Blogosphere Book Circle Book of the Month

APRIL BOOK OF THE MONTH: In Defence of Food
AUTHOR: Michael Pollan

SYNOPSIS from www.michaelpollan.com
"Food. There's plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it --in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances" -- no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food -- the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food -- stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals."

DID YOU LIKE/DISLIKE THE BOOK?:

Having spent the past 4 years on a healthy eating/living journey I have read more than my fair share of books on eating. I liked this book because it offers yet another/same perspective. I enjoyed reading non-fiction, too, this month.

It's basic premise is "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants". End of story. Ha!

You know what sucks? I like food. A lot. It's like my own personal brand of heroin. (Thanks for the line, Edward Cullen.) Cathy says it better than I could.

DID IT AFFECT YOU IN ANY WAY?:

I can't say it affected me but I guess it's another reminder to keep on the straight and narrow.

If only it were that easy.