In Defense of Food - Book Review

This book by Michael Pollan warning the public about the harms caused by our modern culture of food and eating is built around a simple set of rules of eating that he outlines:

Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.

The first one points out that the modern and scientific sounding inventions of food industry like "fiber rich", "vitamin fortified", "omega 3 enhanced", "protein formulated" etc. probably come at a high cost to us. The industry takes the basic food ingredients, processes them removing them of one nutrient or the other and then adds others to make up for the ones they removed like a mad scientist who always invents things that always have a downside to them.
He says: if any food is marketed for its nutrients, avoid it.

The middle rule talks about our culture of fast food, of removing the culture of eating from our lives and turning ourselves into food processors for the Food industry so they can sell us more food than we need, sell mindless nutrients instead of food and later sell food to deal with the effect of too much food and thus pocketing the profits.

The final rule talks up the benefits of not eating too much meat. It illustrates how humans had never in the past, late as much meat as often as the western world does today. It talks about how so much meat eating was due to the promotion of Meat by the Meat industry with ample support from government.

This is not a big book but it is well written and is a wonderful read.