Note: This is book #18 in my 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge for 2008.
Part of the idea behind this whole 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge was to branch out into genres and topics that I might not normally try. While I haven’t read anything about perky single British chicks trying to make it on their own and find love in the big city or perky single British vampire chicks trying to fight crime and find love in the big city, this book by Michael Pollen about nutrition and eating well does signal a bit of a departure for me.
Pollen’s manifesto here isn’t actually that much about nutrition, though. His specific advice about what to eat doesn’t get much more specific than what he presents as both his “eater’s manifesto” and his seven word summary of the whole book: “Eat food, not to much, mostly plants.” The rest is just elaboration.
The elaboration starts with Pollen’s differentiating “food” from “non-food.” He does this mainly by railing against what he calls “nutritionism,” which is the recent trend where food scientists (and food marketing professionals) focus on the nutritional content of food rather than whole foods. A lot of this has its genesis from when the U.S. government wanted to recommend eating less meat and dairy, but the lobby groups from those industries had a Class A freakout and through political pressures got the recommendations changed to focus more on nutrients rather than foods. So “Eat less meat and dairy” got malformed into “Choose lean protein sources like fish, chicken, and fat-free dairy products.”
This is bad, Pollen argues, because scientists and policy makers don’t know that much about how the individual nutrients behave outside of their complex, whole food systems. And, worse, they’re sometimes wrong in entirely harmful ways. Think margarine here. This whole nutrient obsession has also created bizarre creations like low carb pasta (what?), fat-free half-and-half (what IS one of the halves, then?), and other culinary impossibilities. Pollen goes into detail about why such concoctions are not “food” per se, but “food products” and generally bad for you. His advice is generally to avoid anything that your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food, especially if it tries to make health claims. Replace that stuff with whole foods, especially plants and especially the leafy greens of plants.
In general, a lot of Pollen’s suggestions make sense, and the book is written in an easy to read, almost conversational tone that makes it easy to (pardon the pun) digest. Some of his advice is hard to swallow (dang, another pun), like eschewing (oops, puns everywhere) anything with more than five ingredients and only buying stuff that you’ve either grown yourself our bought directly from a grower. Still, it’s good food for thought (ah, sorry), and a lot of what he says about how senselessly the government regulates food labeling gives you plenty to chew on (dang, that one just slipped in there).
Others doing the 52-in-52 thing this week:
- Jeremy reviews The Last Colony by John Scalzi
- Natasha reviews The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
Published by