Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: A Review
This little book is an excellent beginner’s guide to eating. If you are overweight or have been dieting for years, you have probably determined that there is no instant cure for what you have been doing for the past countless years. What Pollan does is give you fast rules to follow that will take you as far, if not further, than many diets. Muffin lids and spare tires may look trendy, but they’re not very attractive or healthy. If you have them now in your twenties or thirties, it becomes even more difficult to lose them as you get older. Therefore, there is no time like the present to read this little book to get you started.
As a curious journalist, Pollan has written several books on food, including In defense of food, The omnivore’s dilemma and Cooked. Try checking out one from a local library and by this time next year, you might get a call to tell you to pick it up or download it. This little book may be the only thing this author has available for free, and it’s a good start.
Nutrition is a relatively new science. Food companies want you to be their guinea pigs and try their new foods that are sure to be “healthy” in one respect or another. By focusing on one item, vitamin, or nutrient at a time, they ignore other ingredients that are harmful and, as a result, perpetuate confusion and poor health. Therefore, food companies and the medical community are making a fortune at your expense. The only sure thing is that by eating highly processed foods, you are most likely obese, diabetic, and prone to heart disease and cancer. That is the result of the American diet.
Pollan sums it up with “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” But it gives you 64 rules to guide you to that conclusion. One rule in particular behind it is Rule 12 “Shop on the periphery of the supermarket and stay out of the way.” That’s another way of saying eat fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, and dairy and avoid processed foods.
So before you go on a diet, make a record of what you are currently eating, follow the Pollan rules, and see if that doesn’t make a difference. If you think that eating healthy may cost a little more, it is much cheaper than what you will pay the medical community if you do not make any changes.
