In Defense of Food

Eat more fruits and vegetables. Michael Pollan gives away the secret to a healthier appetite and a healthier way of living before you can even get into the novel, but those are not the only secrets he shares with his readers of, "In Defense of Food". He gives you tips in keeping a healthy diet and describes to you how the "western diet" has led to many chronic diseases such as heart disease and cancer. In my opinion I think all of the things that Michael discussed in his first four chapters have very good justification and good reasoning behind all of what he believes in. My favorite point he brings up is how the american diet has consisted of scientifically manipulated foods, not real foods. Oh, but wait they are good for you because they say low in fat on the front, but what us people and consumers don't realize is the scientifically altered state of these so called "low in fat" foods are really worse for us than organic foods with lets just say twice the fat in them.

"To guide us we had, instead, Culture, which, at least when it comes to food, is just a really fancy word for your mother. What to eat, how much of it to eat, what order in which to eat it, with what and with whom..." (In Defense of Food, Pollan, pg. 3) This priceless quote hits America's eating habits on the head. The general american society believes in science, because how can they not? It is a nutritional Scientists job to produce better food for you and give you a better chance of having a longer, healthier life, but what they don't realize is what scientists have to work with is already processed, unhealthy, inorganic food which regardless of how you break it down and reconstruct it is flat out unhealthy.

The history of food that is broken down and discussed in the first few chapters of Pollan's book is a very interesting thing to break down and understand. Pollan does a great job at showing how the diet started, and how the science of food first blossomed onto the scene in the late 1800's, early 1900's. He shows the discovering of Macro and Micro nutrients and how we need to get so much of some and not as much of the other. All in all I think the first couple of chapters really pull you in and engage you in this very interesting, factual book.

http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/blogonocom-wordpress-blogs/49379726fedadb0cb120150e70c3e470

This recently posted blog discusses Pollan's book and really justifies the fact that good food is "real food", not "diet food". This argument is one of pollan's main discussions in his first couple of chapters, when he talks about real food he means organic food, natural food. Food that you can go to a farm and get regardless of how many supposed calories it contains. This blog post is a live example for someone who bought into the system of Pollan's book. Although she doesn't quite put Pollan into the sainthood category, she discusses the fact that there has never been so many common sense answers presented to her the way that this book had. There is one more american convinced, now there are millions more to go.