Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

 These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the questions posed in his earlier title The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

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. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape (“nutritionism”) dense with bad advice and foods that are not “real.” These “edible foodlike substances” are often packaged with labels bearing health claims that are typically false or misleading. 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.

Writing In Defense of Food, and affirming the joy of eating, Pollan suggests that if we would pay more for better, well-grown food, but buy less of it, we’ll benefit ourselves, our communities, and the environment at large. Taking a clear-eyed look at what science does and does not know about the links between diet and health, he proposes a new way to think about the question of what to eat that is informed by ecology and tradition rather than by the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach.

In looking toward traditional diets the world over, as well as the foods our families—and regions—historically enjoyed, we can recover a more balanced, reasonable, and pleasurable approach to food. Pollan’s bracing and eloquent manifesto—a pleasure to read—shows us how we might start making thoughtful food choices:

Eat food… don’t eat anything your great great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food…

Avoid food products bearing health claims… When the Kellogg’s strawberry-vanilla breakfast cereal bars can boast about being “heart healthy,” health claims have become hopelessly compromised…

Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, or b) unpronounceable, or c) more than five in number, or that include d) high fructose corn syrup…

Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.