Food Rules
Recently, I picked up Michael Pollan's Food Rules
from my library. It's basically a condensed version of In Defense of Food
...just the, "How then should I eat?" portion of the book.
It's a super-easy, super-quick read.
For those of you that haven't read In Defense of Food, Pollan says that one way we can be healthier is by eating real food, and this book is full of "rules" or guidelines to help you see what that might look like.
Here were a few of my favorites:
#10
Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they're not.
(Soy chicken nuggets would be an example of that.)
#13
Eat only food that will eventually rot.
#36
Don't eat cereals that change the color of the milk.
(This one made me laugh!)
#39
Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
(Potato chips and french fries and doughnuts are such a pain to make, you would eat them only rarely if you always had to cook them yourself.)
#56
Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods.
#63
Cook.
(So true. Cooking at home can do wonders for the healthfulness of a diet and it's pretty difficult to maintain a healthy diet without spending time in the kitchen.)
Even if you're already committed to healthful eating, this is a fun little book to read through, and if your inspiration to pursue healthy eating is lagging, Food Rules might give you a little kick in the pants. 😉
(Disclosure: I got this book from my library and am blogging about it of my own volition.)
In our house, we do follow a whole foods diet. And I believe it is healthier and more economical for us. I shop for ingredients, not finished products, for the most part.
But I also understand that there are times, for all of us, when our lives are too busy, or we're too ill, or we have too many responsibilities, that we just can't pull together a beautiful meal from scratch. So, we follow the 85/15 rule. 85% of the food we consume is very high quality, the other 15% we excuse ourselves, and try to make the best choices we can under the circumstances.
I would disagree, though, with rule number 56, eating only plant foods as your snacks. I frequently eat a couple of bites of meat, along with some veggies or fruit, as a snack. The quality protein keeps my blood sugar on an even keel in a way that just plant foods can't do.
I agree, actually. I think eating real, healthy food is an awesome goal, but I also know that almost none of us will manage to do that all of the time.
And I totally understand about the snacks too...I sometimes eat some cheese or leftover meat if I am starving in between meals. Of course, nuts are also a good way to get some protein in as a snack, and they're a plant food.
I think his point is just that if we snack on fruits, vegetables, (or other real foods, as you and I do), we're going to be healthier than if we snack on chips and sweets.
Totally agree! Maybe it's an age thing, but I just feel crummy if I'm snacking on stuff like chips, candy and desserts. One of my teen daughters is very concerned with sugar consumption for herself. I tell her to go by how her body feels. If carrot sticks and a dip of yogurt and salsa, or apples and peanut butter make her feel healthy then that's probably how she should be snacking. She doesn't like to snack on sugary things either. My other daughter -- now that's a whole different story! But gentle persuasion (and clever baking) has gotten her to snack more sensibly. Oh, the healthy things you can put in a muffin!
I love Michael Pollen's books. They really put things into perspective. Have you read Omnivores Dilemma yet? It's one of my favorites! 🙂
Yep, I finished it just a few weeks ago. It's a pretty hefty tome!
We are big fans of #56. Last year I made myself and family GF donuts for my birthday instead of cake. Fried and everything. Yum. Ice cream, cookies and even the occasional potato chips get eaten in our home, but I make them from scratch. You eat them way less and appreciate them so much more. Plus the taste is incredible.
Oops, I meant 39.
I'm not sure about #39, I could easily make homemade fries and homemade chocolate every day 🙂
But I definitely snack on apples, carrots and nuts, and I definitely cook. #10 is interesting to me as a former vegetarian and now gluten-free eater. You can follow both diets without including foods that are pretending to be other foods, but it's a lot more difficult.
I was thinking the same thing. If I ate all the baked goods wanted as long as I made them, I'd be eating half a batch of brownies a day, supplemented with a few cookies' worth of chocolate chip cookie dough. I make some awesome ice cream, too. All tasty, no chemical crud, but still not good for my health. I would be eating fewer crispy-fried foods but I don't think it would balance the volume of baked goods I'd be inhaling.
(Although, despite all my and CI's tinkering, box brownie mix is still better than homemade. So maybe it'd be a batch of JOY's blondies a day instead.)
WilliamB, the great brownie "boxed vs. scratch" dilemma is truly a to-each-his-own sort of thing. I actually love, love, love scratch brownies. I do mine in the microwave and slightly underbake them. Oh, they are so gooey and good. But I agree that boxed are different from scratch, and I've never been able to put my finger on what they use, or how they process their ingredients, to get them that texture.
Cook's Illustrated did a piece on brownies a while back, and even their tasters preferred the box ones in many cases. They found that manufacturers use forms of sugar and fat that aren't as available to the home baker, but I can't recall the details.
Sara - the key difference that CI highlights in that piece is the ratio of saturated fat to unsat fat. Homemade brownies are about 64% sat fat (from the butter) and 36% unsat; whereas box brownies are 29% sat fat and 71% unsat. They then tinkered with the butter/oil/chocolate/egg proportions to get the right ratio. But even when I follow CI's recipe exactly (which is hard for me to do!), they're not quite the dense, chewy brownies I like from the mix. Given what I do choose to make at home - such as pancetta and bacon - it's a little embarassing that I buy Pillsbury box brownie mix.
