Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture.

Food is the one thing that Americans hate to love and, as it turns out, love to hate. What we want to eat has been ousted by the notion of what we should eat, and it's at this nexus of hunger and hang-up that Michael Pollan poses his most salient question: where is the food in our food? What follows in In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture. Many processed foods vie for a spot in our grocery baskets, claiming to lower cholesterol, weight, glucose levels, you name it. Yet Pollan shows that these convenient "healthy" alternatives to whole foods are appallingly inconvenient: our health has a nation has only deteriorated since we started exiling carbs, fats--even fruits--from our daily meals. His razor-sharp analysis of the American diet (as well as its architects and its detractors) offers an inspiring glimpse of what it would be like if we could (a la Humpty Dumpty) put our food back together again and reconsider what it means to eat well. In a season filled with rallying cries to lose weight and be healthy, Pollan's call to action—"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."--is a program I actually want to follow.

INTRODUCTION

Ⅰ THE AGE OF NUTRITIONISM

ONE From Foods to Nutrients

TWO Nutriti0nism Defined

THREE Nutritionism Comes to Market

FOUR Food Science's GoldenAge

FIVE The Melting of the Lipid Hypothesis

SJIX Eat Right, Get Fatter

SEVEN Beyond the Pleasure Principle

EIGHT The Proof in the Low-Fat Pudding

NINE Bad Science

TEN Nutritionism's Children

Ⅱ THE WESTERN DIET AND THE DISEASES OF CIVILIZATION

ONE The Aborigine inAll of US

TWO The Elephant in the Room

THREE The Industrialization of Eating:

WhatWe Do Know

1) FromWhole Foods to Refined

2) From Complexity to Simplicity

3) From Quality to Quantity

4) From Leaves to Seeds

5) From Food Culture to Food Science

Ⅲ GETTING OVER NUTRITIONISM

ON E Escape from the Western Diet

TWO Eat Food: Food Defined

THREE Mostly Plants:What to Eat

FOUR NotToo Much: How to Eat

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

SOURCES

RESOURCES

INDEX