Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That is the pithy and rather complete advice that Michael Pollan gives about easting in the beginning of his NYT article, Unhappy Meals. This article is the best existing narrative on how industry, science and the media has has taken the acts of preparing and eating food, which should be simple, joyful, and nourishing and appropriated them for their own ends. In Defense of Food is an expanded book version of the article, though if you don't have time to read the whole book, the article will suffice. Pollan's The Botany of Desire, however, is a must read.

One of the food hegemonies that Pollan's dissects is what he calls nutritionism. Foods are complex and wonderful things. Since we don't really understand them, we should stop adding supplements to and making dubious health claims about foods, especially since the very act of modifying/manufacturing foods makes them something less than real. Marion Nestle calls the majority of products that crowd our supermarket aisles these days "edible food-like substances."