In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Michael Pollan

Jan 2008 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Scott Brick

About this audiobook

#1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of This is Your Mind on Plants, 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Because in the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion--most of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science.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 see 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.

Ratings and reviews

I expected this to be a scientifically solid book. Unfortunately, the author spends most of his time dismantling the little we have learned about food through science, providing as counter argument nothing more than personal opinions. Do not recommend this book to those who are looking to learn more about the latest scientific findings in the food and health sector.

great audio offering. entertaining, educational, fair and balanced. refreshingly honest and transparent. it's nice to not feel yanked around by "rules" or emotionally manipulated by the "next new idea". Glad to have a return to simplistic, more intentional and intuitive ideas.

The content may be fine but I can't stand listening to the constant holier-than-thou droll voice.

About the author

Michael Pollan is the author of eight books, including How to Change Your Mind, Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. He is also the author of the audiobook Caffeine: How Coffee and Tea Made the Modern World. A longtime contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Pollan teaches writing at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.