16.9.08

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

I finished the book sometime last week and have been meaning to talk a bit about it but never got around to it. Now that I want to, I can't find my notes. Typical!
So, I have to wing it. Basically, the book can be summed up in the 3 sentences that form the subtitle: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
I liked this book better than "Skinny Bitch" - the title should have been a tip-off. Obviously, if I read a book about nutrition, I'm already interested in changing my "evil ways" and don't need to be sworn at or bullied into going along with somebody else's philosophy.
I learned quite a bit from this book: nutritionism is an ideology, not a science; food is a lot more complex than the sum of its parts - that means breaking it down into this nutrient, that vitamin and that antioxidant and then substituting them for the real food doesn't work too well; what is being sold in supermarkets isn't necessarily food, but food like substances; the good stuff is around the perimeter of the store (did he really mean to include the liquor section?); I have learned what "metabolic syndrome" is and how to avoid it; and plenty of other things I had in my notes which disappeared :-)
Oh, yes: meat is okay in small amounts, but fish is really good.
An interesting book. I think I'll pull out some flowers next year and grow beans and lettuce in addition to the artichokes and herbs I already grow. (I'm not much of a gardener.)

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