Book Review: "I Contain Multitudes" by Ed Yong

I've recently read the book I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong. It is a very broad and reasonably (for a general-audience text) deep exposition of the history and recent work in microbiology and biochemistry, covering the multitude of ways that microbes originated, shaped, and continue to affect life on Earth. In particular, it covers the impact of microbes on diverse ecosystems from shallow coral reefs to island jungles, and frames analysis of human digestive and immune systems in terms of island ecosystems as well after accounting for the associated microbiomes. Its broad goal is to show just how essential microbial life is to other life (often with reference to how model animals can be bred to be sterile but consequently have health problems), to the extent that organisms cannot really be characterized to have the functions that give them their identity without their microbiomes.

This book is moderately long, but it is quite engaging and reads quickly. One of the things that I really liked about this book was that the author was careful to be nuanced about developments in the field, without dampening his obvious enthusiasm for the subject as a whole. Whether it was through descriptions of the scientific controversies over "hologenomes", accounts of the problems with probiotic dietary supplements in general consumer markets, or the subtle ways that different forms of symbiosis (mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism) exist on a sliding scale, blend into each other depending on context, and are almost always built on foundations of managed/tamed conflict & cheating (even in the case of mutualism, which is too often cast with Pollyanna-ish connotations), he didn't try to cover up such issues, yet that didn't detract from the overall narrative. One thing that did seem weird was that the author at various points cautioned against using militaristic imagery for describing the immune system given the complexities of the immune system microbiome, yet there are a few places where he falls into that trap anyway; it isn't clear whether this is by accident, or if this is an acknowledgment of how entrenched such imagery is in the popular imagination that there aren't any suitable alternatives for writing to a general audience. Another was that the author, at a few points, repeated a few sentences or a short passage at the beginning of a chapter nearly verbatim near its end, though I will say that because he didn't overdo this, it added to the narrative by underscoring key ideas rather than seeming like bad writing. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in science, nature, or human health.

Book Review: "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" by Michael Pollan

(image courtesy of Wikipedia)

This is actually the book I had to read to get credit for my high school gym class (I did not have to do any of the actual physical requirements for reasons obvious to those who know me personally). It's been a while since I've read the book, so this post will be relatively short.
It's an entertaining read, to be sure, and while I agree with the general guidelines given by the book, I believe that due to the current state of humanity (that is, we have far more people to feed than we did before processed foods came along, so food has to be cheap (and, as it stands now, not necessarily healthy) to maintain the current world population level), implementing many of Pollan's proposals can only be done by the wealthy (i.e. those who can afford to buy organic produce and the like). Also, several studies have shown that organic food is no healthier for one than conventional produce. It seems like what matters more is eating home-cooked food instead of processed/packaged food. Bill Clinton has lamented how in India, people have switched from eating the delicious (in my opinion) traditional meals to eating fast foods like McDonald's and the like, and that this is a major contributor to the rise of obesity and heart issues in India. (I will add that some of these problems already existed in India prior to the advent of multinational fast foods, owing instead to the over-reliance on refined rice as the primary energy-packed food.)
But more than that, I feel uncomfortable with Pollan's outright rejection of nutrition science, especially since analysis of vitamins in food has led to the eradication of many diseases caused by lack of vitamins. While it is true that incomplete science should not be used as a basis for prescribing diets (see, for example, the warnings against saturated fats leading to the prevalence of trans fats (due to overuse of partially hydrogenated oils)), neither should the incompleteness of the science mean by itself that the science should not be pursued further. I feel like Pollan is blinded by his own zeal; where he means to say that dietitians should not enthusiastically convey new studies' recommendations especially when the studies are very focused [on just one aspect of a certain food type], he instead essentially says that the studies themselves should not be carried out at all.