Pollan makes a case to eat “food”. By food he means not processed food, nor meat from animals fed upon processed food. To find such food is hard nowdays but is managable. After reading this book I’ve been very careful what I buy and what I eat. A five star book 
After seeing Bob make these recommendations, I feel compelled to offer a few with an alternative viewpoint re. nutritional decision-making and the health of the human animal:
- Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, by Weston A. Price
- Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes
Actually, I’m going to stop short of a few, as discussion about these topics often gets dicey. There’s a couple to get you started if you’re interested.
Bobueland wrote:
If the subject and the science is of real interest to you, I can also recommend the blogs of Stephan Guyenet, called wholehealthsource, and the blog of Art Ayers, called coolinginflammation.
An addendum to my previous post: I recommend the Weston A. Price book not as one that meets the scientific gold standard (as the data is observational, etc.) but as a book that may prompt further investigation in an enquiring mind.
Thanks edmo, Weston’s book has been cited in almost all the books I’ve recommended. Gary Taubes book seems to be excellent and the philosophy seems to be in line with the ones I recommended (I’ve just bought the Kindle version).
I’ve read that humans couldn’t drink cows milk 60 thousend years (I don’t remember the time exactly) ago, but then a mutation happened that allowed certain individuals to digest it. That led to a positive evolution advantage and the new genes spread rapidly allowing most humans today to be able to drink milk. This is typical for a lot of different foods. But the processed food has not gone through this evolution process and western civilization diseases like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer and heart diseases are a consequence of that. Maybe in 60 thousend years we will be able to digest processed food without getting western civilization diseases, but until then we should avoid them.
Coming Out Of The Ice, An Unexpected Life by Victor Herman.
This is a true story of the author’s life. He was an American teenager and super athlete. Then his father took the family to the “Motherland” to help rebuild Russia. When Victor Herman became of age and demanded to return to his homeland, he was instead thrown into the Russian prison system. This is my all-time favorite book. It is out-of-print, but you can find it on the internet or at those special bookstores.
Read this book, and you will never complain about your life again.
We all think we know about Steve Jobs; BUT truth is his authorized biography is so revealing and truthful; he gave complete access to the biographer and nothing is held back: good AND bad (his birth parents were Syrian he was adopted by an american couple–he and Bill Gates were friends AND Bill loaned Apple lots of $$$ to keep it alive. Getting fired as CEO was the best thing that happened to him, etc.
I just finished David Roberts’ “Finding Everett Ruess,” which is part biography, part mystery and part personal narrative. Long a character of almost mythic stature, Ruess was a 20 year old painter who disappeared into the high desert of Utah in 1934 and was never seen again. Roberts does a pretty good job of not being dazzled by the idea that Ruess was some sort of desert mystic. As a result, his book is, I think, deeper and more interesting than other examinations of Ruess’s disappearance.