Book 18 - In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan

No preamble.  Time's a wastin'!

Book 18 - In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan is obsessed with food.  But it's not about a particular chef, or a particular style of preparation, or a particular ethnic cuisine.  He's not going to exotic locals trying to convince you to eat bugs or organs or something else the natives there eat all the time.  No, Michael Pollan doesn't care so much about what particular kind of food that you eat.  He just wants you to make sure that it is food.

"That's silly," you might say.  "Of course what I'm eating is food.  The very act of consuming it, by definition, makes it so."   Mr. Pollan might take exception to that.  Especially if what you are eating is the highly processed "edible foodlike substances" that comprise the modern Western diet.

"Shenanigans!" you might say.  "Now Keith is so desperate to try to finish the challenge that he has resorted to diet books!"  But Pollan is not trying to compete with likes of Atkins and Tarnower.  His book is An Eater's Manifesto (the book's subtitle).  It is a set of theses that Pollan has nailed to the kitchen door in order to get us to reclaim real food, and shun the "foodlike substances" that have been foisted upon us by the food industry.  His ideas, in theory, are simple.  In fact the entire gist of his manifesto can be summed up in three very short sentences:  "Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants."

Pollan spends a good bit of time explaining the notion of nutritionism, which is the belief that food can be scientifically broken down into its constituent parts (fat, carbohydrates, protein, vitamins, anti-oxidants, etc), and by increasing or limiting the intake of these component parts, we can eat our way to nutritional health.  This way of thinking has dominated nutritional science for years: one minute we are told we should eschew butter for margarine, the next minute we are told that trans-fat is bad.  Pollan explains the drawbacks of this reductionist approach and how incorrect conclusions based on this approach have negatively affected health.  Pollan also shows us how this nutritional roller coaster plays right into the food science industry, who when faced with a particular nutritional science claim are more than happy to engineer fat-free cookies, or low-carb pasta.

Right now, you might be clutching your McRib Sandwich between stubby little fingers, barbecue sauce dripping down your chins, preparing once again to defend the substance you are shoving into your gaping maw as being food.  Pollan has very simple guidelines for determining whether what you are eating is food:  don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food; don't eat anything with unpronounceable ingredients;  don't eat anything that makes health claims on its package, etc;

Pollan is a convincing advocate for the topic.  He stays away from hyperbole, and presents cogent, well-researched arguments.  His message is simple and sensible enough to be intuitive.  Much as The Omnivore's Dilemma made you stop and think about where your meal comes from, this book will stop and make you think about what it is made of.