In Defense of Food
I read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan a week before quarantine-- a time when I’m constantly telling myself it’s okay to have a treat because *I get this*. I don’t like health books. No offense to people who do, I just have enough anxiety as it is. Now I have to sit here worrying about what I’m eating? F*ck off. Yet, Michael Pollan seems like a very cool guy and quite a smart cookie. A healthy, smart cookie. And I do want to start eating more mindfully, so I thought he was the best place to start. Food is pretty damn important, yet we constantly wonder what we *should* eat. Should I eat sour skittles every day? Pollan will tell me!
Pollan comes out hot rejecting modern nutrition science, dismissing the notion that there are good nutrients and bad nutrients. Basically, no one knows anything about anything. But then… he starts to talk about what he knows? And it feels slightly one-sided. That irks me in non-fiction books sometimes, even with authors I trust. It can start to read a little like he’s omniscient and I’m just believing his narrative behind the data he presents.
That being said, his wisdom is more intuitive. He acknowledges what’s obvious if you’ve ever witnessed the horror deep in the eyes of middle-aged women scouring the aisles at Whole Foods: we get anxious trying to be super nutritious. We’re obsessed with trying to be healthy. There’s an irony to this, because as I’m reading his book, my goal is to try and eat better. And that goal is making me a bit anxious. I want him to tell me how to eat. Make me fit and healthy and glowing and fabulous.
His takeaway: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” This is a ~digestible~ takeaway, but I can mostly do without the first ⅔ of the book. It wasn’t a “compelling” read that I kept wanting to pick up over and over again. It got a lil taxing. There were plenty of paragraphs where my eyes glazed over. Something about vitamins? Something about macros? I’m not Martha Stewart.
Fun fact about Martha Stewart: According to an interview, she has been struck by lightning three times. I went down a rabbit hole about that and saw SkullofAchilles say on Reddit that lightning must be code for Snoops Dogg’s dick lolol.
Basically, it’s hard for me to get a library boner from a book about food. I can only stomach so much of it.
It got better towards the end, when he gave practical guidelines in bullet points. Given his respect within his field, I think they would have held the same weight for me without all the stuff at the beginning. Really, his lead-up to the bullet points was both too short and too long. It was too short in that I didn’t actually fully understand what he was getting at and too long in that I got extremely bored.
Here are some of his takeaways that I’ve genuinely tried to apply to my life:
-Avoid food product containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number, or that include high-fructose corn-syrup. I look at ingredient labels more often and more carefully now.
-Avoid food products that make health claims. If your package brags about how healthy it is a zillion times, I know you’re full of shit.
-Eat mostly plants [plants with a *side* of meat]. I annoyingly repeat this phrase to myself while I cook. It has somehow nagged at me ever since I put down the book.
-Eat wild foods when you can. As a Texan, you don’t have to tell me this twice. Gimme that game!
-Have a glass of wine with dinner. I mean… not to sound like a basic bitch, but come on!
-Eat meals. I try to sit down and make my meal an occasion rather than eat quickly.
Overall, I’m glad that I came away with some practical advice. I’m turning his compassionate tone inward, trying to be more aware of my eating habits but also be easy on myself when I slip up. As a book, I give In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto 3 out of 5 flames. His advice is good and also relatively easy to implement in daily life, but the book is filled with stuff that doesn’t make for an enjoyable read.
If you enjoyed this review, please consider purchasing this book from my Amazon Associates link: https://amzn.to/2XFChdV. The commissions I receive from your purchase help pay for the costs of running this website. Thanks for your support!
