In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Popular science and nutrition author Michael Pollan's bestselling 2008 book is adapted in this PBS-aired documentary by filmmaker Michael Schwarz featuring the convivial, gentle-spoken author, who serves up some troubling propositions about the “Western diet” and its pathologies. According to Pollan, just about the only area of the grocery store selling edibles safe to eat are the produce aisles. Elsewhere, processed non-foods and harmful ingredients (high-fructose corn syrup) are foisted on the public (especially low-income shoppers) by greedy corporations whose lobbying machinery defeats public-health measures. But Pollan lays equal blame on progress-dazzled mainstream science for having promoted a syndrome he calls “nutritionalism” that substituted synthetic chemicals for good stuff and waged a misguided campaign against “fat” that instead created American epidemics of obesity, cancer, and diabetes—medical scourges that other nations and more primitive cultures conspicuously lack. Pollan also explains his famous adage “eat food—not too much, mostly plants” in full detail, with no apologies to vegans that it does not entirely forbid meat consumption. An essential title, this is highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: J, H, C, P. (C. Cassady)