In Defense of Food: A Review
I’d just like to start by saying that this isn’t a paid review of anything like that. I genuinely just finished reading this book and couldn’t wait to tell you all about it!
In Defense of Food (link)
by Michael Pollan
To be completely honest with you, the reason i bought this book in Paris (at Shakespeare and Co no less!) was because of the cover, and secondly because of the title. I din’t read the synopsis, or hear good things about it, it just looked and sounded good!
Boy oh boy, am i glad that I did! Apart from the bible, I’ve never read a book that made me think so much about my own thoughts and views and want to radically change my life!!
In defense if food is about celebrating, and eating food. It’s about stopping to think about the truth in all the nutritional mumbo-jumbo that we’re told and making our eating a whole lot simpler. Well, kind of…
As it turns out, eating ‘real food’ in this day and age is harder then you’d first imagine.
Pollan takes the time in this book to firstly talk about nutritionism- what it is and where it came from, and secondly the western diet, and it’s effects of the human body. after all that doom and gloom, Pollan shares simple ‘rules’ to help you put what you’ve learnt into practice. And you know what, the rules he presents are in a way, just common sense. The kind that happens to be so rare today…
Some of these common sense rules he presents include:
“Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does” (we all one how rubbish petrol station food is),
“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”
“Eat slowly”
And “Try not to eat alone”
My only reservation about this book is how ‘American’ it is. But the principles, and general facts are stil applicable to Australia, expecially as we unfortunately become more and more like them.
January 6th, 2011
Having read the book vicariously through Talia, I can confirm that this book does indeed contain many tasty morsels of food wisdom.
January 6th, 2011
Hey Talia! I got given the book ‘The Food Companion’ by Matthew Evans. He is big on local food and REAL food. Makes me want to throw all these ‘weight loss’ diets out the window and just focus on real whole food made by my hands in my kitchen.
Cheers,
Felicity
January 6th, 2011
[...] the way I look at food and sugar. You’ll remember that I’m quite into natural food, and not eating processed food, so the new sugar thing is quite a natural progression from that. I won’t go into all the [...]
January 6th, 2011
[...] you read “Food Rules” by Michael Polan? A while ago I read “In Defence of Food“, and I loved it, and I’m keen to read Food Rules [...]