Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual presents guidelines for healthy eating. You wouldn’t think that as a developed nation that we would need guidelines how to eat, but as our standard American diet (SAD – how’s that for an appropriate acronym) has led us high levels of obesity, type II diabetes, and heart disease.
Part of the problem is that healthy eating can be a confusing landscape and unfortunately, confusion adds to the financial incentives of those involved. Pollan points out that the more you process food, the more profitable it becomes. The healthcare industry makes more money treating chronic diseases rather than preventing them. The upshot is we ignore the real problem by treating the symptoms rather than addressing the underlying causes. Pollan explains that this uncertainty has become a marketing ploy that allows food corporations to market their food as healthy according to the results of the latest study of a nutritional scientist.
Pollan says everything he’s learned about food and health can be summed up in seven words: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” He’s distilled his research into 64 rules and divided the book up into three sections:
1) Part I: What should I eat? (Eat Food)
2) Part II: What kind of food should I eat? (Mostly plants)
3) Part III: How should I eat? (Not too much)
Pollan provides a brief commentary for each of the rules. Here are the rules to whet your appetite:
1. Eat food
2. Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food
3. Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry
4. Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup
5. Avoid food products that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients
6. Avoid food products that have more than 5 ingredients
7. Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce
8. Avoid food products that make health claims
9. Avoid food products with the word “lite” or the terms “low fat” or “nonfat” in their names
10. Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not
11. Avoid foods you see advertised on television
12. Get out of the supermarket whenever you can (to buy food)
13. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle
14. Eat only foods that will eventually rot
15. Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature
16. Go food shopping every week
17. Buy your snacks at the farmers market
18. Eat Close to the Earth
19. Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans
20. Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap
21. If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
22. It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car
23. It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language (Think Big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles)
24. When you eat real food, you don’t need roles
25. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves
26. Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food
27. Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs and other mammals].
28. Eat your colors
29. Drink the spinach water
30. Eat animals that have themselves eaten well
31. If you have space, buy a freezer
32. Eat like an omnivore (great diversity of species)
33. Eat well-grown food from healthy soil
34. Eat wild foods when you can
35. Don’t overlook the oily little fishes
36. Eat some foods that have been predigested by bacterial or fungi
37. Sweeten and salt your food yourself
38. Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature
39. Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk
40. Make water your beverage of choice
41. Milk is a food, not a beverage
42. “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead”
43. Avoid sugary and starchy foods if you’re concerned about weight
44. Favor the kinds of oils and grains that have traditionally been stone ground
45. Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself
46. Love your spices
47. Be the kind of person who takes supplements – then skip the supplements
48. Eat more lie the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.
49. Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism
50. Avoid ingredients that lie to your body (artificial sweeteners and flavorings, starches, MMSG, texturizers)
51. Enjoy drinks that have been caffeinated by nature not food science (coffee, tea)
52. Have a glass of wine with dinner
53. Pay more, eat less
54. Eat less
55. Stop eating before you’re full
56. Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored
57. If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re probably not hungry
58. It’s okay to be a little hungry
59. Don’t let yourself get too hungry
60. Consult your gut (slow down and pay attention what your body is telling you)
61. Serve the vegetables first
62. Eat slowly (enough to savor your food; you’ll need less of it to be satisfied)
63. “The banquet is in the first bite”
64. Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it
65. Give some thought to where your food comes from
66. Don’t become a short order cook
67. Buy smaller plates and glasses
68. Serve a proper portion and don’t go back for seconds
69. Order the small (in a restaurant)
70. Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper
71. Eat meals (snacking less)
72. Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods
73. Do all your eating at a table
74. Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does
75. “No labels on the table” (keep logos and food packaging off the dinner table)
76. Place a bouquet of flowers on the table and everything will taste twice as good
77. Leave something on your plate
78. Eat with other people whenever you can
79. Treat treats as treats
80. Compost
81. Plant a vegetable garden if you have space, a window box if you don’t
82. Cook
83. Break the rules once in a while
The bottom line is that we must learn to eat food. This means real food — vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and sparingly fish and meat. I highly recommend this short and practical book.
Associate Pastor – Discipleship. The Church at LifePark
Professor of Discipleship, Columbia International University
Follow me on twitter: rickhiggins5
December 21, 2019 at 2:54 am
Great food for thought here, Rick! 🙂