Review: In Defense of Food
I have just wrapped up reading Michael Pollen’s latest tome on what we are putting in our bodies. The good news: I still have an appetite. The bad news: we are screwed, really screwed, overweight and unhealthy. But wait, there is more good news: we don’t have to be fat unhealthy slobs, we can counteract everything we are inflicting on our poor bodies by eating actual food and not the crap being packaged as edible “products” the food industry is selling us. The bad news: most of us can’t afford it.
Pollen explores how nutritionism and food science has replaced actual food with a series of vitamins, minerals and compounds. We have evolved from the industrialization of wheat, which removed all of the oil and protein to create a perfectly white, soft flour completely devoid of nutritional value, and enriched it with synthetic compounds to attempt to increase its health value. Now, we have a fruit flavored drink which has been enriched with vitamin C. It is cheaper to produce than regular juice, since it is water and high fructose corn syrup with added flavors and colors. Shelf stable, it requires no refrigeration, and can be shipped anywhere.
He dissects fat in dieting trends and explains the bad science behind margarine and trans fat. Just when the book turns into a whirlwind of what we thought we knew and how bad it was for us, he posits some rules for eating. Here they are in brief:
- “Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”
- “Avoid foods with ingredients you can’t pronounce.”
- “Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot.”
- “Avoid food products that carry health claims.”
- “Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.”
- “Better yet, buy food elsewhere, like a farmers market.”
- “Pay more, eat less.”
- “Eat a wide variety of species.”
- “Eat food from animals that eat grass.”
- “Cook, and grow your own food (if you can.)”
- “Eat meals and eat them only at tables.”
- “Eat deliberately, communally, and with pleasure.”
I am adding this book to the list of required reading for people who eat. Best digested in small chunks, you can find the NYTimes article version here.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
