Michael Pollen's 64 food rules from his little book "Food Rules". 
www.michaelpollan.com
 

1. Eat food
2. Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food
3. Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry
4. Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup
5. Avoid food products that have some form of sugar (or sweetener listed among) the top three ingredients
6. Avoid food products that have more than 5 ingredients
7. Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce
8. Avoid food products that make health claims
9. Avoid food products with the wordoid 'lite' or the terms 'low fat' or 'nonfat' in their names
10. Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not
11. Avoid foods you see advertised on television
12. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle
13. Eat only foods that will eventually rot
14. Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature
15. Get out of the supermarket whenever you can
16. Buy your snacks at the farmers market
17. Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans
18. Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap
19. If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
20. It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car
21. It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language (Think Big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles)
22. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves
23. Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food
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, pigs and other mammals].
25. Eat your colors
26. Drink the spinach water
27. Eat animals that have themselves eaten well
28. If you have space, buy a freezer
29. Eat like an omnivore
30. Eat well-grown food from healthy soil
31. Eat wild foods when you can
32. Don’t overlook the oily little fishes

33. Eat some foods that have been predigested by bacterial or fungi
34. Sweeten and salt your food yourself
35. Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature
36. Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk
37. The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead
38. Favor the kinds of oils and grains that have traditionally been stone-ground
39. Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself
40. Be the kind of person who takes supplements . then skip the supplements
41. Eat more lie the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.
42. Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism
43. Have a glass of wine with dinner
44. Pay more, eat less
45. Eat less
46. Stop eating before you’re full
47. Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored
48. Consult your gut
49. Eat slowly
50. The banquet is in the first bite
51. Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it
52. Buy smaller plates and glasses
53. Serve a proper portion and don’t go back for seconds
54. Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like pauper
55. Eat meals
56. Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods
57. Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does
58. Do all your eating at a table
59. Try not to eat alone
60. Treat treats as treats
61. Leave something on your plate
62. Plant a vegetable garden if you have space, a window box if you don’t
63. Cook
64. Break the rules once in a while

Bad fat [solid at room temp = meat,milk,butter,cheese.. the more, the more heart disease
Meat fish veg fruit ...grains...nuts
Eat food, mostly plants, not too much
Cuisine_of_the_United_States

Rule 46: Stop eating before you’re full.
Apparently, a bunch of cultures have traditions of advising their members to stop eating at somewhere between 67 percent and 80 percent of fullness, and Mr. Pollan thinks we ought to join them.
This makes sense especially when you think of eating until you feel full, only to be full to the point of bursting later, once all that food has really settled in your belly. Hey - if you can stop before you’re completely full, it’s like making your own lap band diet!
Rule 47: Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
Don’t "eat your feelings," as a friend of mine likes to say. Yeah.
The grandma quotation in this rule is, "If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re not hungry." I don’t see follow-up commentary about if you are hungry enough to eat an apple dutifully, followed by a large bag of potato chips.
But anyway, you know what you should do, and maybe picturing Michael Pollan watching you break the rule will motivate you not to do it.
Rule 48: Consult your gut.
How does he know my gut is large enough that it has a bit of a personality and might in fact offer an opinion here and there?
Oh ... he just means you should wait 20 minutes while you’re eating to see if your stomach is reporting that it is full. Don’t allow your eyes to be bigger than your stomach - don’t rely on cues other than whether you are actually hungry or actually satiated to motivate you to eat or not.

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Many of the rules in American food writer Michael Pollan’s new book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual are so obvious, you wonder why he bothered to compile them for us.
Presumably everybody already follows Rule 1, Eat food, and Rule 63, Cook - right?
Wrong. These 2006 statistics (which may not take into account recent upward trends) prove that they don’t:
One in four Americans eat fast food daily;
67% of American adults are considered overweight or obese; and
18% of American adolescents are considered obese.

