In Defense of Food: Resources

You can help promote healthier eating in your community by screening In Defense of Food in your home or for a community group. You can choose between showing the full two-hour version of the film that aired on PBS or a condensed 78-minute version. Or if you’d prefer a shorter event, you can show a selection from our library of short clips from the film that run from 3 to 6 minutes each and cover specific topics.

If you’re inspired to share these rules, or discuss food and health with your friends, neighbors or colleagues, host a house party featuring some of Michael Pollan’s favorite recipes. Sign up here to get a free house party toolkit and discussion guide. They’ll tell you everything you need to know to host a successful screening.

 

Start by downloading the producers’ free community screening toolkit and discussion guide. The toolkit provides step-by-step instructions for planning an event. The questions in the guide cover both the 78-minute and two-hour versions of the film. If you’re showing clips and not the whole film, you’ll see that the guide contains keys, such as (GR) or (ST)–see below–that tell you which questions are best-suited for use with particular clips.

For exploring how food affects health you can screen:

• CO – Childhood Obesity
• HF – The Healthy Fats We Need
• TMS – Too Much Sugar

For policy discussions, check out:

• GR – The Government’s Role in Our Food System
• SP – Soda Politics

For youth engagement, watch:

• FDB – A Food Desert Blooms
• BPC – Bigger Picture Campaign

For food marketing literacy efforts, consider:

• CCB – Calorie Conveyor Belt
• FF – Food Fads
• PN – The Pitfalls of Nutritionism
• RLL – Redesigning the Lunch Line and Buffet

 

You can use the middle school curriculum from Teachers College, Columbia University to teach young people how they can defend food.

 

There are many useful web sites where you can get information about the relationship of food and health. Below are some of the most useful.

• American Community Garden Association: communitygarden.org
• American Diabetes Association: diabetes.org
• American Heart Association: heart.org/HEARTORG
• Leanne Brown’s Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4 per day: leannebrown.com
• Center for Science in the Public Interest: cspinet.org
• Centers for Disease Control, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity: www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/
• Civil Eats: civileats.com
• Cooking With Kids: cookingwithkids.org
• Dietary Guidelines: health.gov/dietaryguidelines/
• Edible Schoolyard edibleschoolyard.org
• Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen Guide: www.ewg.org/research/ewg-s-dirty-dozen-guide-food-additives
• Environmental Working Group’s Good Food on a Tight Budget guide: ewg.org/goodfood
• Food Policy Action: foodpolicyaction.org
• Green Bronx Machine: greenbronxmachine.org
• Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Source: www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource
• Healthy Food Access: healthyfoodaccess.org
• Let’s Move: letsmove.gov
• National Institutes of Health / U.S. National Library of Medicine “Medline Plus: Health Topics”: www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/healthtopics.html
• Marion Nestle’s Food Politics blog. foodpolitics.com
• Michael Pollan’s web site resources: michaelpollan.com/resources
• Real Food Challenge: realfoodchallenge.org
• Roots of Change: rootsofchange.org/projects/engaging-food-policy-councils-across-land
• Union of Concerned Scientists: ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration website, food section. Good info on food safety, labeling and supplements: fda.gov/Food
• Brian Wansink’s Mindless Eating website. Great tips on practical steps you can take: mindlesseating.org

 

• Allport, Susan. The Queen of Fats. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.
• Apple, Rima. Mothers and Medicine. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
• Apple, Rima. Vitamania: Vitamins in American Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
• Brownell, Kelly. Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America’s Obesity Crisis and What We Can Do About It. New York: McGraw Hill, 2004.
• Farley, Tom. Saving Gotham. A Billionaire Mayor, Activist Doctors, and the Fight for Eight Million Lives. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2015.
• Kessler, David. The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. New York: Rodale, 2009.
• Levenstein, Harvey. Fear Of Food. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
• Ludwig, David. Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food / Fake Food World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
• Ludwig, David. Always Hungry? Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016.
• Lustig, Robert. Fat Chance. New York: Hudson Street Press, 2013.
• Moss, Michael. Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. New York: Random House, 2013.
• Nestle, Marion. Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning). New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health. Tenth Anniversary Edition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013.
• Pollan, Michael. Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. New York: Penguin Press, 2013.
• Pollan, Michael. Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. New York: Penguin Books, 2009.
• Pollan, Michael. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
• Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
• Price, Catherine. Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized The Way We Think About Food. New York: Penguin Press, 2015
• Scrinis, Gyorgy. Nutritionism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
• Simon, Michele. Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back. New York: Nation Books, 2006.
• Wansink, Brian. Slim By Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2014.
• Wansink, Brian. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. New York: Bantam-Dell, 2006.
• Warner, Melanie. Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal. New York: Scribner, 2013.
• Willett, Walter. Eat, Drink and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating. New York: Free Press, 2006.