Food Rules: An Eater's Manual
by Michael Pollan

Summary

Eating doesn't have to be so complicated. In this age of ever-more elaborate diets and conflicting health advice, Food Rules brings a welcome simplicity to our daily decisions about food. Written with the clarity, concision and wit that has become bestselling author Michael Pollan's trademark, this indispensable handbook lays out a set of straightforward, memorable rules for eating wisely, one per page accompanied by a concise explanation. It's an easy-to-use guide that draws from a variety of traditions, suggesting how different cultures through the ages have arrived at the same enduring wisdom about food. Whether at the supermarket or an all-you-can-eat buffet, this is the perfect guide for anyone who ever wondered, "What should I eat?"

About the Author

Michael Pollan is the author of five previous books, including In Defense of Food, a number one New York Times bestseller, and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was named one the the ten best books of the year by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both books won the James Beard Award. A longeime contributor to the New York Times Magazine, Pollan is also the Knight Professor of Jouralism at the University of California at Berkely.

Related books by Michael Pollan:

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Summary

Most of what we're consuming today is not food. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances" — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

Years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals. Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

In Defense of Food shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. We can relearn which foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to its proper context — out of the car and back to the table. Michael Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

Praise for In Defense of Food

"Michael Pollan [is a] distinguished author and designated repository for the nation's food conscience." — New York Times

"A remarkable volume ... engrossing ...offers those prescriptons Americans so desperately crave." — The Washington Post

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Summary

What should we have for dinner? The question has confronted us since man discovered fire. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? The omnivore's dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape.

This groundbreaking book takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.

The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore's Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.

Praise for Omnivore's Dilemma

"Outstanding ... a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our eating habits." — The New Yorker

"A brilliant, eye-opening account of how we produce, market, and agonize over what we eat." — The Seattle Times