Read this!

If you haven't picked it up yet, consider reading "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" written by award winning journalist and Bay Area native Michael Pollan. His previous book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001); A Place of My Own (1997); and Second Nature (1991). Pollan is also a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and is a Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

The book is summed up in three lines right on the cover "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants". Pollan discusses the history of food in the U.S. to demonstrate how the question of what to eat has become so confusing and distorted by politics and greed. His message is clear and to the point, offering up a fresh, new approach on how we look at food, an approach that encourages us to return to a natural, more traditional way of eating. Read the full introduction of the book here.

Here's a list of Pollan's 12 commandments for serious eaters:

1. Don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.

2. Avoid foods containing ingredients you can’t pronounce.

3. Don’t eat anything that wouldn’t eventually rot.

4. Avoid food products that carry health claims.

5. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle.

6. Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmer’s market or CSA.

7. Pay more, eat less.

8. Eat a wide diversity of species.

9. Eat food from animals that eat grass.

10. Cook and, if you can, grow some of your own food.

11. Eat meals and eat them only at tables.

12. Eat deliberately, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.

Visit www.cookingupastory.com to view parts 2 and 3 of this video.

For those who have read any of his books, please post reviews to comments. If you aren't familiar with his works, post other good reads.