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“Where scientists extol the benefits of beta-carotene, Pollan spins a stoic portrait of the carrot.” Review Why is there a book about eating in our Politics issue? Why doesn't a book subtitled An Eater's Manifesto get shelved with... See more » “Where scientists extol the benefits of beta-carotene, Pollan spins a stoic portrait of the carrot.” Review Why is there a book about eating in our Politics issue? Why doesn't a book subtitled An Eater's Manifesto get shelved with Family, or even... Food? The questions of what our dietary concerns are versus where they belong lie at the core of In Defense of Food. Here, Pollan explores how nearly 30 years of scientific studies on the relationship between food and health have left Americans increasingly confused about healthy eating. For Pollan, "nutritionism" is an ideology that scientifically approaches food as the combination of good and bad nutrients, rather than as whole items. He contends that this mostly well-intentioned scientific discourse has robbed us of food itself, along with the instinctive pleasures of eating. Now the Western diet consists of "edible foodlike substances," which are essentially petri dishes of nutrients chemically rearranged by researchers and sold by popular slogans like "Low Carb!" or "Rich in Antioxidants!" The book is the natural evolution of Pollan's 2006 best-selling The Omnivore's Dilemma , which revealed in plain terms where most of the food we eat comes from (answer: cornfields). In Defense of Food connects the dots from the cornfields to individual health, arguing that food is more than the sum of its nutritional parts. It simply cannot be taken apart and reconstructed according to marketing whims without deleterious results for our health. For example, when diet fads make fat the enemy, scientists take the fat out of butter, inject hydrogenated corn oil, and label it "low fat." But what does hydrogenated mean? And why is it better than fat? And has anybody done any research about how it mixes with toast? Pollan's version of food's recent history (lenient labeling laws, abstract health guidelines, and blind faith in technology) suggests that we ended up in this half-baked supermarket of Burstin' Melon Berry Go-GURT and soy bacon bits thanks to scientists afflicted with a tunnel-vision obsession with protein and politicians stuck in a headlock courtesy of the beef lobby. But what, Pollan insists, do they know about eating? What do they know about health? Where scientists extol the benefits of beta-carotene, Pollan spins a stoic portrait of the carrot. "Eat food," he advises, not nutrients. Campaign for your health. Vote with your fork. See less »

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NONFICTION

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