• In Defense of Food

  • An Eater's Manifesto
  • By: Michael Pollan
  • Narrated by: Scott Brick
  • Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (4,581 ratings)

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In Defense of Food  By  cover art

In Defense of Food

By: Michael Pollan
Narrated by: Scott Brick
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Editorial reviews

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These are the first words of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Scott Brick narrates these opening sentences with slowly paced emphasis and a nicely modulated deftness, with a hint of coyness. The coyness is Pollan's. For what else can one eat but food? And why does eating need a manifesto? Pollan answers that we increasing do not eat food (whole food) but rather consume processed "food products". We are in "The Age of Nutritionism". Pollan's In Defense of Food is a richly developed polemic against the unhealthful food culture that the ideology of nurtitionism represents. The book is as well a de facto manual for growing and eating our way out of it.

Brick is a compelling spokesman for Pollan's argument. He brings to In Defense of Food a voice in the baritone-to-tenor range, with an always on-the-mark sonic focus matched with a point of expressive emphasis that constantly shifts, as Brick makes his flawless and fluent runs up and down and within his octave ranges. Brick's doing all of this can only be achieved by natural talent, disciplined training, and smart reading - joined by a mastery of a quite large array of narrative and expressive skills.

It is very likely that somewhere in some academic haven there are specific concepts and a precise language that could quantify and describe what goes on with Brick's narrative voice. In the end, though, it all comes down to art. Using, with apologies, an extended metaphor, that of jazz: Brick picks up his axe (saxophone), fingering the notes and changing the octaves with the keys; with his fine set of chops (lips) applies the pressure onto the sax's mouth piece and reed, and, modulating the breath and applying nuances of feeling and expression, blows - that is, in jazz-speak - plays. The well-argued and passionate polemic that is In Defense of Food is, in this audio production, a show piece showcasing Scott Brick's narrative range and dexterity. (David Chasey)

Publisher's summary

#1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of This is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Food Rules

Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion—most of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American Paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we see to become. With In Defense of Food, 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." Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

©2008 Michael Pollan (P)2008 Penguin Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Michael Pollan [is the] designated repository for the nation's food conscience."—Frank Bruni, The New York Times

"In this slim, remarkable volume, Pollan builds a convincing case not only against that steak dinner but against the entire Western diet."The Washington Post

"A tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to the proposition that food can be reduced to its nutritional components without the loss of something essential . . . [a] lively, invaluable book."—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

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What listeners say about In Defense of Food

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Life and Death

After years of surging insulin resistance and the accompanying host of metabolic disorder symptoms (high cholesterol, high triglycerides, high blood sugar) I now follow the simple rules in this book. I still eat meat but a tiny fraction of what I ate for my first 50 years. I eat mostly plants, not too much. I avoid packaged, processed food. I've lost 100 pounds, LDL went from 285 to 83 and my insulin resistance has vanished. This book has saved my life, seriously.

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128 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Good book, but read The Omnivore's Dilemma first

I enjoyed the book, but if you haven't read The Omnivore's Dilemma, read it first - not as a prequel, but just because it's a more in depth discussion of our industrialized food system and how it's failing us. You may not be convinced of this by In Defense of Food, but you will be by The Omnivore's Dilemma.

If you have The Omnivore's Dilemma, this book is a bit like preaching to the choir, but still well worth the read.

Also, I hate to "dis" the narrator, but he distracts from the book. I've heard his narration of other books and enjoyed them, but they were all fiction. He put a little too much drama into his reading of this non-fiction book about food.

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58 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

good book but terrible narration

I really don't want to give this or any book a bad review because I'm usually not in the habit of criticizing others, but Michael Pollan's book which, I would enjoy if I read, was not so pleasant to listen to because of the overly exaggerated tone of the narrator. I'm sure Scott Brick is wonderful with fiction, but non-fiction with a continues sarcastic tone is really too much. For what it's worth, I recommend buying the book.

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56 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

If your looking for a Diet book read this first!

