In Defense of Food

The new book from Michael Pollan is just what I was looking for as I start trying to determine what kind of foods will be best for the baby. With his seven word mantra "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Pollan is out to reverse effects of the Western diet by encouraging people to make good choices based on common sense and quality instead of the modern mayhem of nutritionalism, packaging and marketing.

While I don't always expect non-fiction reading to be entertaining, several parts of this book made me laugh out loud, including an explanation of qualified health claims on processed food packaging. Pollan explains that many of these claims are sketchy to begin with and the disclaimers in tiny print are even more confusing for consumers. As an example, he offers this scenario for the future: ""No doubt we can look forward to a qualified health claim for high fructose corn syrup, a tablespoon of which probably does contribute to your health, as long as it replaces a comparable amount of --say--poison-- in your diet and doesn't increase the total number of calories you eat in a day."


6.5 hours of listening


I also read the delightful "The Wayward Debutante" by Sarah Elliott, a regency romance paperback with a broken spine so I could one-hand read while feeding/rocking the baby. 294 pages.