In Defense of Eating

Michael Pollan's work has been to illuminate the food culture that Americans are currently mired in. My first encounter with him was in Food Rules.  In addition to Food Rules, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food round out his works on what and how we should go about eating. The latter two are both groundbreaking in the way they look at the mistakes we have made as a culture and society when it comes to eating.

I have recently completed In Defense of Food (and only just started Omnivore's Dilemma).  There was one thing that jumped out to me beyond the general advice on how to eat healthy.  Which was: eat—enjoy eating—eat for pleasure. The idea that food should be delicious and pleasurable balks at a national consciousness that still holds a Puritanical definition of gluttony. We fuel ourselves like we fuel our cars; if we are responsible, we take into account chemical composition and environmental impact.

Turns out, when you strip away culture and flavor and tradition you aren't left with food at all. Our culture has experts and scientists telling us what to eat. No other culture in history needed that. They knew what to eat because their parents knew.  Michael Pollan dwells a lot on this idea.  Culture and tradition are important to health.  So are family and connecting to food beyond items in a grocery store.

But the immediate take away lesson for me was pleasure.  Americans have a hard time eating less. Each new "super food" is simply added to the diet without removing something else.  But there is something everyone can do the next time, and every time, they eat.  Enjoy yourself.  Make something you love. [OK, learning curve here, but when you start to see cooking as a vehicle for the pleasure of eating it's less odious to take the time to learn a few new skills.] Sit down at a table with a few friends and a bottle of something else you love. And enjoy.

It turns out, the more you savor your food the less of it you eat before you start to feel full.  And if you plan on savoring food, you aren't like to buy something that becomes inedible if not eaten in the first thirty seconds (I'm looking at you, McDonald's fries).  Diets are something we dread. Eating for pleasure becomes an adventure, takes the fear out of eating.

It is all we need to be healthy? No. But it's a start. And it may be the most fun you ever have with a diet.

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.