[meadandale]

In Defense of Food

Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food — the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food — stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals.

Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach — what he calls nutritionism — and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part.

In Defense of Food shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. We can relearn which foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to its proper context — out of the car and back to the table. Michael Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

Pollan’s last book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is another great book…which I’ve also read.

[meadandale]

In Defense of Food

Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food — the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food — stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals.

Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach — what he calls nutritionism — and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part.

In Defense of Food shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. We can relearn which foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to its proper context — out of the car and back to the table. Michael Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

Pollan’s last book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is another great book…which I’ve also read.

[meadandale]

In Defense of Food

Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food — the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food — stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals.

Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach — what he calls nutritionism — and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part.

In Defense of Food shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. We can relearn which foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to its proper context — out of the car and back to the table. Michael Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

Pollan’s last book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is another great book…which I’ve also read.

[meadandale]

In Defense of Food

Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food — the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food — stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals.

Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach — what he calls nutritionism — and proposes an alternative way of eating that is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of which we are part.

In Defense of Food shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. We can relearn which foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to its proper context — out of the car and back to the table. Michael Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

Pollan’s last book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating; now In Defense of Food shows us how to change it, one meal at a time.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is another great book…which I’ve also read.

[meadandale]

I’m currently reading In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. Based on some of the opinions I’ve read in this thread it seems that some of you need to read it. Much of what you think you know (which you’ve been fed by the media) is wrong.

[meadandale]

I’m currently reading In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. Based on some of the opinions I’ve read in this thread it seems that some of you need to read it. Much of what you think you know (which you’ve been fed by the media) is wrong.

[meadandale]

I’m currently reading In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. Based on some of the opinions I’ve read in this thread it seems that some of you need to read it. Much of what you think you know (which you’ve been fed by the media) is wrong.

[meadandale]

I’m currently reading In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. Based on some of the opinions I’ve read in this thread it seems that some of you need to read it. Much of what you think you know (which you’ve been fed by the media) is wrong.

[meadandale]

I’m currently reading In Defense Of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. Based on some of the opinions I’ve read in this thread it seems that some of you need to read it. Much of what you think you know (which you’ve been fed by the media) is wrong.

[meadandale]

[quote=eyePod]You can get under $30/hr (for 1000s of hours) for high end Software, Firmware, and Hardware engineers. So yes, it is out there at those rates in India if you look for it. Not that it has anything to do with the dopey recruiter, but someone mentioned India.[/quote]

Those aren’t ‘high end’ anything. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve billed fixing stuff that was outsourced either offshore to India or to body shops full of H1B’s in the states. The quality isn’t even proportional to the cost. It’s WAY worse value for the dollar.

[meadandale]

[quote=eyePod]You can get under $30/hr (for 1000s of hours) for high end Software, Firmware, and Hardware engineers. So yes, it is out there at those rates in India if you look for it. Not that it has anything to do with the dopey recruiter, but someone mentioned India.[/quote]

Those aren’t ‘high end’ anything. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve billed fixing stuff that was outsourced either offshore to India or to body shops full of H1B’s in the states. The quality isn’t even proportional to the cost. It’s WAY worse value for the dollar.

[meadandale]

[quote=eyePod]You can get under $30/hr (for 1000s of hours) for high end Software, Firmware, and Hardware engineers. So yes, it is out there at those rates in India if you look for it. Not that it has anything to do with the dopey recruiter, but someone mentioned India.[/quote]

Those aren’t ‘high end’ anything. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve billed fixing stuff that was outsourced either offshore to India or to body shops full of H1B’s in the states. The quality isn’t even proportional to the cost. It’s WAY worse value for the dollar.

[meadandale]

[quote=eyePod]You can get under $30/hr (for 1000s of hours) for high end Software, Firmware, and Hardware engineers. So yes, it is out there at those rates in India if you look for it. Not that it has anything to do with the dopey recruiter, but someone mentioned India.[/quote]

Those aren’t ‘high end’ anything. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve billed fixing stuff that was outsourced either offshore to India or to body shops full of H1B’s in the states. The quality isn’t even proportional to the cost. It’s WAY worse value for the dollar.

[meadandale]

[quote=eyePod]You can get under $30/hr (for 1000s of hours) for high end Software, Firmware, and Hardware engineers. So yes, it is out there at those rates in India if you look for it. Not that it has anything to do with the dopey recruiter, but someone mentioned India.[/quote]

Those aren’t ‘high end’ anything. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve billed fixing stuff that was outsourced either offshore to India or to body shops full of H1B’s in the states. The quality isn’t even proportional to the cost. It’s WAY worse value for the dollar.

[meadandale]

[quote=flu]
I got some dodo recruiter that contacted me about a wonderful opportunity as a Junior QA engineer in florida from LinkedIn… I responded “do you even bother to try to read people’s profile?” Apparently not…[/quote]

Funny, my linked in profile says I’m an independent contractor…and some outsourcing company contacted me about outsourcing services they wanted to provide me. I read him the riot act about how he’s sending US jobs offshore for the cheapest cost at the expense of quality and people like him are directly affecting my ability to make a living.

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