Review: In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
MCL. Audio.
Unfortunately, CD 2 refused to play, so I missed 1/5 of the book, and I’m afraid it was the most interesting section, too. Also unfortunately, the narrator’s inflections did make the author sound pompous and condescending, which I don’t think was necessarily communicated by the words themselves.
Although Pollan’s political and metaphysical views vastly differ from my own, his call to reject Scientism and reductionism was refreshing. Food is more than its component nutrients, and Science always knows less than it thinks it does.
What Pollan skirts is that traditional diets rely upon a full-time woman at home, dedicating herself to food and family. It is only the aberrant Western Diet that allows for the modern two-income household.
Okay, I am just now having time to go through some of your reviews (and actually, I read four and have to stop: time for school). I haven’t read this book, though I’d like to. I REALLY appreciate your point about a woman’s role in this issue. I recently found a recipe for homemade enchiladas, and I don’t mean from a can. It all started, for instance, with soaking New Mexico Chili Peppers overnight, and involved food mills and ingredients I was able to procure, but had never heard of.
The food was wonderful–I mean, really wonderful. “Authentic” food always is. But it took me hours and hours. I knew that it would and I started very early in the afternoon, but we still didn’t eat until after 7pm.
And I didn’t even make my own tortillas!
I came away from that realizing not only how hard women within those cultures work, but also how they would have little time for anything else. Of course, there are simpler recipes. But these folks who think a family–any family–can pull off some sort of “ideal diet” on the go in the modern world are, I think, pretty mistaken.