In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

by Michael Pollan

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

To guide us we had, instead, Culture, which, at least when it comes to food, is really just a fancy word for your mother. What

We are becoming a nation of orthorexics: people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.*

There is a lot more religion in science than you might expect.

AVOID FOOD PRODUCTS THAT MAKE HEALTH CLAIMS. For a food product to make health claims on its package it must first have a package, so right off the bat it’s more likely to be a processed than a whole food.

When corn oil and chips and sugary breakfast cereals can all boast being good for your heart, health claims have become hopelessly corrupt. The

Cooking is one of the most important health consequences of buying food from local farmers; for one thing, when you cook at home you seldom find yourself reaching for the ethoxylated diglycerides or high-fructose corn syrup.

I’m inclined to think any traditional diet will do; if it wasn’t a healthy regimen, the diet and the people who followed it wouldn’t still be around.

Gas stations have become processed-corn stations: ethanol outside for your car and high-fructose corn syrup inside for you.