If you, like Pollan, believe that fast food is not food but rather an "edible foodlike substance" (or that KFC is not actually chicken), then you can safely assume that many people are not eating food, let alone cooking it. Digesting ‘Food Rules’
Pollan is well known for having popularised awareness about the consequences of the industrial food system in his decisive and detailed Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006).
His motivation in releasing this accessible pocket-sized paperback reflects the importance of educating a wider (no pun intended) American audience about food. To do this, he called on the US public to help him by sharing their own food rules. Thousands of responses flooded in from which Pollan compiled the 64 best food rules into one book of three parts:
1) What should I eat? (Answer: Eat food);
2) What kind of food should I eat? (Answer: Mostly plants); and,
3) How should I eat? (Answer: not too much).
Pollan’s quest in Food Rules is to help people "tell the real food from the edible foodlike substances you want to avoid". He tries to, where possible, offer this guidance while steering clear of the complex scientific jargon of the nutrition science he distrusts.
The key to this challenge of distinguishing between ‘food’ and ‘foodlike’ is to follow Rule 15: "Get out of the supermarket whenever you can". This requires buying out of an entrenched industrial food chain and the ‘Western diet’. For those who trust ‘the system’ and their government’s ability to ensure food safety, many of Pollan’s rules will sound radical. Rule 8, "Avoid food products that make health claims", and Rule 11, "Avoid foods you see advertised on television", imply that the main players - government, food companies and the media - cannot be trusted. Is he right? Our food is cheap, convenient and always available - what is there not to trust?
While Pollan might seem like an idealist, he is in fact a realist. He favours balance ahead of fanaticism. He uses simple messages and encouraging language to communicate. Rule 22, "Eat mostly plants, especially leaves", is as simple as you can get. This is at the heart of his response to the basic and frequent question of "what to eat".
Even the most cynical readers will appreciate Rule 43: "Have a glass of wine with dinner."
Pollan, deliberately avoiding the compromised word ‘organic’, asks us to "Eat well-grown food from healthy soil" (Rule 30). These sorts of rules sound like something your great-grandmother would have said. No surprise there, seeing as how Rule 2 is "Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food". Surely, Pollan implies in of all his writing, we can learn a lot from 10,000 years of agricultural history?
For those who love treats, more than healthy eats, it is not all bad news. Even the most cynical readers will appreciate Rule 43: "Have a glass of wine with dinner". Yet it, like all the others rules, works better the more of the other rules you follow.
What’s food security got to do with it?
Healthy eating is not just about our health as individuals. Despite writing for an American audience and sticking closely to eating principles instead of parochial political statements, Pollan deserves credit for his grasp of the catastrophic impacts that the ‘Western diet’ has, usually on ecosystems in the Global South.
However, he doesn’t deal with this aggressively or even overtly through pushy language. Rather, his approach seems to be that saving the planet can be a by-product of encouraging people to be healthy. After all, the quickest way to get through to a man, or woman’s heart, is through their stomach.
Take Rule 23: "Eat meat as a flavouring or special occasion food". This won’t sit well with many people but, by drawing attention to the health impacts of excessive (often antibiotic-injected) meat, he appeals to people’s self-interest and not their sense of guilt in relation to the deforestation caused by raising cattle. Likewise with Rule 32, "Don’t overlook the oily little fishies", Pollan warns us off the depleted stocks of larger fish - such as blue fin tuna and swordfish - by citing the high levels of mercury they contain.
Although, by not moralising about the environmental consequences of our food (or foodlike) choices, he will disappoint some, Pollan is not trying to win a popularity contest by telling us what we want to hear.
By his own admission, certain rules - like 44, "Pay more, eat less", and 45 "Eat less" - will be unwelcome advice. Sadly, eating that is healthier for the earth, society and body, is often considered expensive and elitist, rather than something the human species has pursued successfully for millenia.
Still, Pollan believes firmly in the idea that low cost food has a high price.
"There’s no escaping the fact that better food - measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) - costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care."
From there, eating better food leads naturally to eating less food, Pollan claims.
"If higher quality food tastes better, you will need less of it to feel satisfied. Choose quality over quantity, food experience over mere calories".
But don’t take Pollan’s word for it alone. Instead, in his words, after you switch from sugary white bread to nutritious and filling whole grains (Rule 37), "Consult your gut" (Rule 48) to see if he is right. Fat-bottomed world
Food Rules can be a restorative tool for millions of Americans who need to transform their eating habits. It is also a useful preparatory guide for readers located (mainly) in developing countries further behind in the fat race. We would be naive to think that the problem of eating beyond our means is isolated to countries like the US, UK and Australia.
Obesity, influenced heavily by people’s bad food choices, is a worldwide phenomenon. In fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 2.3 billion adults across the globe will be overweight or obese by 2015, while at the other end of the scale, 1 billion people are undernourished.
That Pollan and other lesser known food writers before feel driven to write guides like Food Rules is a sad indictment of the lack of respect we have for our food, our environment and ultimately our own bodies.
While most of Pollan’s conventions are hard to dispute, Rule 41 - "Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks" - may be a little romantic. The propensity for people, especially youngsters, from respected food cultures like France to eat more fast food and less real food is disturbing. Perhaps the rule should be "Eat more like the French used to...".
Food-losophy
It is not until you arrive at Pollan’s final rule that you truly appreciate his philosophy and underlying intentions for spelling out the rules of food.
Rule 64: "Break the rules once in a while," he recommends.
This might seem contradictory in a book comprised of rules. What Pollan is really getting at, however, is that eating food should not be a complex scientific procedure.
"Our experience over the past few decades suggests that dieting and worrying too much about nutrition has made us no healthier or slimmer; cultivating a relaxed attitude towards food is important," he says.
All Pollan’s rules point towards the widely held belief that we should and can easily eat as naturally, locally, seasonally and fairly as possible, as often as possible. That he, and other lesser-known food writers before him, feel driven to write guides like ‘Food Rules’ is a sad indictment of the lack of respect we have for our food, our environment and ultimately our own bodies.
Readers of Pollan’s other works will not learn anything new in Food Rules. But they will have a handy set of instructions to pass onto those who do not know as much about the high cost of low price food. This good book, like good food, is an investment worth making.

