Thus is the tOth in an occassional series of

Thus is the tOth in an occassional series of books that are likely to appeal to or particularly relate to the Rappahannock reader.

“In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” fellows Michael Pollan's more detailed, scientific, and dense nonfiction book. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”

If you have read the latter, you know that Pollan traces the origins of feur meals, one highly processed, two organic (one from Whole Foods and one from a form in Virginia.), and one foraged, hunted, and gathered. Pbilan educates the reader in the food industry, from feedfots and king corn to the new organic mass production, and explores the challenges of eating locally.

His final section of gathering fungi (including morels), foraging for greens and fruit, and hunting wild pig culminate in a meal he acquired through his own neolithic methods. The more than 400 pages of this bestseller (one of the New York Times Book Review’s top 10 books of the year) require close attention and a willingness to process scientific data and many statistics.

Rillan begins “In Defense of Food” by saying he is responding to the many questions he received following the publication of “The Omnivore's Dilemma.” So, what do you eat? He offers the reader a succinct answer Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

In slightly more than 200 additional, highly readable pages, Mian elaborates on this advice. If you are a “locavore,” eating right now from formers’ markets and your own garden, and you are a “foodie,” enjoying time in the kitchen and preparing meals for friends and fomily then this book will affirm all your beliefs.

Mian rejects the trend of the* last half century of regarding food as nutrition. He points out that loud is also pleasure, community and culture1. So, he proceeds to debunk the nutritionist movement which sought to reduce food to its ingredients and, due to incomplete knowledge, misled all of us into such harmful practices as substituting margarine for butter.

My own Rappahannock family members consistently rejected the modem approach to food and health, insisting that margarine just tasted “greasy” and that butter was “real.” Little did they know that they were* preventing us from ingesting trans-fats, now made illegal in many locations including New York City

Pollan describes an “unhealthy obsession with healthy eating ” The problem, of course, lies in the* inability of the scientific community to truly isolate those micrunutrients critical to the health of a human being. So when we assume that we need calcium or vitamin C,