Eat Food, Not too much, mostly plants & The Omnivore's Dilemma

 I recently heard about this book and am going to get it off Amazon but I thought I would share in CC. 1st off, I love that CCers are so health concious- it's not just about loosing weight- it's about being HEALTHY (not in the "healthy" as a code word for extra tiny, either- like ACTUALLY healthy). There are people here losing, trying to gain, recovering from EDs, & maintaining weight- Awesome! This book- In Defense of Food: an Eater's Manifestoby Michael Pollan speaks to a lot of the issues US & Western/Industrial societies have developed towards food.  His premise is simple: Eat Food (REAL food), not too much, mostly plants. The hard part these days is trying to figure out what really qualifies as FOOD. In a supermarket surrounded by atkins bars, slim fast shakes, lunchables, frozen "healthy" tv dinners, and other processed "foods" that may contain preservatives, industrial left overs, hydrogenated oils and things we don't commonly think of as eatable (cottonseed oil!??)- it is increasingly difficult to know what the heck we should be eating. He suggests shopping like your great-grandma was with you- if she wouldn't recognize it- it ain't food. (or at least food you should be eating).  The book also addresses the lack of comprehensive knowledge in the nutritional industry of how exactly all the components in foods act, how they are used/not used by the body and even what all is in there, though this doesn't stop them from telling us we need this or that or less of whatever.   If this sounds interesting, you could also check out The Omnivore's Dilemma.    (Same author)

I know it is a little premature to suggest books I haven't read yet (waiting for them in the mail!) but I figured I'd through this out there.  I'd love to hear from CCers who have read them and what you thought.   There are so many whacky diets out there- it's time to cut through the noise and realize that humans have been eating and surviving for tens of thousands of years- obviously someone was doing SOMETHING right without the benefit of an energy bar.  

I just finished reading this book and (not that i was eating a lot of fake food before) after making sure to eat real whole foods with meat as more of a side dish, I lost 2 pounds after 2 days 

whole foods, whole grains..fruits, vegetables...don't buy canned items....cook most my food, very easy(and I hate to cook)..I'm losing about 2.8 pounds a week doing this..... I'll pop back in more later

Original Post by esann:

I just finished reading this book and (not that i was eating a lot of fake food before) after making sure to eat real whole foods with meat as more of a side dish, I lost 2 pounds after 2 days 

Umm unless you like ran a marathon each day and starved yourself that was just water weight.

I read The Omnivore's Dilemma (I also recommend The Botany of Desire... can you tell I like this guy?) and I think a lot of what Michael Pollan tries to get across is how often we forget where our food comes from. It's so easy to look at those processed and bleached products in the supermarket aisles and equate it with food, but we never realize how much oil is pumped into those products.

I think it's pretty accurate when he refers to "our national eating disorder."

Let me know how the eater's manifesto is, because I think I'll put it on my Christmas list!

I own 'In Defense of Food' and think it's a great book.  Not too stuffy, ideological or boringly scientific but nicely practical and applicable in the good old commonsense journalistic tradition.   I love how he pulls apart the current craze for 'four legs good, two legs bad....  oat bran good, saturated fat bad', dumbed-down nutritionism that is the plague of this age.  The idea that we need 'experts' to tell us how to eat is crazy when you think about it.   Having worked in the food industry my whole life I'd already come to some of the same conclusions but there were still plenty of things to think about.  If you want the opposite of a whacky diet book I think this absolutely qualifies.

I must read the Omnivore's Dilemma at some point.