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Michael Pollan: Three Simple Rules for Eating
Eve Adamson
Is Michael Pollan America’s sweetheart? People love to talk about his pithy pronouncements on how we should eat. At least where I live, he’s the subject of many a conversation at parties, in bars, in restaurants, in book groups. People mention him with reverence. He’s like a 21st-century E.F. Hutton. When Michael Pollan speaks...people listen. When he gives lectures, it’s standing room only. Food and diet book writers quote him constantly, and some even admit that he’s their celebrity crush.
I’ve seen him speak, and while he’s articulate and intelligent, he’s no George Clooney. I wasn’t weak in the knees or anything. I suspect his wide appeal is probably an indication of how confused everybody is about food, and how much we love it when people make it very clear to us what we should and shouldn’t eat.
Then again, if this is true, why is it that, once we know how to eat, we don’t do it? One of Michael Pollan’s most famous quotes is a simple one, but it tells you everything you ever need to know about eating. Practicing it would render weight-loss diets irrelevant, positively impact the environment, champion local food producers, and bring the processed food industry to its knees. You’ve probably heard it before. You may have even quoted it to your friends. It’s just this:
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
So simple, so clean, so memorable...and so hard to do! But why? What’s so difficult about embracing these three uncomplicated concepts, when they could have such a positive effect on personal and global health? Let’s break it down. Maybe we can find some answers.
Eat food.

