In Defence of Food: An Eater's Manifesto has received favourable reviews in the LA Times and the Sunday Times (of London), and is a bestseller at this point in time.
Michael Pollan is an experienced journalist and writer. He reviews a fair amount of history and science in a short book. He tries to talk about food from a common sense perspective. He is cautious about food science, which is often bad science. He is skeptical about anything the food industry, nutritionists and journalists say about food. All too often, claims about food are made to sell new kinds of processed foods, or to sell books, diet plans, supplements and fads.
His advice for eating well, to avoid malnutrition and obesity is: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." His idea of food is something pretty close to the original plant or animal - fresh, dried, frozen - cooked at home, not processed at a factory. Don't buy or eat processed and packaged things that claim to produce health benefits or weight loss. If you want to avoid obesity, eat less.
Pollan is an advocate of a natural diet, organic produce and Slow Food. He described the Western diet as a disaster, and cites the studies of people who return to a traditional diet from a Western diet. He says that there are many traditional diets incorporating indigenous resources and cultural traditions - and all of them are healthier than the Western diet, which manages to produce malnutrition and obesity at the same time.
