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Real Food: What to Eat and Why | 
 enlarge | Author: Nina Planck
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $15.99
Buy New: $4.83
You Save: $11.16 (70%)
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Rating:  76 reviews
Sales Rank: 12817
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 1596913428
Dewey Decimal Number: 613
EAN: 9781596913424
ASIN: 1596913428
Publication Date: June 12, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: New book. Fast Shipping. May have small remainder mark.
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Product Description
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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| Customer Reviews: Read 71 more reviews...
 great information but 3 caveats December 11, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Nina Planck has written a very good overview of the best of nutritional knowledge. I found only 3 items in which she strays from good research into what I would categorize as personal prejudice. These are: soy, canola oil, and eating all the fruits and vegetables one wants, regardless of quality.
Soy first. As a former vegan, she obviously still has a soft spot for soy, which has been a central fixture of that religion. The research on soy is only "evenly balanced for and against" if you include questionable work done/paid for by the soy industry. The independent research is quite clear that the only soy products that are safe for human consumption are traditionally produced fermented condiments. Research from the soy industry is extremely dubious, considering the magnitude of money involved and the history of that industry's disinformation campaign against traditional oils like coconut. Independent researchers have recently forced the soy industry to retract claims about the healthy nature of soy, especially in the face of massive evidence to the contrary.
Second, canola is an oil created purely to pull market share away from healthy oils and create some cash flow for Canada. It is not a traditional oil in any way, shape, or form. I find her mention of Indian cultures use of crushed rapeseed not very compelling. In any case, I would recommend people avoid canola, as there are much healthier oils that have stood the test of time, and have much better research on their side.
Finally, her advice that everyone should eat as much fruit and vegetables as possible, organic or not, is very bad advice. Aside from the fact that most regular produce (and some organic) is not handled very well, with all the sprays, gases, chemicals, and so on that it is subjected to as it comes to market. There are also issues with the ability of humans to properly digest and assimilate nutrients from plant sources. Anyone with IBS will also have issues with the fiber. Contrary to media propaganda, there are limits to how much fiber is good for you, and people with IBS can have major problems from fiber overstimulating their digestive tract.
Consider also that our soil is so depleted that there can be up to 50 times less mineral content in vegetables than there was just 50 years ago, even for produce raised on the same land. Think 50 cups of broccoli today to equal one cup in 1950. Not a good nutritional deal.
Fruits are mostly water, fiber, and sugars, and virtually all traditional cultures limited their intake of fruit. Diabetics and people with yeast problems would be well advised to seriously limit fruit intake.
The concept of the "balanced diet" was a marketing gimmick designed to get people to buy more foods in supermarkets. Most people for the majority of history had limited diets of far higher quality, more complete foods. The research of Weston Price, which she promotes, is quite clear on this, as is the work of others who followed him.
One other minor nitpick is that corn is technically a grain, not a vegetable, although a lot of Americans think of it that way.
A really great book on nutrition if you keep those caveats in mind when you read it.
 Good Resource November 4, 2008
I thought this was very well written and it confirmed much of what I had been thinking as well as introduced new issues to ponder. I like that Nina cites research and discusses historical precedents to support her contentions. She also isn't afraid to point out areas where the research is thin. Very reputable in my opinion and well worth reading for anyone.
A great foodie book. October 20, 2008
Real Food by Nina Planck is a great read. She focuses on why old-fashioned, traditional foods worked for our ancestors and why the same food can nourish us today. I love her basic approach. Everyone should read this book.
 Unchallenging and possibly plagiarized October 15, 2008
12 out of 18 found this review helpful
Lately, I have been in the habit of reading books that pair together - either by the same author or books that seem to treat the same topic. The two most recent books -- on the heels of the two Michael Pollan books I finished a few weeks ago, are "The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved" by Sandor Katz, the author of "Wild Fermentation" and "Real Food: What to Eat & Why" by Nina Planck. Since the Planck book is the least useful and most controversial, I'll start there - hoping to make this quick and painless.
"Real Food: What to Eat & Why" by Nina Planck has a beguiling cover that seems to offer promises of quality guidelines and content. While Planck writes with great passion in an accessible, chatty style, I found much of her book to be pompous, arrogant and repetitive. Although she does use footnotes in the first part of the book and lists a bibliography, her academic rigor is not nearly on the same level as "Omnivore's Dilemma."
In fact, there were several long sections that seem to be lifted right from Michael Pollan's book -- making "Real Food" seem more to me like a "Cliff Notes" version of "Omnivore's Dilemma" but tainted with a very subjected, personal angle that implies there is only one "right" diet and everyone else is an idiot. While Planck and Pollan are both journalists and food writers, it is clear that Planck's skill is not in writing -- her book seems like a very long blog article or diatribe. She relies heavily on secondary and tertiary sources, fails to properly substantiate many of her arguments except by anecdote -- you can hardly tear down the China Study, for example, by your own personal experience.
She also seems to be taking format cues from Sandor Katz's "The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved" -- both in terms of the structure of her book and the individual chapters. Her weak attempts at describing food preparation and providing resources don't hold water next to Katz's superior book which describes the experiences and experiments of him and his friends and is very strongly supportive of readers exploring and finding what works best for them.
Reading the reviews for Planck's book on Amazon and other places on the internet was highly entertaining -- she has a very vocal following who will defend to the death her assertions -- afterall, Planck's book validates their current diets making very few recommendations aside from staying away from packaged, processed food. It's still basically the Standard American Diet - lots of animal products, eat as much as you want. The redeeming factor is that she encourages people to strongly consider the source of their foods -- staying away from big corporate farm produced foods.
Her argument boils down to something pulled right from Pollan's writings: anything your grandmother made is 'real food. However, that was what Pollan offered as a guideline for selecting better prepared foods -- not as a pretext to eat whatever the hell you want. Planck maintains that you should eat as much as you want of anything that's not packaged or processed crap -- somehow, your body will know when to stop because those foods are more satisfying. This leaves out the obvious -- calories are calories and must be burned. People eat for many reasons -- hunger, boredom, happiness, sadness -- and satiety isn't always a cue for ending a meal.
Planck is vehemently (and obnoxiously) anti vegetarian, particularly anti-vegan, and there is not a lot of material provided to encourage independent, critical thought or to make space for other people's experiences or conclusions. She puts little value on moderation or exercise, and doesn't allow for differences in individual body chemistry.
Pollan, on the other hand, goes to Polyface farm and works on the farm, he goes hunting, he goes foraging -- he talks to real people, he dives in and describes his experiences. All Planck does is to read Pollan and a few other books and write an over-long newspaper column that incorporates some of their key ideas with her own strong opinions. Her shameless theft of concepts from Pollan's books -- twisted to her own means -- lead me to make only one recommendation: Read Omnivore's Dilemma. It's a far superior book when compared to Planck's book or any others on the shelf.
A Refreshing Outlook on Food October 2, 2008
This book is a real eye opener! Planck provides information on diet and backs it up with scientific evidence in a readable fashion. I thouroughly enjoyed this book and it has definitely changed the way I look at what I am eating.
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