a good read

Just finished reading Michael Pollan's deliberate, funny, and thoughtful account of food and culture via In Defense of Food. The book's premise - "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants." - couldn't be simpler at first glance. But the rampant marketing of today's agricultural system obscures the simplicity and healthfulness of the foods - the whole foods - that we should be consuming.


At the heart of the book rests the belief that food, health, culture, and the environment are all connected - all working together in a system. To isolate nutrients from a whole food and stuff them into a not so whole food (vitamin-fortified Coke), or to extract one part of a culture and jam it into a diet (ie: the Mediterranean diet or the French paradox) - these creations and adaptations will not automatically result in a fit and healthy person.

Through food, Pollan explores the conception of quick fixes, band-aid health care, and twisted agricultural policies that are America. Sorry, nation.

But, he's not a total Debbie downer, nor is he an irrational idealist (not that there's anything wrong with idealism). In the final section, "Cook, or if you can, plant a garden," he offers the following:

"To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be fast, cheap, and easy; that food is a product of industry, not nature; that food is fuel, and not a form of communion, with other people as well as with other species - with nature" (p. 197)

So thank you, Michael Pollan, for summing up my own thoughts before I could put them down on paper :)

For more, feel free to borrow my copy of the book. Another goodie is Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (also have that one, if needed).