read’ list.)
Something I learned as a single guy that my wife hasn’t quite picked up on (she’s not as much of a carnivore as me):
You would be surprised at the variety of meals you can make just by shopping the meat counter and the spice rack. Go to the grocery store once a week or so (most people do that anyway) and pick up some of each type of the five main meats they have there: beef, pork, chicken, turkey, and fish. Go over to the spice rack and pick up a few different things, one of my favorites is Lemon Pepper.
Depending on exactly how you decide to cook it (I did everything but fish on my Foreman grill), it generally only takes about 20 minutes from start to finish and you wind up with a pretty decent meal.
Is it going to be Food Network worthy? Probably not. But I dropped about 20 lbs without even realizing it just by eating this and the various flavors of rice-a-roni. (And my beer/ soft drink consumption was at the same or higher levels as now.)
By Maria
January 24, 2008 6:12 PM | Link to this
I think the worst thing in my pantry recently was a bag of cookie mix my husband and I received for Christmas. The ingredients label was So. Very. Long. It scared me. My husband eventually made the cookies. They were supposedly “peanut butter chocolate chunk,” but neither of us ever found any chocolate. Hmm. The oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that Awesome Chef Husband made from scratch yesterday are so much better. I’m having some right now. Yum.
I looked at In Defense of Food at a friend’s house and I definitely want to read it after I get through my current stack of library books. This is going to make me sound insufferable, but I already stick pretty close to what Pollan says. I didn’t always. In college I had an Easy Mac / rice-in-a-box / Lipton-noodles-and-sauce habit that ran pretty deep. But that can get tiresome. And salty. I kicked that to the curb before it became an embarrassing mid-20s habit.
The one thing that keeps me the most healthy is also the one thing that’ll probably get me kicked out of the South. I’ve never had a taste for Coke, sweet tea, or beer. Avoid those and you avoid a lot of HFCS and other things that won’t fit into the “food” category. I’ll keep my red wine and black coffee, though.