“The Gospel of Food,” by Barry Glassner (ecco/HarperCollins, $25.95)
For anyone who has longed for a good read that speaks sense to America’s preoccupation with diet fads and irrational food fears, Barry Glassner is your man. Glassner made the rounds, talking to nutritionists, chefs, restaurant critics, physicians and food chemists to divine the truth about why we’re so afraid of food.
Glassner says we’re held ransom to diet books and marketing claims, unable to scientifically determine which foods are “good” or “bad.” In “Gospel,” he examines the cultural roots of our seemingly congenital inability to enjoy food the way Europeans do, tracing this aversion to early nutritionists who believed nothing that tasted good could be good for you.
That contention, married to the puritan idea that pleasure is something best experienced in the privacy of one’s home with the curtains drawn, is most likely the reason, for example, we feel compelled to bemoan at the table why we ought not eat luscious food, then eat it anyway.
Glassner makes a highly readable argument for why everything you think you know about food is wrong.|Ellen Sweets
