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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 36-40 of 192
 Best information on nutrition I've read in years August 5, 2008
photondancer (Australia)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I'm still not sure what made me buy this book, as I consider myself fairly well educated on food and nutrition; perhaps just the catchy "don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognise as food" line. I am glad I did as it not only reinforced and gave reasons for much that I already knew, but opened my eyes to much that I hadn't. I've been growing steadily more interested in food issues ever since a lactose-intolerant colleague made me realise how many food products have milk powder added to them, for no very apparent reason. I have struggled with my weight for years; after reading this book I finally understand WHY eating bread twice a day makes me fat within a few days, while cutting out the bread makes my waist slimmer just as quickly. For the first time I've been given a plausible theory explaining the sudden and simultaneous rise in obesity and diabetes type 2 in western countries.
I live in Australia so our situation is not quite as dire as the USA's: for example we don't have a corn lobby so the use of HFCS is much less common, and most of our cows and sheep still eat grass, not grain. I was flabbergasted by Pollan's revelation of just how much of the foodstuff sold in a US supermarket contains corn in some form or other. I've always avoided grain-fed meat on environmental grounds; now I know to also avoid it because this unnatural diet forces the animal's meat to be much higher in omega-6 than it's meant to be. Despite knowing quite well that "you are what you eat" and that cows and sheep aren't meant to eat grains, somehow I had failed to make the connection that this would have an inevitable effect on the nutritional makeup of the animal's flesh. That, to me, is the real power of this book - that it makes connections between numerous facts that I'd been individually aware of, but had failed to put together into a larger picture. Pollan does this for us.
Not that I'm complacent about Australia as our obesity rate is on par with the USA's. Today's newspaper had an article supporting Pollan's claim that the more nutritional claims a food makes, the less healthy in reality it is likely to be. More than half the food ads on tv that trumpeted nutritiional claims such as 'low fat' or 'high fibre' were for junk food ( http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2008/08/04/1217701950053.html)
Another reason I liked this book was that it put me onto some other very good books such as Wansink's "Mindless Eating" and Taubes' "Diet Delusion" (sold as "Good Calories, Bad Calories" in the US) neither of which I'd heard of but have found just as illuminating as "In Defense of Food". Pollan is generous in crediting other people's work, something a lot of authors fall short in.
The only reason I'm giving this 4 stars rather than 5 was because I found the final chapter on how to eat better somewhat slight compared to the preceding chapters. It's no news (to some of us) that agribusiness needs serious reform and I would've liked Pollan to discuss how this might be done instead of just saying it's needed. But I liked the way he pointed out that so many of us say we eat poorly because we can't afford to eat better, yet can find the money for a bigger tv or faster internet connection. In my experience a lot of people need to be reminded that they are indeed making a choice when they spend money on one thing rather than another.
 Great Info August 4, 2008
M. Griffo (NYC, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great book, gets the point across and really makes you think. I'm glad I purchased and read it. It has already been passed on to a friend and two others are waiting in line.
Everyone wants to know "what should I eat?", but as the author details, should we really have to ask such a basic question... I believe the answer is yes and no due to the craziness which has been created with the "Western Diet".
Hopefully food choices will change for the better, but I'm not counting on it happening anytime soon.
Read this book and pass it on, it will benefit us all...
 Glad this is so popular July 28, 2008
Daniel J. Tasse
1 out of 1 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
P. Keller (Palmetto, FL)
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
Andrew Fippinger (Bloomington, IN USA)
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.
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