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 enlarge | Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $11.84
You Save: $10.11 (46%)
New (75) Used (34) Collectible (5) from $10.33
Rating:  192 reviews
Sales Rank: 115
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
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:
Showing reviews 171-175 of 192
 Great Book Everyone Should Read January 18, 2008
Blair J. Leake (Texas)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book really opened my eyes as to how I should be looking at food. I have told everyone I know about it and even have bought a copy for my parents. It's that good.
Admiration from another nutrition writer January 18, 2008
Ira M. Edwards
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a better book than mine. IN DEFENSE OF FOOD and HONEST NUTRITION cover some of the same topics, but Michael Pollen does it better than I did. Buy it!
Much of popular ideas and literature about nutrition is false. Pollen does very well at presenting what is true, and making it simple.
Loved this book January 17, 2008
kur-v (california)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I savored omnivore's delima took my time and read it carefully in order not to miss something. This short easy to read book was the opposite. I sat down and read the whole thing. I agree with everything Michael Pollan has to say about the western diet, even though I have been less than careful about avoiding it. I feel inspired to eat better and be more careful than ever about what I buy. it is probably the best "diet book" I have ever read. Not to mention it is entertaining, funny and does not insult my intelligence.
A good follow up for "The Omnivore's Dilemma" January 16, 2008
N. Bohac (San Francisco, CA USA)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Having read, and enjoyed, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" last year, I was really looking forward to reading through this book. The book feels almost like a sequel to the last book, laid out almost as if Michael Pollan is answering the questions that the reader inevitably would have had from reading "Omnivore".
The concept here is simple, which is to eat food. This seems so easy, but unless you pick up the containers in the grocery store, you would assume everything that is edible is food. Wrong. Pollan reinforces a similar idea that I have heard on a few occasions, which is when you are in the supermarket, stay on the outside of the store and not inside. Try to not eat things that have more than five ingredients, and make sure you can pronounce the ingredients. Whole foods are the key here, which is something that was essentially the underlying idea behind the previous book. Know your food and know who grows your food.
I want to take a point off for it being so short (and so good that I could hardly put it down, making it feel that much shorter), but that really is not fair.
 This book is Indefensible! January 16, 2008
Upton Sinclair (San Diego, CA USA)
52 out of 95 found this review helpful
Pollan's In Defense of Food is indefensible! Perhaps because I so thoroughly enjoyed his eloquent Omnivore's Dilemma (except for the last sections that deals with his overwrought angst on killing his very own pig), I was very disappointed in this follow-up book.
Even though Pollan has meager disclaimers throughout the book that he is a Journalist instead of a Scientist, he fails even journalistic standards. I feel his lack of adequately referencing or explaining his statements, is especially problematic. For example, he quotes that 80% of Type 2 Diabetes could be prevented with diet and exercise, yet does not share with us the methodology and reasoning of how that figure was derived. There are a number of references in the Sources section, but will someone really want to read every single source to confirm this?
In multiple areas, he lumps physicians, food producers, and the pharmaceutical industry, as all being solely economically orientated, as if there is a conspiracy amongst them to create disease. I feel his mischaracterization of the motives of physicians is inexcusable, not to mention narrow, inaccurate, and demeaning. He feels they are capitalistic and use illness as a business opportunity. Inexplicably, he does not prominently mention the multiple physicians who are experts on diet and atherosclerosis. Where are the interviews with Dean Ornish, M.D., Ron Krauss, M.D., or John McDougall, M.D.? They are some of the brightest and most informed researchers regarding diet and disease, and are right in his own backyard in the Berkeley area.
As he notes himself, Pollan is certainly is not a true food authority, even though he has many provocative ideas and concepts which may ultimately be true. He resorts to the "pseudo-science" he preaches so strongly against. For example, I was tired of hearing about the "French Paradox" which gained popularity following a 1991 Sixty Minutes episode. The fact that the incidence of heart disease is similar to its other developed neighbors, and the validity of the whole idea has been questioned by Health researchers based on subsequent data, was not commented on. It reminds me of a saying, which I enjoy quoting, and probably applies to this book: "Keep an Open Mind, but not so open that your Brains fall out!"
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