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What to Eat is the antidote to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Where AVM screeched and keened about how eating certain foods makes us horrible people, What to Eat is an unemotional guide to making informed food choices. I would call this a crash course in nutrition, but 'crash' is not the best word to use. It is a robust, honest-to-goodness course in all things food, with its narrative structured according to the shelves and sections you'd find in a supermarket. When I picked up this book, I was at first dismayed by its size and thought that maybe I'd end up flipping through it and reading brief selections, but no: I read the whole thing straight through. It was that interesting (and informative).

Marion Nestle (that's the author's name, and she has no relation to the food company) believes that you shouldn't tell people what to eat and expect them to do it blindly; she is a fan of the informed choice, and that makes all the difference. If you are informed about the ingredients and manufacturing process that goes into an Oreo, and you still want to eat it, that's ok. (She even admits that she personally prefers the Oreo recipe from before they eliminated the trans fats.) But armed with the facts, you can make a better decision about how many Oreos you should eat, and how often you should eat them. That is my kind of nutritionist!

There is also plenty of insight into food issues such as why it was ok for you to eat raw cookie dough when you were a kid - but why you shouldn't let your own children do that today.

I was also impressed to notice that many of the issues Nestle raises in this book, which was published in 2006 - trans fats, organics, country of origin labeling, HFCS, etc. - have really hit the spotlight in recent years. What to Eat is almost prescient in that respect.

I am so glad I read this book, and one change I'm planning on making in my family's food consumption habit is to look more closely at the labels of boxed cereals. I didn't realize how many cereals that I considered NON-"sugar" cereals (like Rice Krispies), actually have sugar as one of their main ingredients.