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| Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $12.36
You Save: $9.59 (44%)
New (76) Used (35) Collectible (5) from $9.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  174 reviews
Sales Rank: 183
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 1594201455
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.2
EAN: 9781594201455
ASIN: 1594201455
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Dietitan Delighted July 3, 2008
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a Dietitian and Certified Diabetes Educator I am delighted that Pollan has put together one pouch with most all the jewels. The system while well meaning is not yet optimizing our access to the path of health.
Learn to cook July 2, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
You really have to read Pollan's masterpiece, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," to appreciate this one, which functions as a kind of coda to Omnivore's exploration of industrial farming and its effects on the food supply. In "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto," Pollan's attack on nutritionism--the separating of a food into its components--certainly puts the lie to "alternative" medicine health gurus like Andrew Weil, who sometimes seem to push pills (vitamins, anti-oxidants, etc.) as heartily as his counterparts in traditional medicine. According to Pollan, there is no magic substance, whether it be oat bran or omega-3 oils, that can bestow health. He points out that human beings have thrived on all kinds of different diets, the so-called Western diet excepted. He convincingly argues, citing infant formula as just one example, that efforts to reduce a valuable food to its components are primitive at best and that attempts to define what comprises a healthy diet, like the emphasis on low fat consumption, have been just plain wrong. Shop the outer walls of the supermarket, he advises, looking for the real food: vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat. Stay out of the middle, where the "whole grain" junk food and "heart healthy" cookies dwell. This is an interesting and sensible book full of good advice that is ridiculously easy to follow. Despite some of the more enthusiastic reviews, I do have to say that for middle-aged readers the notion that if you follow Pollan's precepts you will live longer and avoid devastating diseases is a bit silly. (Pollan does not make this claim.) Who can predict such things? However, for those who choose to teach their children or grandchildren to eat well---what better gift for the next generation? Reader: if you can't cook you are going to have to learn.
Spread the word... July 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If this fabulous book becomes a best-seller, as it should, if enough people read and follow its advice, if we can manage to get the kids on board with healthy eatting (PLEASE write a kid's version, asap), we can put the food processors, food "scientists" on notice that their imitation food is at least one contributing factor behind so many "new" epidemics: bi-polarity in children, autism, ADD, allergies, asthma, diabetes I & II, obesity, etc etc etc.
Thank you Michael Pollan for stating the case for real food so very well. This Saturday, I'm off to the farmer's market.
Intriguing June 30, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I almost put this book back on the shelf after seeing its sub-subtitle: "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants." I thought, well, duh, who doesn't know that? I expected yet another rant that we're eating too much of the wrong food, which isn't new and isn't helpful.
But this book posits some interesting reasons why we're eating too much and even more importantly why we're not eating *food*. Until I read Chapter One I had not even considered how long it's been since I looked at an item of food as something in and of itself instead of just as a collection of nutrients. Our grandparents looked at an orange and saw an orange; we look at an orange and see part of our daily allotment of Vitamin C. Yet we really know very little about what's in an orange that's protective to our health. We should eat it because it's delicious and has been part of the human diet for centuries, not because some expert tells us to.
Mr. Pollan also advances the idea that we don't spend enough on food, that if we can afford to we should spend more. This seems counter-intuitive, but in fact he's right. When you spend $6 for a half-gallon of organic, non-homogenized milk, or $4.89 a dozen for eggs from pastured chickens, you really become conscious of the food you're eating.
At the end he provides some practical advice on how to avoid the pressures that cause us to eat too much of the wrong things.
With the rise of the farmer's market in most areas we now have more opportunity than we've had in decades to eat real food. Try it, you'll like it -- that applies to both this book and the real food it advocates.
Pollan Does It Again, Shows Why He's One Of America's Top Health Science Writers June 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
One of the most brilliant diet and health writers of our day has got to be Michael Pollan. As a worthy follow-up to his instant classic The Omnivore's Dilemma, this book comes strongly to the defense of REAL food as opposed to the heavy reliance on packaged creations that dominates the typical American family dinner table. What if most of the diseases we are dealing with have more to do with the diet we are consuming in the fast-paced lifestyle of the 21st century and less to do with whatever the latest nutritional flavor of the day advice is out there? It's a rather thought-provoking exercise that is worth reading every glorious one of these 230-something pages of text. Pollan is on to something HUGE her and I can't wait to see what else he comes up with if he keeps writing about diet in the future.
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