Food Rules!

Review of Michael Pollan's Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

If diets and proper nutrition confuse you, if you want to 'eat right' but don't know exactly what that means, then rest assured the answer has been found and it is as simple as it is effective.

Michael Pollan went in search of the secret to healthy eating and has written several books, including The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food.  In Food Rules, he lays out a simple guide for eating food. Food, as defined by Pollan should be perishable, pronounceable, and as unprocessed as possible.  Everything else is "edible foodlike substances."  The sixty-four rules found in the book can be boiled down to seven words— "Eat food. Mostly plants.  Not too much."

Most of the rules in this book require not just a change in habits ("Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.") but a change in our entire way of thinking about not only what we eat but how, why, and with whom.  Thus healthy, conscientious eating involves searching out the right ingredients or growing them, cooking, eating meals— especially with other people and at tables, and simply taking time to appreciate the flavor and effort involved in your food.  The fallout for following these rules extends far beyond loosing weight and living longer.  By reclaiming thoughtful preparation and communal time during meals we can strengthen relationships and nourish spirits as well as bodies.

Food Rules may not be the next panacea, but as far as a prescription for healthy living, you couldn't do better than to read this book.