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 enlarge | Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $11.74
You Save: $10.21 (47%)
New (66) Used (23) Collectible (5) from $11.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  166 reviews
Sales Rank: 91
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:
 Glad this is so popular July 28, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Pollan gives a pretty systematic overview of what's wrong with what we eat and how we can fix it. It's concise, it's well-informed, and it's open-minded. Everyone talks about how organic food or sustainable agriculture or whatever is good, but Pollan compiles it into an excellent essay.
Review of "In Defense of Food" July 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Michael Pollan's book is excellent! If you have even a slight interest in knowing more about nutrition, this book will take you through the industrialization of food and farming and will have you cheering for the farmers markets, organics and eating "real" food. Learn how to rise above the lure of the Western diet and return to eating in a way that promotes good health and fights diseases that threaten us daily. I totally recommend this book to anyone who wants to arm themselves with information that will educate them and prepare them for grocery shopping in today's supermarkets that are overrun with foodstuffs, not food. Get ready to radically rock your grocery list!
This book should be required reading July 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have a few reservations about this book, but I think that the message is so crucial and so well stated that it deserves nothing less than five stars. This book will be interesting to just about everything and is eminently readable. It doesn't get bogged down and even if it is occasionally repetitive, well, that's because it's a message that really, really needs to be hammered home.
The only major reservation that pops to mind is Pollan's use of statistical and nutritional information. He is convincingly antagonistic towards the world of 'nutritionism' that reduces foods and meals to unseeable macro- and micro-nutrients (thus making food science and food industry the supposed authorities over all we eat). However, Pollan himself often uses statistical and nutritional information when it supports his point. At one clever moment he admits this weakness, but I don't think it strengthens his case to use the very sort of data which throughout most of the book he refers to as 'bad science.'
I am glad to see a bibliography, but I would like to see more suggestions on where to turn for more information (practical and otherwise) - the sort of resources that Barbara Kingsolver et al were very good at suggesting.
I recommend Sally Fallon's book Nourishing Traditions, which is very in sync with Pollan although he doesn't mention it.
This book can be read with or without, before or after Omnivore's Dilemma. A bit of information is repeated, but impressively little.
Compelling July 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is the first blockbuster I've ever reviewed on Amazon. Usually I defer to the droves of other reviewers to cover every point, but this book is just too compelling. I devoured it in two days, an extraordinary rarity for an unusually slow reader like me.
Here, Pollan firmly repudiates the "Western diet" and the scientific, industrial, and political complex surrounding it. He challenges the tenets of scientific nutritionism and its tendency to lionize or demonize various chemical components of food within a framework of a highly processed industrial diet of "food-like products." Rather, he argues for a return to older patterns of eating, more in tune with traditional cultures and whole foods, that are more conducive to physical, social, and ecological health. He distills this into a seven-word mnemonic: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." The sweep of this message makes the reader a little queasy - would we all have been better off as pre-agricultural nomads? - but it is well-researched and closely argued, so it ultimately makes a convincing case.
The book satisfies on an intellectual level as well. It opens the reader's eyes to the depth of the perversion of governmental, agricultural, and academic interests to satisfy the profit motive. It shatters the whole reductionist (nutritional facts labels?) way of thinking about food. And it comprises a convincing, real-world example to support a skeptical epistemology when confronting the biological and ecological worlds.
Years ago, while I was still a child, I was trying to choose between medicine, biology, or chemistry as a career path. I chose chemistry for ethical and aesthetic reasons - I was scared by the ethical ramifications of tampering with living things, and I liked the idea of doing experiments on simple systems that can be quite fully characterized. Pollan teaches us about a related ethical issue - the danger of scientific hubris when applying reductionist methods to complex systems, particularly in fields like nutrition where powerful political forces want to take one's results out of context. If there's one thing I do not like about the book, it is how Pollan - a journalist - takes numerous cheap potshots at nutrition science while using some of its recent results - omega-3 vs. omega-6 fatty acids, the polyphenols in red wines - as the principal evidence for some of his points. But he acknowledges this himself, and ultimately he stimulates genuine thought about the responsible conduct and communication of research and the role of its results in industrial or governmental practice. The book could thus serve as an effective component in the education of a young scientist or policymaker.
To recommend a bestselling book to friends, students, and family is rare for me - just as rare as reading such a book quickly and reviewing it on Amazon. Nevertheless, I will be recommending it to everyone I can.
You Will Never Read A Food "Study" The Same Way Again July 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There is so much to like about this persuasive, thoughtful essay. It's really a snap to read -- breezy, informative and very funny in spots. Pollan reduces food and nutrition information to its essence, and who doesn't need that kind of crystallized advice in this day and age? Perhaps my favorite section is how he exposes the thinking and "science" behind the various food studies which have informed our thinking to date. In short, this section breaks down how hard it is to isolate one influencing factor for a study. Hard? Nearly impossible. That section is called, appropriately, "bad science." I think about how many nutrition studies I've read (about) in newspapers and heard (about) on television over the past decades....and how little information is really imparted about how the study was conducted. One of the primary issues, of course, is how you "control" for what's being studied, and how hard it is to draw conclusions without that "control." And there is no control. There are so many factors that influence the impact of a change in diet, from genetic makeup to environmental factors, that it's nearly impossible. You could just skip to the last "Eat Food: Food Defined" and gather all of Pollan's bottom-line advice. But the rest is so interesting and full of information that it would be a shame to miss the build-up. Confused about food? Read this. I mean, consume it.
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