Many nutrition books aspire to show you insight on your body chemistry and its link to the food you eat. Fortunately this is not a book on nutrition, this is a book on "nutritionism". Most of this book explores the food industry and how the media, government, and nutritionists have corrupted what humans have been doing correctly for thousands of years, namely eating real FOOD. While Michael Pollan does show some points on what processed food is doing to our body, he mainly focuses on the misinformation we generally receive about food. He concludes with some diet advice a little more detailed than just "eat food&". The best part about his advice is it makes sense, common sense. It will make you say "I already knew that" but at the same time say "so why have I not been doing it?". This is the first book I have read(heard) by Michael Pollan but I plan on reading(hearing) more. The only downside you may find is the reading by Scott Brick. I have heard many books read by him and I am used to his style and actually enjoy it, but I can see some people finding it distracting. This is an EASY 5 stars, no reason not to buy it. (and no I'm not getting paid to say that lol)

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45 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

DRAMATISE IT FROM THE ROOF TOPS!

This is the most down to earth (pardon the pun;-) and sensible diet book I have ever listened to. At the end, I thought "I can do this" and still enjoy my food. Scot Brick's dramatisation and pausing at just the moments when I needed to consider an important point, really made the listening easy and enjoyable. Bravo! Bravo!

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36 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Lovely follow-up to An Omnivore's Dilemna

This is a very informative, easy-to-listen-to book. An Omnivore's Dilemna is an excellent account of the writer's exploration of how food gets from the farm to the plate, and this book answers the question he most often received after publishing the first, "What should we eat?" Very pratical, realistic and soundly written, he discusses the nature of the food industry and food itself. Enjoyable and worthwhile.

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Wonderful!

A great followup to The Omnivore's Dilemma. Kudos to Pollan for his smart, high-quality research and clean writing. Kudos to Brick for a near-perfect narration.

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18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Prepare to change your habits

The best books affect you, make you think and sometimes they even make you change your day to day habits. This is one of those books, a short read of ground shifting potential. And like all great books I’ve read, it starts with a simple premise and a simple question: Western culture is, by and large, health obsessed and has been for a while. We count calories, we examine fat content, we examine with finite prevision the nutritional makeup of our foods. So why, in a culture of nutritional obsession are we getting sicker and sicker every year?

What the author poses as an answer is, to use his words, that we have removed culture from our eating habits (culture being a word that means your mother). So he examines the food industry for all its faults and suggests an alternative: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. It’s strange that someone would need to spend a whole book defending food but most of what we eat is not, strictly speaking, food. You should read this book, it has made an impact in my life. So go on, get cooking.

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13 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Phenomenal book

Phenomenal book, I would strongly recommend it to anyone who is interested in living a healthy, happy and long life

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent, both text and performance

This book, "In Defense of Food," is galvanizing, offering a holistic re-orientation to the whole realm of food and all that's involved in it.

Pollan gives us a useful new villain, "nutritionalism" (a term previously coined by another author), which is our (and more so, "the pro's" - researchers, dieticians, etc)tendency to want to think of foods in terms of individual nutrients - carbs, protein, fat, micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, co-factors, enzymes, etc), and the omnipresent calorie. This is inculcated through our whole culture, and Pollan suggests it is a BARRIER. He suggests that ESCAPING that fragmented, malfunctioning mindset is our salvation, and offers holistic means of achieving the health and dietary peace that evades us.

(One very little hitch in all this gitalong: Though at each point along the way, Pollan guides the reader such that his various recommendations seem feasible at each step, with the reader nodding in agreement that yes, this is something I could do - at the very end (the VERY end) he picks up a huge amount of speed and arrives at the finish line a bit breathless - with the reader - well, THIS reader - thinking um, I'm not sure about this, you left me in the dust a little ways back there! But... I guess that's another book.)

Otherwise, excellent: brilliantly conceived, creatively researched, beautifully written. And the reading is simply top-notch, the pairing of book & reader is a marriage made in heaven. Scott Brick's delivery is as articulate, as accurate, as brisk, and as bitingly accusatory as David Hyde Pierce, while being as soothing, helpful, hopeful and compassionate as the movement of the text demands.

It is a big topic Pollan has taken on, in terms of the technical scope of the material as well as the social reach of his analysis, and I think he's done a marvelous job, really hit the nail on the head, or very nearly so. I have his other book, "Omnivore's Dilemma" in my library and can't wait to get to it next.

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