Saturday, April 12, 2008

Defending your food

Michael Pollan is a journalist who teaches at Berkeley. His recent work, In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto, takes a fresh approach in addressing American eating and what he calls nutritionalism. Basically Mr. Pollan breaks it down to this: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

No secret I like food. What I learned in Defense is that I like the right food, that is, food without process, food that’s out of a vegetable bin, not out of a box. By eating less of the boxed types of food product, Mr. Pollan says, we can eat better. Eating processed food leads to loss of health and weight gain.

He does not suggest a strictly vegetarian diet, and I liked that; instead he suggests, as Thomas Jefferson did, that we treat meat as a condiment rather than a main course.

All good sound advice, if you ask me.

Let’s eat just food, not a whole lot and maybe eat more leaves than flesh.

And cake, so long as it’s good cake, just a small slice and not too sweet.