Review of In Defense of Food

In "In Defense of Food," author Michael Pollan offers simple advice for anyone that wants to improve their health by improving their diet. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." However, according to Pollan, this may not be as easy as it seems. He states that for years, real food has been disappearing from grocery store shelves and replaced with substitutes, commonly referred to as nutrients. Many Americans are obsessed with eating healthy, sometimes to an unhealthy degree. By worrying too much about what they put into their bodies and heeding diets that have little, if any, scientific basis (like the Atkins diet), they are actually becoming unhealthier. The solution? The seven-word mantra. Pollan suggests that we start by consuming as much local and organic produce as possible. Because said produce does not have any added pesticides and are not transported cross-country, they still have maximum nutritional value, which makes them good to eat. In addition to eating smaller portions of real food, Pollan suggests that we as Americans take more time to enjoy said food, cook it ourselves, and to not get carried away with watching what we eat. All in all, this was a great book to read and very eye-opening in the sense that nobody really knows what a perfect diet consists of, but by eating real food and cutting down on junk, one will be set. Pollan can be sarcastic at times, but it falls in line with the points he makes. I highly recommend this book.