In Defense of Food

By Michael Pollan. Because I'm lazy, I'm just going to basically copy my GoodReads review for this one.

The best part of this book is the way Pollan disuputes the basic premises of nutrional science--the whole idea that food can be simply reduced to its nutritional components, that the primary purpose of eating is to maintain health, and that the effects of nutrients can be scientifically measured. It made me realize how much nutrional science shapes what and how I think about food.

However, I found myself bogged down into too many details of antioxidents and amino acids and other nutritional explanations. And to me, it didn't deliver the profound punch of Omnivore's Dilemma. I liked this one so much better and decided to change my GoodReads rating from 4 to 5 stars. It started out as an article for the NYTimes Magazine, and reading that may have been enough for me. I listened to a podcast of a talk he gave in SLC and liked the summarized version a lot better.

The last section on some practical applications of his ideas has made me think a lot more about the kinds of ingredients in foods. I've looked at a lot of food labels to see what's in my food and I think it is a good idea to go to less processed foods. Maybe I will pull out the old bread maker and bake bread for us.