What I Learned Today: In Defense of Food II

If you find the quantity and variety of available nutritional advice frustrating, find relief in Michael Pollan’s simplified rules: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.

In the last 50 pages of In Defense of Food, he parses this guidance into an only slightly more complicated algorithm, the highlights of which are:

  • Avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number or that include high-fructose corn syrup. I’ve been unable to find any bread in the supermarket that meets these criteria; the Whole Grain White Bread Pollan excoriates in the book contains over forty ingredients.
  • Avoid food products that make health claims. The AHA seal of approval decorates the packaging of Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs and Trix, yet no sane person would consider these to be healthy breakfast options.
  • Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle. Meaning, stick to minimally-processed produce, meat, dairy and the like.

I’ve taken a few steps in this direction recently, and I may become even more drastic by going to farmers markets.

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Published:
6.8.08 / 4pm
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