In Defense of Food

An Eater's Manifesto

By: Michael Pollan

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's Summary

Number-one New York Times best seller from the author of 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 Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion - most of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science.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 seem 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. 

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

"A remarkable volume . . . engrossing . . . [Pollan] offers those prescriptions Americans so desperately crave." (The Washington Post) 

Michael Pollan’s most recent food book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation - the story of our most trusted food expert’s culinary education - was published by Penguin Press in April 2013, and in 2016 it served as the inspiration for a four-part docuseries on Netflix by the same name. Pollan is also the author of How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

©2008 Michael Pollan (P)2008 Penguin Audiobooks

Critic Reviews

"[Narrator] Scott Brick brings the necessary energy, pacing, and articulation to what promises to be one of this year's most popular and provocative titles.... Brick carries this manifesto against nutrition science and food manufacturers with the voice of indictment - unflinching, unflagging, and fired by conviction." (AudioFile)

"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)

"In Defense of Food is written with Pollan's customary bite, ringing clarity and brilliance at connecting the dots." (The Seattle Times) 

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.

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!

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Engrossing and Informative

I knew I would learn from this book, but I didn't realize how much I would enjoy it. I found myself really engrossed in this book - so much so I wanted to do the dishes so I'd have an excise to put in headphones. I have really changed my perspective on food and loved the way it debunked so many myths of "nutritionism" in favor of sense.

Enlightening

Very well written punchy comments that keep you engaged with the discussion of food. The book has been well written with manageable chunks. Right from the start there is no surprise what the book is about.

Good book, think for yourselves sheeple

This book is getting on in years, and I think his correct predictions of the nutrition recommendations in the 2010s is an attestation to the quality of the material here.

I read many reviews on Goodreads that were particularly critical, things that went along the lines of literalism to say that the idea was not worth hearing.

He has a lot of good ideas, they are worth listening too in an open manner. The bulk of the book is geared towards advising you to think for yourself and listen to your and your grandparents' senses. I would expect the reader to apply the same logic to what you hear here.

Also, the voice actor is the same that does Bean in the Ender's Shadow series which was amusingly disorientating!

Great but awful theatrical narration!!

Loved the book but the narration is just terrible to the point it really spoils the book...

Eat real food, mostly plants , not too much

A good read.

But I enjoyed omnivore s dilemma more than this one.
But overall I do recommend if someone is suffering from western diet.