I've found that freezing my from scratch brownies gives them more of that chewy boxed texture. I don't know if that helps.
I literally gained weight (and lost it again later after they were gone) after we had a party for which we made the Barefoot Countess Outrageous brownies (hands down the best dense brownie recipe ever) and had most of the sheet left for about a (delicious) week. They weren't that difficult to make and that much butter and chocolate goes a long way for a long time... and tends to stick around after.
Oh my gosh, I feel exactly the same way about box brownies, and my foodie boyfriend thinks I'm crazy. It always seems like from-scratch brownies are not chewy enough and always taste more cocoa-ish than fudgey.
However! This recipe makes the best from-scratch brownies I've ever had: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2013/05/dave-and-kates-chocolate-brownies/
(Apologies to Michael Pollan for hijacking a post about his book on healthy eating with a brownie recipe!)
Yeah, I'm a sweets junkie who has no problem with #39- cooking is a passion and a stress release, and I'd no doubt still do it even if I didn't enjoy the fruits of my labor! It does feel different, though, eating stuff I've produced -even if it's too much- than it does when I dig into the store-bought goods. Maybe because I've at least had to exert some energy, creative and otherwise?
As for brownies- any of you ever tried the ones made with Nutella?
Your disclosure made me chuckle.
Rule #39 could get me in trouble, though, I can create some sinful junk foods pretty easily!
I laughed at the cereal one, that was one of our favorite things growing up, how Cocoa Pebbles gave you chocolate milk, what a treat! 😉 The color with fruity pebbles wasn't so pleasant, but we drank it anyway!
Love it! #39 works ... as long as you don't have a 15 year old son who loves to bake. Last week it was deep fried Newman-O's and doughnuts. Course we make our own lard from pig fat we get from a farmer. 😉
Sounds like book I'd like. I'll have to see if my library has it.
My favourite snack currently is muesli, Greek yoghurt and honey - mixed together. All rather calorific but real food!
these are definitely some of my own food rules! Would be fun to read the book though!
I just got this book from our library too! In fact, I was talking about it with my mother this morning! It is a good guide to simple yet smart rules of how to choose foods that nourish the body. I liked #2 "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."
I´m not sure what to think of #10... sure, trying to imitate the exact same taste and look of some other food would probably require additives in a lot of cases. Still, I think there is a number of perfectly healthy dishes that "pretend" to be something else, such as veggie spaghetti, veggie "schnitzel", tofu, etc. Why not eat it just because someone named it after another food item?
Great rules! I also like the 85/15 idea.
I would like to add to #13 - honey is the only "real food" that never spoils.
Great post! I in particularly like 13 and 39, they hold very much true and if you do that you can definitely remove some fatty intake from your system.
Ohh I loved this booklet. Had to keep myself from writing it all down!
Currently, I am reading Cooked, his new book. Love that as well! He gets his hands dirty in this one.
I want to read that one...the hold long is line at my library, though!
I can whip up a batch of homemade french fries in no time! And a pan of from scratch brownies too! Or some chocolate chip cookies! And...I think I'm getting hungry for some junk food! Maybe we'll have french fries and brownies with our ham for supper tonight! 🙂
When we first got married, my husband tried to convince me that we ought to buy a Fry Daddy. If you are not familiar, this is a deep fat fryer that lives on your countertop. The oil stays in the fryer between uses, thus making deep frying much more convenient, less expensive, and less messy. His argument was that it would then be so easy to fry things! I said, Exactly!
I have a general rule that I do not deep fry things. I break this rule a few times a year on special occasions. Currently, I find it a huge pain and I don't want to get good at it.
I also find it helps to keep down junk food consumption if you read up about chocolate slavery. Fairly traded chocolate is way more expensive, so I find myself making brownies and chocolate chip cookies much less often.
So, in reading this over, I guess I use a combination of inconvenience and guilt to keep our junk food consumption down.
I've often thought the same thing about those...I like that it's a pain in the rear to deep fat fry things, because then I am not at all tempted to do it regularly!
I live in Walnut Creek, CA and our library's Speaker Series is hosting Michael Pollan this month. Tickets were only $12 and it's completely sold out! I can't wait!!!
I have wanted to read this book, but it is always checked out. Thanks for the summary. The rule that helps me the most is fixing your junk food at home. I love my sweets and this helps cut back on them, because I don't like to cook that much.
I have yet to read any of this books. I've seen a documentary and a few interview he has done. I have him on my reading list, other books somehow seem to jump in front of him. My family follows a lot of the rules he talks about. Eat more whole foods and less process crap
I haven't read Michael Pollan's books, but we adhere to Dr. Cate Shannahan's "Food Rules" book (except that I don't eat grains with the rest of the family). She has very good, common sense rules for real, whole food which minimizes toxins and inflammatory agents. I'm guessing that many of her rules overlap with Pollan's except that grass fed meat, wild caught fish, and raw, pastured dairy are encouraged.
Can I use number #39 as justification to purchase an ice cream maker this summer?
Um, no. =P
One can be eating healthy, and at one point read something like this and realize - there's so much that is logical, but I never thought about it.
Such great advice, thank you for sharing!