Michael Pollan – In Defense of Food - Intro

For my friends and family, I would like you to read this book, however, it may not fit into your schedule. This book has changed my way of thinking about food and I want to absorb it even more, so I’m going to re-read it and post summaries of it here on my blog. I’m realizing that so many of our guidelines about eating are based on outdated recommendations and that’s why we have such a problem with our school lunches, and why people like Jamie Oliver is starting a “Food Revolution”.

If you’d like to know about this Michael Pollan guy, here’s a link to his website. http://www.michaelpollan.com/about.php He’s a journalist and has written about the food system for some time.

In the introduction to In Defense of Food he talks about why he wrote this book. He’s done a lot of research on the history of the Western Diet and the details are fascinating! In summary, we westerners, particularly Americans, have lost confidence in what we choose to eat. We have stopped looking at food as food, and think of it more at nutrients. We depend on scientist to tell us what to eat. An orange is not an orange, it’s a source of vitamin C, never mind the other benefits to eating an orange that isn’t in a vitamin C pill.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That’s the short lesson of this book. He’s not telling us what to eat, just getting us to think about the choices we make. We are caught in between the food scientists telling us what to eat (no butter, marg…oops! No marg, butter) and the “thirty-two-billion-dollar food-marketing machine that thrives on change for its own sake.” This country’s industrialization of the food system began in the 60’s and it’s taken this long…over 40 years…to get back to basics. Food chemistry creates flavors that make things taste good, like that chicken sandwich from your favorite fast food joint; the feed lot chicken doesn’t have much flavor or nutrition, but they add it so you think it’s good and wholesome food. It’s not! There is so much added flavor, sugar, corn syrup and fat to our food, and the labels are so confusing, most of us just give up and eat whatever.

It seems ridiculous that there is need for a book to be written, with the first rule “Eat Food”. It seems obvious, of course we eat food…but we don’t…we eat foodlike substances. Through this book you’ll see what I mean. It’s really changed me and I hope you enjoy it too!