mmmm food

One of the books on my table just now is Michael Pollan's new one "In Defense of Food", an extended version of his New York Times Magazine cover story from about a year ago, which answers his question: What shall we eat? The answer hasn't changed: Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants. Unlike "Omnivore's Dilemma", In Defense of Food asks how we ever forgot how to eat and what to eat, something that didn't trouble humans for their first million years or so. It's the damn nutritionists, he decides, who for the last 150 years have been busy breaking food down into its constituent parts and every few months pronouncing one or another of them either the devil in our diets or the very thing to save us from our ills. Rather than scrutinize food labels for cholesterol, fat, Omega 3, etc., etc., Pollan says we should simply eat what our grandparents ate. ( He never met my grandparents; I doubt he's recommending Jello salad for every meal.)