“Cooked” by Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan is an award winning journalist and knighted professor of Science and Environmental journalism at UC Berkley. He has written bestsellers such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Food Rules and In Defense of Food. In this book, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation he explains food you cook yourself is by far more beneficial to your health and wellbeing. Pollan believes “the best way to recover the reality of food – to return it to its proper place in our lives – is to master the physical processes by which it has traditionally been made.” He does this by structuring the book into four elements of cooking: fire (barbecue), water (braising), air (bread) and earth (fermentation). Pollan refers to history, chemistry, physics, psychology, anthropology and even religion in order to get his point through that cooking food from scratch yourself is not only nurturing and better for you, it sets a good example for little ones.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I would recommend it to our members as it’s easy to read, has a great use of analogies, and is very enlightening. Enjoy!