Real Food: What to Eat and Why

published	2006 by Bloomsbury USA
binding	Hardcover
isbn	1596911441 (isbn13: 9781596911444)
pages	288
description	*Yes, Virginia, you can* butter your carrots. A farmer’s daughter tells the truth about cream, eggs, fish, chicken, chocolate—even lard. <...more [close] Yes, Virginia, you can butter your carrots. A farmer’s daughter tells the truth about cream, eggs, fish, chicken, chocolate—even lard.** Everyone loves real food, but they’re afraid butter and eggs will give them a heart attack—thus the culinary abomination known as the egg-white omelet. Tossing out the yolk, it turns out, isn’t smart. Real Food reveals why traditional foods are actually healthy: not only egg yolks, but also cream, butter, grass-fed beef, wild salmon, roast chicken skin, and more. Nina Planck grew up on a vegetable farm in Virginia and learned to eat right from her no-nonsense parents: lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, along with beef, bacon, fish, dairy, and eggs. Later, she wondered: was the farmhouse diet deadly, as the cardiologists say? Happily for people who love food, the answer is no. In lively, personal chapters on produce, dairy, meat, fish, chocolate, and other real foods, Nina explains how ancient foods like beef and butter have been falsely accused, while industrial foods like corn syrup and soybean oil have created a triple epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Real Food upends the conventional wisdom on diet and health and explains our taste for good things. [close]
date added	02-07-07 edit book

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Diane rated it:

01/09/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: Anyone who wants an excuse to guzzle half and half

I teetered between shock and skepticism for the entire 275 pages of this book, and at the end of it all, I've been persuaded. I now stock my fridge with whole milk, and whole-milk yogurt, I threw out my beloved Brummel and Brown, and I bought pancetta at the grocery store yesterday - all because of Nina Planck's book. The basic premise of Real Food is that industrial foods (essentially all processed and factory-farmed foods) are what cause heart disease, diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol and t...more I teetered between shock and skepticism for the entire 275 pages of this book, and at the end of it all, I've been persuaded. I now stock my fridge with whole milk, and whole-milk yogurt, I threw out my beloved Brummel and Brown, and I bought pancetta at the grocery store yesterday - all because of Nina Planck's book. The basic premise of Real Food is that industrial foods (essentially all processed and factory-farmed foods) are what cause heart disease, diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol and the zillion other maladies that are popping off lazy Americans one fat ass at a time. Planck goes to bat for fat (hell yes! that was on purpose) and for sensible ways of farming, including grass-fed, free-range, organic, (and probably Zen) cows, pigs, chickens/eggs, fish and produce.

Planck also does right by a whole lotta disenfranchized researchers, who have apparently been doing studies for decades that show that there is no correlation between dietary fat intake ("real" fat of course - not trans fats or processed fats) and heart disease. For those of us who have heard nothing our entire lives except that saturated fat sits at the right hand of Satan, this kind of information is positively jaw-dropping. It also, incidentally, appeals to the part of me that loves conspiracy theories. "But Diane. How can the American public be so mislead about saturated fat and cholesterol?" you ask, with one eye-brow cocked. Well, cholesterol-lowering statins are the best-selling prescription drug in America ($16 billion a year in sales) and Pfizer spends $60 million each year on marketing Lipitor to the American public. Getting suspicious?

[Sidebar: And let's all hope that the $60 million Pfizer spent on marketing didn't go directly to Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart. 1. That guy looks like a fucking walking corpse - decidedly NOT someone I would put in MY Lipitor commercial, and 2. If you're in the "artificial hearts" business, don't tell me for one second that you're not hoping I have a massive coronary any day now]

Planck's Real Food falls a bit short as far as the structure goes - it seems like she wrote separate chapters and then flipped a coin to see where she should put them, which is mildly annoying. But her writing style is straightforward, and she's kind of cheeky ("No doubt, for some people, cracking open an egg is one chore too many..."). She also provides a sizeable list of real food resources, end notes, and a bibliography.

So. Hurry up and read this book so that we can talk about it over eggs and bacon and whole milk, with a side of butter, and you won't think I'm insane....less

Like this review? yes (7 people liked it)

4 comments

Melissa rated it:

08/26/07

Read in August, 2007

I have to admit that I was a pretty skeptical audience. I read this book because I have visted the Plancks' farm and I was curious about what their daughter had to say about food.

I'm a little torn in my opinion--she makes some really good points, but others didn't seem so well considered. The central idea of the book is that humans have been eating animal fats (meat, lard, eggs, dairy) thousands and thousands of years, so we should be eating them rather than industrial imitations created...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

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