Food Rules

Might I recommend a book for your consideration in this season of diet-starting and food-related resolution making?

Michael Pollan's Food Rules.

Says Pollan, "After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, I discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refined grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit."

Pollan's rules, which cover everything from quantity of food (not so much) to types of food (things that will rot, mostly plants, especially leaves) to when you should eat (when you're hungry, not when you're bored), are all rooted in common sense. Many of them feel like heirloom wisdom from your great grandmother. But they also seem sort of revelatory and fresh.
Pollan's simplicity and wit give the rules a catchy-ness that sticks. Rule 19, for example, has been in my mind since I read it: "If it came from a plant eat it. If it was made in a plant, do not."

Here's a little sampler to whet your appetite:

Rule 24 - 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 and pigs).

Rule 14 - Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature.

Rule 46 - Eat 'til your hunger is gone, not 'til you're full.

Food Rules. Good stuff. I think you'll love it.