This is just the first of many times I plan to write about Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. It's a brilliant book, so do yourself a huge favor and read it. His concepts are not entirely new (William Dufty shared many of the same concerns in regards to refined foods in his 1975 book Sugar Blues), but America has been so misled by the food industry and by nutritional scientists that it's simply not possible to have too many people writing on the subject.
Mr. Pollan very smartly states on the cover of the book what he refers to as, "the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy."
EAT FOOD. NOT TOO MUCH. MOSTLY PLANTS.
It's so simple, yet somehow feels like a revelation.
He goes on in the book to detail how most of what we're eating today is not actually food, and many of the ways we consume it are not actually eating. He tells us to try eating like our grandparents or better yet, like our great grandparents, thus avoiding refined, processed, chemically enhanced, Frankenstein foods.
It's no easy task. Basically you have to ignore most of the thousands of new food products introduced to the market every year, ignore the health claims of nutritional scientists and the U.S. government, navigate your way through various pitfalls such as restaurants, dinner with friends, picnics and church socials, and spend a little time cooking for yourself.
Nobody's going to get it perfect all the time. That's not the point. At the end of the day it's really about finding pleasure in real food. That I can handle.
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