When Michael Pollan says, "Eat food," what he means is, "Eat real food," as in food that is unprocessed and doesn’t come from a factory. It sounds so simple, and yet, when you look at the snack you’re about to eat, it can be difficult to decide whether or not Michael Pollan (should he suddenly burst into your kitchen) would sign off on it as food.
Is Greek yogurt mixed with bran cereal and raisins food? Although the components of this snack come in packages and could be considered processed, of course, it’s food. Arguably, an organic apple and a handful of raw walnuts might be more "real." But in our current, complicated world, "food" exists on a spectrum, from just-out-of-the-garden to "is-that-actually-edible?" If you’re too strict with yourself about, say, packaging or processing, you probably won’t stick to your resolve when hunger hits and your fresh produce has rotted in your crisper and all you can find to eat is something that comes in a package.
So what to do? Eat the foods you want to eat that are, in general, closest to the way you might encounter them at their source. Instead of always making the best choice, just make the better choice. Greek yogurt looks a lot more like milk than bright orange chips look like an ear of corn. I think Michael Pollan would agree.
Not too much.
Wouldn’t it be funny if everybody decided to practice these three words and just stop eating too much? The diet industry would collapse! (Wait, that wouldn’t be funny. I write diet books for a living, so I’d be out of a job!) Unfortunately eating "not too much" is a lot harder than it sounds.
We’re biochemically primed to eat, and to enjoy it. While this biochemistry undoubtedly led us to a more balanced diet when we were hunters and gatherers, it doesn’t necessarily lead us to great eating in today’s world. When we eat too many simple carbohydrates, we get a blood sugar spike, and then an insulin spike and a blood sugar crash, and the result is that we’re hungry again, even though we just ate. Many processed foods kick-start this reaction, making moderation and portion control goals seem insurmountable. So what’s an aspiring Pollan fan to do?
Two things. First, eat some protein with every meal and snack, especially if you’re also eating starchy or sugary foods like bread, pasta, or fruit. This won’t necessarily stop you from overeating ever again, but it will help slow the blood sugar roller coaster, dulling that frantic "gotta eat more" feeling. With breakfast, add an egg, some tofu, yogurt, or some protein powder (in a smoothie or your oatmeal). Add nuts, cheese, or a little bit of meat to your snacks. The same goes for lunch and dinner. Beans, lentils, peas, lean meats, low-fat dairy products...you don’t have to overdo it (but make sure it’s always there).
Second, switch most or all of your grain foods to whole grains. Whole grain breads, pastas, cereals, and snack foods contain more fiber and nutrients, so you’ll be satisfied with less. Protein + wholegrain = eating "not too much," without feeling deprived. We can do that, right? Mostly plants.
Don’t worry. Michael Pollan doesn’t want you to live on lettuce alone. He knows how much you love him, and he wants you to be happy. All he’s saying with his "mostly plants" advice is that we can benefit from eating more plant foods, aka vegetables and fruits and whole grains-you know, food (see item #1).
While some people take this all the way and eat only plants, (and that’s great too), Michael Pollan’s just saying that a plant-based diet is the best diet. Plant foods are the richest, most bountiful sources of vitamins and minerals as well as fiber. They contain hundreds of thousands of phytochemicals, and many of these contain disease-fighting properties that a laboratory can’t duplicate. Just about anybody can add more plants to their plate. Add a fruit to breakfast, a leafy green and one other vegetable to lunch, and a leafy green and three other vegetables to dinner. Plus, whatever else you want to eat, because it’s your dinner, and you should enjoy it.
So why not jump in? Just do a little better than you did yesterday. It’s not so hard when you recognize that you don’t have to be perfect. Michael Pollan doesn’t expect you to be perfect, and he’s not judging you. He can’t even see you. I promise. Just try to eat as much real food as you can, and try not to eat too much of it, and try to eat mostly plants. It’s easier than you think and the more you do it, the easier it gets.

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Never eat something that is pretending to be something else.
If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you are not hungry.
The Chinese have a saying: "Eat until you are seven-tenths full and save the other three-tenths for hunger." That way, food always tastes good, and you don't eat too much.

Still, eating really doesn't have to be all that difficult, and shouldn't necessarily require so many rules—which is where the next-to-final rule on the list comes in:

After spending some time working with people with eating disorders, I came up with this rule: "Don't create arbitrary rules for eating if their only purpose is to help you feel in control." I try to eat healthfully, but if there's a choice between eating ice cream and spending all day obsessing about eating ice cream, I'm going to eat the ice cream!



Amen. Still, if you've got your own rules of thumb for making sure you're sticking to a healthy, balanced diet (maybe you subscribe to Pollan's simple "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." mantra), let's hear it in the comments.

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I t can be complicated to simplify things, but sometimes we need to be reminded of the essentials. Michael Pollan's done just that with his new book, Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. After researching The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (2008), Pollan came to an important realization: "The deeper I delved into the confused and confusing thicket of nutritional science, sorting through long-running fats versus carb wars, the fiber skirmishes and the raging dietary supplement debates, the simpler the picture gradually became," he writes in Food Rules.

The simple picture, he says, can be distilled into two facts that will lead to a sensible diet: First, the Western diet leads to Western diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. "Four of the top ten killers in America are chronic diseases that can be linked to this diet," Pollan claims. Second, people throughout the world who eat a range of traditional diets, even those heavy in fats, carbohydrates, or protein, don't suffer from these diseases. Thankfully, Pollan offers a third fact derived from these two: If we get away from the Western diet, we can see dramatic improvements in our health and reduce the risk of chronic diet-related diseases.

