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Real Food: What to Eat and Why (Paperback)
by Nina Planck
| Category:
Diets & weight loss, Gastronomy, Food science, Healthy living |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
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Author: Nina Planck
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First Edition edition
Pub. in: June, 2007
ISBN: 1596913428
Pages: 352
Measurements: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01225
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-1596913424
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- MSL Picks -
This book is for anyone who has ever raised an eyebrow at the many unpronounceable ingredients gracing today's packaged foods. The bottom line: put the box down! In Real Food, Planck builds a case for returning to the whole, natural foods that nourished humanity for thousands of years.
Planck begins by sharing her personal history with food, from childhood on a Virginia farm to veganism to eating "meatloaf, bacon and eggs with impunity." The rest of the book serves as an extended definition of the title: what is real food?
While mainstream nutrition tends to treat certain foods as homogeneous, i.e. milk is milk, Planck asks: which milk? She asserts that it is not the food itself that is healthy or harmful, but how it is produced. Raw milk from healthy, grass-fed cows is perfectly suited to human nutrition, whereas milk from confined cows fed grain, animal byproducts, hormones and antibiotics is not. Planck goes on to distinguish between "real" and industrial meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, fats, eggs, grains, salt, and chocolate. Even vilified foods like lard, when prepared as they have been for thousands of years, can be part of a healthy diet.
It may be true that anyone interested in reading a book of this genre is already capable of distinguishing between old-fashioned and processed foods. For me, Real Food summarized most of the conclusions I had already made via self-directed research. The value of the book, however, is just that; Planck synthesizes the available research on traditional foods and delivers it with flair. The questioning reader is free to scrutinize her endnotes and test the legitimacy of her citations.
In a field where extremists are not hard to find, this book is a cool-headed treasure. Some nutrition writers will make you afraid to eat anything - Planck, however, rejoices in [unadulterated] food and has the opposite effect. She encourages readers to eat all the nutritious, unprocessed foods they like and thoroughly enjoy them. While she is clearly passionate about the subject matter, she doesn't stray into sensationalism or scare tactics, but remains objective in all the right places. She praises locally grown, fresh vegetables supremely, and makes a substantial case for dietary reprobates like liver, butter and eggs.
Planck takes a controversial and compelling position on saturated fat and cholesterol. Not being a Masai tribeswoman myself, I would not attempt a meat-milk-and-blood diet, but am persuaded that our bodies and foods are more complex than the reigning "if-then" science of fat, cholesterol and heart disease. It is true that every body is different; some can thrive on a vegetarian diet, others on steak and eggs.
I recommend Real Food as an ideal introduction to the traditional foods lifestyle. There are more scientific works on the subject, but Planck's friendly, conversational tone makes real food both approachable and attractive. Her personal experiences and practical advice take the daunt out of incorporating traditional foods into very modern lifestyles.
(From quoting Deborah Young, USA)
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- Better with -
Better with
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
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Nina Planck grew up in Virginia selling vegetables at farmers’ markets and later created the first farmers’ markets in London, England. In New York City, she ran the legendary Greenmarkets. Nina also wrote The Farmers’ Market Cookbook and hosted a British television series on local food. Her latest company, Real Food, runs markets for traditional foods in American cities.
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From Publisher
Hailed as the “patron saint of farmers’ markets” by the Guardian and called one of the “great food activists” by Vanity Fair’s David Kamp, Nina Planck is single-handedly changing the way we view “real food.” A vital and original contribution to the hot debate about what to eat and why, Real Food is a thoroughly researched rebuttal to dietary fads and a clarion call for the return to old-fashioned foods.
In lively, personal chapters on produce, dairy, meat, fish, chocolate, and other real foods, Nina explains how ancient foods like beef and butter have been falsely accused, while industrial foods like corn syrup and soybean oil have created a triple epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The New York Times said that Real Food “poses a convincing alternative to the prevailing dietary guidelines, even those treated as gospel,” and that “radical” as Nina’s ideas may be, the case she makes for them is “eminently sensible.”
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| View all 6 comments |
Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
Nina Planck is a good, stylish writer and a dogged researcher who writes directly, forthrightly and with an edge. She isn't afraid to make the occasional wisecrack ("No doubt, for some people, cracking open an egg is one chore too many") while taking unpopular positions. Her chosen field - she is a champion of "real" (as opposed to industrialized) food - is one in which unpopular positions are easy to find. As Planck reveals, in her compellingly smart Real Food: What to Eat and Why, much of what we have learned about nutrition in the past generation or so is either misinformed or dead wrong, and almost all of the food invented in the last century, and especially since the Second World War, is worse than almost all of the food that we've been eating since we developed agriculture. This means, she says, that butter is better than margarine (so, for that matter, is lard); that whole eggs (especially those laid by hens who scratch around in the dirt) are better than egg whites, and that eggs in general are an integral part of a sound diet; that full-fat milk is preferable to skim, raw preferable to pasteurized, au naturel preferable to homogenized. She goes so far as to maintain - horror of horrors - that chopped liver mixed with real schmaltz and hard-boiled eggs is, in a very real way, a form of health food. Like those who've paved the way before her, she urges us to eat in a natural, old-fashioned way. But unlike many of them, and unlike her sometimes overbearing compatriots in the Slow Food movement, she is far from dogmatic, making her case casually, gently, persuasively. And personally, Planck's philosophy grows directly out of her life history, which included a pair of well-educated parents who decided, when the author was two, to pull up stakes in Buffalo, N.Y., and take up farming in northern Virginia. Planck, therefore, grew up among that odd combination of rural farming intellectuals who not only wanted to raise food for a living but could explain why it made sense. Planck, who is now an author and a creator and manager of farmers' markets, has a message that can be - and is - summed up in straightforward and simple fashion in her first couple of chapters. She then goes on to build her case elaborately, citing both recent and venerable studies, concluding in the end that the only sensible path for eating, the one that maintains and even improves health, the one that maintains stable weight and avoids obesity, happens to be the one that we all crave: not modern food, but traditional food, and not industrial food, but real food. (June)Mark Bittman's latest book is The Best Recipes in the World (Broadway); he is also the author of How to Cook Everything (Wiley).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
Booklist (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
A successful manager of urban green markets, Planck presents a contrarian view of what constitutes sound nutrition. She urges readers to think back to the kinds of diets that their grandmothers ate, regimens full of foods fresh from farms and from individual purveyors: meats, dairy, and seasonal fruits and vegetables. Planck has a lot to offer about the role of fats in a healthy diet. Although most nutritionists worry about people consuming too much fat, Planck distinguishes good fats from bad, noting that many vital nutrients are absorbed into the body only dissolved in fat. She describes the differences between industrial fats that have been chemically saturated and hydrogenated and those fats that occur naturally in vegetables, fish, and meats, especially lauding the benefits of homemade lard. Planck draws a similar line between natural and industrial soy foods. She also encourages people to consume much more seafood, finding the threat of mercury contamination a bit overblown. Above all, Planck links good nutrition to sensible enjoyment of food in all its variety. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. |
Jesse Kornbluth, HeadButler.com, USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
How can you not be interested in Nina Planck's book? |
Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, USA
<2008-03-17 00:00>
Science is finally catching up to what our grandmothers knew long ago: that traditional foods, and even fats, are actually good for you - and a whole lot healthier than the creations of food technology. Drawing on the latest research and oldest folk wisdom, Real Food offers a persuasive and invigorating defense of eggs, butter, meat, and even lard (!), as well as a powerful critique of a food industry that aims to replace these standbys with its highly processed, and sometimes deadly, simulacra. Nina Planck has written a valuable and eye-opening book. |
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