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“In defense of food” is a best-selling book that makes an exceptionally strong case for eating real foods (as opposed to processed stuff), and for eating less of it, and largely (but not totally) avoiding meat.
Michael Pollan, the author, did his homework, and turns what might otherwise be dry and sterile material into easily-digested chapters put together in a conversational, readable effort.

The problem, though, is that he’s mostly preaching to the Choir. He makes a lot of noise about eating locally-grown food, consuming less meat, and increasing the amount of plant material in our diets. He’s got the “why” down to a science (literally), and his case is airtight; but when it comes to the “how”, he chokes. Check out this passage from an earlier essay (preceding the book):

Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality.

That’s where he lost me, as I’d rather not pay more, thank you very much. Sure, I get that Americans pay less for food than we did decades ago. And I get that a reasonable person could argue that the decline in the quality of food has a relationship to the reduced prices. But if he’s suggesting that the American public (or the World, for that matter) is going to voluntarily start spending more money just to get organic broccoli and apples, he’s nuts.

I would humbly suggest that we might benefit from solutions more realistic in nature. But that’s just my take on the matter. Comments?