For anyone who's ever wondered why it is that Americans are fatter, more obese and more prone to coronary disease, Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food" provides stunning insight. In fact, whatever I say in this blog will fail to do justice to the amount of research and thought that went into this book. In his study of the American food culture (or lack thereof), Pollan explains how nutrition science and the food processing industries are equally responsible for the increasing rate of diseases such as Diabetes and Heart Attacks in America. Food industries in America have taken the philosophy of quantity over quality and have sacrificed the caliber of our food products by processing whole foods with chemicals and additives that might make some foods more tasty, but ultimately sacrifice the overall nutritional value of those foods. Nutrition science has consistently aided and abetted the food industries by providing them with incessant yet ephemeral advice on what nutrients (whether micro or macro) to embrace. Pollan argues that nature and evolution have already solved the problem of nutritional value for people over the course of centuries and therefore proposes a return to eating whole foods (anything that your great grandmother would recognize) instead of allowing nutrition science to dictate whichever isolated nutrient happens to be vogue or in condemnation. This is an important read.