I'm a reader and I love books. My friends know this about me so they often recommend new books for me to add to my growing home library. The latest suggestion comes from my very good friend Beth. She's a voracious reader like me and never fails to direct me to a good read.
Beth recently devoured a book called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. At first glance, it looks to be an interesting read. Author Michael Pollan explores the way we Americans view food, what we eat and how we eat it. I haven't read the book yet, but I plan to, so I'll stop telling you about it and let the author tell you about it.
I pulled this from the author's website:
"Most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it--in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone--is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming 'edible foodlike substances'--no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.
It goes on to say:
"Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach--what he calls nutritionism--and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part."
It all sounds very heady yet interesting. I suspect the book will make me feel guilty for my love of French fries and cheese steaks. Maybe it will change my approach to eating all together. We shall see, we shall see.
Interestingly, he was on Oprah Thursday afternoon. At shows end, Oprah announced that viewers could purchase his latest book on amazon.com for only $9.99. When I went into amazon.com the book (in paperback) was selling for $5.99. I read a couple of its reviews and decided I didn't need to purchase it.
How timely! He was on Oprah. I assure you, that was a coincidence! And $5.99 really isn't a terrible price. I plan on borrowing the book from my friend Beth, though I think I already get the gist of it...eat more fresh foods, less processed. I'm especially interested in the sections about CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture).