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Description edit
What to eat, what not to eat and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the questions posed in the bestselling The... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
- - Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Summary edit
Somewhere along the line we stopped eating food and started feeding on "edible food-like substances" created not by nature, but by food scientists. We stopped eating socially and started feeding in the car, at our desks, and in front of the television. In the Western diet, food has been... read more
Quotes edit
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“Be the kind of person who would take supplements, and then save your money.”
Michael Pollan -
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Michael Pollan -
“Most of the nutritional advice we've received over the last half century (and in particular the advice to replace the fats in our diets with carbohydrates) has actually made us less healthy and considerably fatter.”
Michael Pollan -
“We are becoming a nation of orthorexics: people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.”
Michael Pollan -
“The scientists haven't tested the hypothesis yet, but I'm willing to bet that when they do they'll find an inverse correlation between the amount of time people spend worrying about nutrition and their overall health and happiness.”
Michael Pollan -
“Don't eat anything incapable of rotting.”
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“Nutritionism had become the official ideology of the Food and Drug Administration; for all practical purposes the government had redefined food as nothing more than the sum of their recognized nutrients. Adulteration had been repositioned as food science.”
Michael Pollan -
“Yet as a general rule it's a whole lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a raw potato or a carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over in Cereal the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming their newfound "whole-grain goodness" to the rafters.”
Michael Pollan -
“What the Soviet Union was to the ideology of Marxism, the Low-Fat Campaign is to the ideology of nutritionism - its supreme test and, as now is coming clear, its most abject failure.”
Michael Pollan -
“in most but not all cases, the best ethical and environmental choices also happen to be the best choices for our health”
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“the chronic diseases that now kill most of us can be traced directly to the industrialization of our food: the rise of highly processed foods and refined grains; the use of chemicals to raise plants and animals in huge monocultures; the superabundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat produced by modern agriculture; and the narrowing of the biological diversity of the human diet to a tiny handful of staple crops, notably, wheat, corn, and soy.”
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“Indeed, nutritionism supplies the ultimate justification for processing food by implying that with a judicious application of food science, fake foods can be made even more nutritious than the real thing.”
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“every course correction in nutritionist advice gives reason to write new diet books and articles, manufacture a new line of products, and eat a whole bunch of even more healthy new food products.”
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“But while nutritionism has its roots in a scientific approach to food, it's imporant to remember that it is not a science but an ideology, and that the food industry, journalism, and government bear just as much responsibility for its conquest of our minds and diets. All three helped to amplify the signal of nutritionism: journalism by uncritically reporting the latest dietary studies on its front page; the food industry by marketing dubious foodlike products on the basis of tenuous health claims; and the government by taking it upon itself to issue official dietary advice based on sketchy science in the first place and corrupted by political pressure in the second.”
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“Since the widespread adoption of chemical fertilizers in the 1950s, the nutritional quality of produce in America has declined substantially, according to figures gathered by the USDA, which has tracked the nutrient content of various crops since then. Some researchers blame this decline on the condition of the soil; others cite the tendency of modern plant breeding, which has consistently selected for industrial characteristics such as yield rather than nutritional quality.”
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“Clearly the achievements of industrial agriculture have come at a cost: It can produce a great many more calories per acre, but each of those calories may supply less nutrition than it formerly did. And what has happened on the farm has happened in the food system as a whole as industry has pursued the same general strategy of promoting quantity at the expense of quality.”
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“The context in which a food is eaten can be nearly as important as the food itself.”
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AVOID FOOD PRODUCTS CONTAINING INGREDIENTS THAT ARE A) UNFAMILIAR, B) UNPRONOUNCEABLE, C) MORE THAN FIVE IN NUMBER, OR THAT INCLUDE D) HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP.
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AVOID FOOD PRODUCTS THAT MAKE HEALTH CLAIMS.
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SHOP THE PERIPHERIES OF THE SUPERMARKET AND STAY OUT OF THE MIDDLE.
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GET OUT OF THE SUPERMARKET WHENEVER POSSIBLE.
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DON’T EAT ANYTHING YOUR GREAT GRANDMOTHER WOULDN’T RECOGNIZE AS FOOD.
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YOU ARE WHAT WHAT YOU EAT EATS TOO.
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EAT MOSTLY PLANTS, ESPECIALLY LEAVES.
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BE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO TAKES SUPPLEMENTS.
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EAT WELL-GROWN FOOD FROM HEALTHY SOILS.
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COOK AND, IF YOU CAN, PLANT A GARDEN.
Highlighted by 370 Kindle customers
Setting & Locations edit
Organizations edit
- Archer Daniels Midland Company: ADM is a food conglomerate based in Decatur, Illinois.
- EPA: The United States Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the United States federal government, charged with protecting human health and the environment.
- FDA: The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the regulation of food, tobacco, prescriptions, over-the-counter medications, cosmetics and more.
- Slow Food: Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. To do that, Slow Food brings together pleasure and responsibility, and makes them inseparable.
First Sentence edit
If you spent any time at all in a supermarket in the 1980s, you might have noticed something peculiar going on.
Table of Contents edit
I. The Age of Nutritionism
1. From Foods to Nutrients
2. Nutritionism Defined
3. Nutritionism Comes to Market
4. Food Science's Golden Age
5. The Melting of the Lipid Hypothesis
6. Eat Right, Get Fatter
7. Beyond the Pleasure Principle
8. The Proof in the Low-Fat Pudding
9. Bad Science
10. Nutritionism's Children
II. The Western Diet and the Disease of Civilization
1. The Aborigine in All of Us
2. The Elephant in the Room
3. The Industrialization of Eating:
- What We Do Know:
1. From Whole Foods to Refined
2. From Complexity to Simplicity
3. From Quality to Quantity
4. From Leaves to Seeds
5. From Food Culture to Food Science
III. Getting Over Nutritionism
1. Escape from the Western Diet
2. Eat Food: Food Defined
3. Mostly Plants: What to Eat
4. Not Too Much: How to Eat
Acknowledgements
Sources
Resources
Index
Glossary edit
- CSA: In a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture), farmers offers a certain number of "shares" to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a "membership" or a "subscription") and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.
- Biodiversity: Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem. Biodiversity is often used to gauge the health of a system.
- Carotenoids: Carotenoids are the naturally-occurring organic pigments found in photosynthetic organisms.
- Diverticulitis: Diverticulitis is a relatively common digestive disease of the large intestine.
- Macronutrients: The nutrients that humans need to consume in large quantities: carbohydrates, fats, proteins.
- Micronutrients: Micronutrients are nutrients for which humans only need to consume a small quantity in order to sustain life.
- Nutritionism: Nutritionism is a school of thought that assumes that the value of a food is equal to the sum of its scientifically-identified nutrients.
- Western diet: Describe this term.
- Orthorexics: People with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating
Themes & Symbolism edit
Series & Lists edit
This book is in Eating Well. (community list)
This is book 1 of 4 in Go Big Read - University of Wisconsin-Madison Common Reading Program. (authoritative list)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Penguin Press
Country: USA
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
ISBN: 1594201455
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Penguin Press
Country: USA
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
ISBN: 1594201455
Page Count: 256
Awards edit
- James Beard Foundation Book Award (2009: Writing and Literature, Winner)
- ALA Notable Book (2009: Non-Fiction)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: RA784 .P643 2009
- Dewey: 613
Subjects edit
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Links to Supplemental Material edit
- Michael Pollan's official website: Learn more about this book from the author.
- Texas Observer: Less-than-positive review from James E. McWilliams
- Wikipedia: Learn more about this book at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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