"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defence of Food.

Humans used to know how to eat well, Pollan argues. But the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused, complicated, and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists - all of whom have much to gain from our dietary confusion. Indeed, real food is fast disappearing from the marketplace, to be replaced by "nutrients," and plain old eating by an obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically, ruining our health, not to mention our meals.

Michael Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we might start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives and our palates and enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy.

Michael Pollan is the author of five previous books, including In Defence of Food, a number one New York Times bestseller, and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both books won the James Beard Award. A long-time contributor to the New York Times Magazine, he is also the Knight Profes­sor of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.