Epicurious spoke with Pollan about Food Rules and how its prescription for eating "real food" in moderation and sidestepping the Western diet developed naturally from the author's mantra in his In Defense of Food: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Epicurious: If The Omnivore's Dilemma is an eater's manifesto, did you write Food Rules as a guide to putting the manifesto into practice? Michael Pollan: That's the basic idea. After reading In Defense of Food, several doctors told me, "I've got patients I'd like to give the background to, just a list of rules." People were sending me their own rules, and I set up a Web site where they could post them . .There was that repository of wisdom about food out there that we didn't have. I've compiled information from doctors, anthropologists, folklorists, and more.

Quirky Food Rules

Rule 20: It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car.
Rule 21: It's not food if it's called by the same name in every language (think Big Mac, Cheetos, or Pringles).
Rule 26: Drink the spinach water.
Rule 32: Don't overlook the oily little fishes.
Rule 36: Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
Rule 57: Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does.
Epi: Do you have a favorite Food Rule?
MP: It changes, but probably, "Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself." And this one's weird because it's so blunt: "The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead."
Epi: The Food Rules are very simple though not always easy to act on. Which rule is most difficult for you to follow?
MP: I don't have much trouble with them, but if I had to name one, probably Number 46, "Stop eating before you're full." That's a challenge for Americans, who've been trained to eat till they're full and finish what's on their plate.
Epi: A related rule, "Leave something on your plate," surprised me. Isn't waste against the principles of ethical eating? Wouldn't it be better to simply shrink portions to eat less?
MP: It's a form of self-discipline, instead of your plate dictating when you're full. I'm talking about a bite or two, not leaving a big pile of food.
Epi: Do you think there's hope for improving the Western diet, or are we too far gone?
MP: I think there's hope as we're starting to recognize the toll this diet takes: One third of the population is now obese; there are soaring rates of Type 2 diabetes. Eating this way is going to bankrupt the country. The same kind of feedback on smoking changed our habits, and the smoking rate has gone down significantly; we're on course for that kind of change in food.
Epi: Do you worry about the government getting too involved in policy about our food?
MP: There's always the potential for the government to do it badly, but they are already involved in agricultural policies, school nutrition, and other areas. In fact, a lot of what we're dealing with are the unintended consequences of government policies such as subsidies that can be changed.
Epi: Are you seeing any changes as a result of The Omnivore's Dilemma and Robert Kenner's documentary Food, Inc.? Are consumers demanding that corn and its by-products not be added to every food, that chicken factories be shut down, for example?
MP: Lots has changed since 2006: Hundreds of products are being reformulated without high-fructose corn syrup, for one thing. Local food is taking off, and the market for pastured meat and milk has grown enormously.
Epi: What would be your last meal?
MP: Hmmm. Roast chicken, preferably pastured, with roasted vegetables, eaten very slowly. That's probably my favorite dinner. And if there's ever a time for slow food .
Epi: Who are your food heroes?
MP: Alice Waters, Dan Barber, Joel Salatin, Eliot Coleman, Fred Kirschenmann, Joan Gussow, and Marion Nestle. I've learned immense amounts from these people.
Epi: If you could choose four dining companions (besides your family), who would they be?
MP: Barack and Michelle, and we'd talk about some of the issues surrounding food and farming in America. We'd eat salad from the White House garden. I need four people? Well, let's include Sasha and Malia. Kids have to be in on this conversation, too.
Epi: Do you have another food topic you're itching to write about?
MP: Yes, I want to write about cooking. My research has convinced me cooking is an important part of the solution. It's the only way to take back our diet from the big companies. http://www.epicurious.com/archive/chefsexperts/interviews/michaelpollaninterview

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Author Michael Pollan offers 64 ways to eat healthy
Feb. 16, 2010

By now, most everyone knows Michael Pollan's seven-word eating directive:

"Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much."

He wrote a whole book around this philosophy, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" (Penguin, 2008), a follow-up to his bestselling 2006 tome, "The Omnivore's Dilemma."

Late last year he boiled down his eater's how-to into a slim paperback called "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual," 64 short, sometimes flip Pollanisms that on the face of it mostly make sense but that, if taken too seriously, can drive you to the nearest confessional for a purging of past eating sins - or make you reluctant to ever set foot again in an American restaurant or supermarket.

