Who doesn't love food, right? What's not to love? After reading Prof. Michael Pollan's new book, you'll love it even more. Or, just hopefully, love the right kinds of food. 

To those unfamiliar with Professor Pollan, he writes often for the NY Times as a contributing editor, a journalist by trade with dozens of articles for Time, Conde Nast, Harper's and the Times. He has a background in journalism and studied at Oxford, and at Columbia. 

Pollan's writing style is amazing and fun to read. A chapter might switch from data to research to observation to suggestion in just a few paragraphs, all the while begging the reader to examine his own food practices and shortcomings. The prose is never preachy or overly scientific, and therein lies the beauty. I took the time to research, i.e. not Google, several of his sources and data points, and they do indeed add up. Readers should take the time to investigate steps taken by our government to safeguard the food 'industry' and question just whom the nexus between the government and this industry benefits. 

Unlike his previous book however, The Omnivore's Dilemma, this one is less about industry, but more to & for the consumer. Analyzing food practices and cultures centuries old, contrasted with nutritionism, a few decades old, reductionist science approach to food content, he asks the reader to make simple, better choices in their diet. Calling out a few of this 'science's' missteps (corn products, saturated fat, trans fats, etc.) he cautions basically against taking the nutrients out of the food, the food out of the diet, the diet out of the practices, and the practices out of the culture. Every misstep of ours, and therefore miscalculated health outcome, seems to have been the result of families forsaking generations-old food practices, and placing their faith in a nutritionist's test tubes and the products that come out of them. This just seems too intuitive, but we still do most of our shopping in the middle aisles of the grocery store, where these food products thrive.

While describing the values of an all-vegetarian diet, which he openly professes is far healthier, he admits to enjoying the odd serving of meat as well. The reader is given lots of options, simple advice, on better yet pragmatic choices to make while at the grocery store. The best part of the book for me, is when he talks about the relationship between our appetites, our desire for food, a plant or fruit's ripening cycles and the antioxidant and other compounds it forms as a result. It was thrilling to read about the relations between a dozen or more of nature's processes, and the purpose behind each one.

These purposes are rarely witnessed in a test tube.