Reviews
-
This is an important book, short but pithy, and, like the word “food,” not simple at all.
-
The book is short and compact; and, although there’s still good bit of reporting, especially about the history of nutrition science, the book seems designed to be what it says it is: a manifesto a declaration of principles that you carry around and use to remind yourself of certain ideas or to start arguments.
-
If you read one book about food this year, it should be Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.
-
A tough, witty, cogent rebuttal to the proposition that food can be reduced to its nutritional components without the loss of something essential.
-
His master stroke is a ringing declaration of nutritional independence: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
-
Pollan’s advice is sensible and even inspiring.
-
He’s way too polite to tell us what to eat. Instead, he uses his familiar brand of carefully researched, common-sense journalism to persuade, providing guidelines and convincing arguments.
-
A writer of great subtlety, Pollan doesn’t preach to the choir; in fact, rarely does he preach at all, preferring to let the facts speak for themselves.
-
Reading Pollan’s book, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the food industry has confined many Americans to their own urban feedlots, in which they have grown obese, ill, and uncurious about the source or nutritional quality of their food.
-
Pollan is a gardener, a cook and an uncommonly graceful explainer of natural science; this is the book he was born to write.
-
I doubt that there is a book which succeeds more than The Omnivore’ s Dilemma — with its richness of information, eloquence of address, and integrity of moral purpose — in rendering visible, and presenting for a “different” style of ethical reflection, that “profound engagement” with our world which eating represents.
-
In all of his books, including this one, Pollan brings lucid and rich prose to the table, an enthusiasm for his topic, interesting anecdotes, a journalist’s passion for research, an ability to poke fun at himself, and an appreciation for historical context.