hey guys -- quik noted that my reading list disappeared. we're not sure what happened to it, but here's a revised list:
Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, 2008.
Why only one book? It summarizes much of what was in the many other books I'd previously listed (Taubes, Nestle, Enig and Pollan himself) in a mere 200 pages (the others are all very thick tomes). Most of you value your time, and if something in this volume doesn't convince you, you can always follow the notes and/or bibliography to look for more evidence.
The advice can be summarized as: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Obviously some of you who eat raw eggs by the dozen will jump on this as evidence that he's clueless, but you'll have to read it for yourself.
For one thing, by 'eat food' he means avoid anything that comes pre-packaged, pre-processed, and especially if the packaging makes 'health' claims.
For another thing, he's giving recommendations to people who mostly don't lift any weights, let alone big ones. So you'd have to scale up his recommendation: eat food, enough to grow, mostly plants. By mostly plants, he means at least half the food on your plate (by volume) at each sitting should be some combination of fruits/veggies. That's not really that hard, but you have to man up and start eating salads & green beans and such.
It's not so different from the advice most of us are giving out here [cook your own whole foods, avoid anything that hasn't been eaten for hundreds of years, balance your fats, eat your veggies, and supplement as a last and not first resort], and it succinctly makes the case.
Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, 2008.
Why only one book? It summarizes much of what was in the many other books I'd previously listed (Taubes, Nestle, Enig and Pollan himself) in a mere 200 pages (the others are all very thick tomes). Most of you value your time, and if something in this volume doesn't convince you, you can always follow the notes and/or bibliography to look for more evidence.
The advice can be summarized as: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Obviously some of you who eat raw eggs by the dozen will jump on this as evidence that he's clueless, but you'll have to read it for yourself.
For one thing, by 'eat food' he means avoid anything that comes pre-packaged, pre-processed, and especially if the packaging makes 'health' claims.
For another thing, he's giving recommendations to people who mostly don't lift any weights, let alone big ones. So you'd have to scale up his recommendation: eat food, enough to grow, mostly plants. By mostly plants, he means at least half the food on your plate (by volume) at each sitting should be some combination of fruits/veggies. That's not really that hard, but you have to man up and start eating salads & green beans and such.
It's not so different from the advice most of us are giving out here [cook your own whole foods, avoid anything that hasn't been eaten for hundreds of years, balance your fats, eat your veggies, and supplement as a last and not first resort], and it succinctly makes the case.
