On Food

For as long as I can remember I have been eating food. My definition of food was always, "Delicious fuel for my body." And that's the only thought I really ever gave it. I considered processed snack foods and carrots the same thing. Food. But after reading Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food, my perspective has been totally changed ... for the better. The book is about how food, over the past hundred years, has changed from its natural state to processed fake food. Pollan talks about the obesity epidemic and provides many explanations for its occurrence. Pollan also explains why foods that boast fat free and low fat, are actually worse than the regular form of that food.

After a couple hundred pages that inform you on everything you would ever want to know about food (while still managing to be surprisingly interesting), Pollan gets into what you should do about food. He doesn't provide some elaborate diet like many authors before him, he just gives three sentences. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." After reading the first two-hundred pages of this book, this is something that I am definitely going to follow.

Michael Pollan also just released a Young Reader's Edition of the book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Secrets Behind What You Eat. Little Shop has it in stock, though it keeps selling out.  So with all this confusion going around these days about what's healthy and what isn't, read this book to clear your mind and realize that the best kinds of foods are really natural.

- Cal