In Defense Of Food

I'll be the first to admit these two truths:  I love to eat good food and I love to read about eating good food.  No one writes about good food--it history, and how to find it, cook it, and eat it--better than Michael Pollan.  This past week, while on a road trip to a library conference, I finished listening to Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto on audio book.

Readers may be more familiar with his The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, or more recently his book turned PBS documentary, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World.  Similar to these two works,  In Defense of Food examines food from social, cultural and scientific perspectives.  But more specifically, in this, Pollan presents a fascinating analysis of the American diet:  how we eat, and how and why our eating habits have changed since the mid-20th century.  He balances this history by presenting a series of "rules" for eating (which he's recently condensed into his book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual).  Things like,"Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants"--the line with which he opens.  To the more humorous, "Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."  It's all fairly common sense stuff--but utterly fascinating.  If nothing else, readers of Pollan's work will become more cognizant of the food they eat.  Devotees (like me) will find themselves taking a more action-oriented approach:  reading labels, planting a garden, shopping locally, eating organic, and spreading the word.   Highly recommended.