A Book List

I wanted to call your attention to the book list on the left as well as to give a (partial) review of two of the books on the list. Yesterday, while I was at Target picking up my nasty antibiotics I grabbed two books that I have been seeing for a while, but never bothered to look at. The first is The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, and is a really interesting look at what it takes to create our food and what is really in it. The idea is that when a species, like humans, are truly omnivores, it becomes an ordeal to figure out what to eat; the sheer number of choices are overwhelming. Today's supermarket has just exponentially exacerbated the problem because most of what we see isn't even real food! Add to that, we have the problem of the medicalization of eating (we call it nutrition) and you have to have a degree to know what is "good" to eat. It's not really a "diet" book because he doesn't particularly give you guidelines on what to eat, it is more about the impact our eating has on everything else. Very interesting reading. I am still reading it, but I have glanced through it and think that it will be a challenging read. (1/18-edited to add, this book takes an evolutionary approach which thoroughly impacts the authors conclusions and reasoning. In one case he is talking about corn's evolution and how smart it was to throw itself on the mercy of humans...what a brave evolutionary jump...so on and so forth. I am still reading it, though it has been, at times, difficult to keep reading, for that reason alone.)

The second book is In Defense of Food by the same author and the main concept, as he states in the very opening (Pollan, pg. 1),

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.

This book is going to be really interesting and is essentially an extension of what he found in The Omnivore's Dilemma. These books are both on my immediate reading list. His writing style is very entertaining and still informative...I am excited about reading these!