Summary of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food

By: Falcon Press

Narrated by: Paul Bartlett

Length: 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Download this summary of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, nutritionists and scientists are not the sources from whom you should be obtaining advice on what to eat. They mostly profit off your confusion and merely complicate the question. You already know what to eat; humans have done it without a coach for the majority of history!

Pollan calls for a return to ancestral roots regarding what and how we eat. He advocates for the consumption of real food rather than processed nutrients and provides simple and intuitive steps for doing so.

Insights from Chapter One:

1. Certain foods within the American diet, like meat, were said to cause heart diseases, especially when comparisons were made to other cultures which ate less meat and did not struggle with the same health complications as Americans do.
2. In the 1980s, food began being referred to in terms of nutrients, an ideology of nutritionism, so as to avoid offending any businesses. If people were told to avoid “saturated fats", the meat industry was not directly mentioned.
3. Nutritionism opened a gateway to greater confusion, as it is difficult to pinpoint which nutrient is harmful or helpful within foods.

Please note: This is a summary of In Defense of Food, not the original book.

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