I read it. Three times. It's a fast skim.

I came away feeling pretty good about the diet I already follow, but alternately intrigued, amused, annoyed, baffled or charmed by its pages. As I suspect most ordinary Americans would.

I was intrigued by rules like No. 21: "It's not food if it's called by the same name in every language. (Think Big Mac, Chee-tos or Pringles.)" Hadn't thought of that before, though I'm not convinced it's 100% true.

And by No. 52: "Buy smaller plates and glasses." Switching from 12- to 10-inch plates, one researcher found, caused people to eat 22% less.

I was amused by rules like No. 51: "Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it." Ha - has Pollan ever spent three hours making dinner? How about those times when I microwave a plate of leftovers? (But I get his point.)

I was annoyed by the frequently elitist oversimplification ("If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't") and the unrealistic nature of some of his rules, such as "Eat wild foods when you can."

And I was baffled by statements like this: "Vegetarians are notably healthier than carnivores, and they live longer."

Really? Longer than my meat-eating grandma, who died a month short of 100? Let's remember, vegetarians can eat poorly, too. I know some who do.

But I was charmed by rules like "Eat your colors" and "Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself" - and whenever Pollan invoked ancient proverbs or grandma wisdom.

For example:

"The banquet is in the first bite." (i.e., don't overeat)

"A land with lots of herring can get along with few doctors." (i.e., eat oily fishes high in omega-3s)

"Eating what stands on one leg is better than eating what stands on two legs, which is better than eating what stands on four legs." (A Chinese proverb that basically means plants are healthier than poultry, which is better than beef and pork.)

This look back reinforces, for me, that none of what Pollan says is really, truly new. It's just new packaging for the times we live in.
My least favorite section of the book is the first, in which Pollan tells us largely what not to eat. His forbidden list includes: foods you see advertised on television, food products with more than five ingredients, those with high-fructose corn syrup. The negativity is disquieting; perhaps in part because it's a reminder of how many highly processed foods we have access to in our culture.

But it's the very idea of rules that gives me the most pause.

Many of us have been down this rule-rutted road. I once went through a phase when I wouldn't eat potatoes because I viewed them as fattening.

For a time I used only honey as a sweetener, only whole-wheat flour in baking; and I let no refined grain products into my house.

Too many rules are a set-up for failure, and worse, they're a clear culprit on the path to the far more serious problem of eating disorders.

In all fairness, Pollan does allow for exceptions, and he acknowledges that obsessing over food is "bad for your happiness and probably for your health, too."

He leaves room for occasional treats, he advocates wine with dinner.

His last rule, No. 64, not surprisingly, is among my favorites, an "ism" I never have any trouble following, at the dinner table or anywhere else: "Break the rules once in a while."
RULES TO EAT BY
Here's a sampling of the 64 rules in Michael Pollan's paperback book "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual."

Eat like an omnivore (in other words, a wide variety of foods).

Treat treats as treats.

Eat slowly.

Do all your eating at a table.

Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.

Eat meals (and not snacks).

Have a glass of wine with dinner.

Cook. Nancy J. Stohs is food editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. E-mail her at nstohs@journalsentinel.com.

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Real Food Defined (The Rules)

What you CAN eat:


Whole foods that are more a product of nature than a product of industry
Lots of fruits and vegetables (we recommend that you shop for these at your local farmers’ market)
Dairy products like milk, unsweetened yogurt, eggs, and cheese
100% whole-wheat and whole-grains (find a local bakery for approved sandwich bread and check the Understanding Grains post for more info)
Seafood (wild caught is the optimal choice over farm-raised)
Only locally raised meats such as pork, beef, and chicken (preferably in moderation)
Beverages limited to water, milk, all natural juices, naturally sweetened coffee & tea, and, to help the adults keep their sanity, wine and beer!
Snacks like dried fruit, seeds, nuts and popcorn
All natural sweeteners including honey, 100% maple syrup, and fruit juice concentrates are acceptable in moderation
Also check out the Recipes & Resources page for a more detailed list of meal options including links to recipes
What you CANNOT eat:

No refined grains such as white flour or white rice (items containing wheat must say WHOLE wheat . not just "wheat")
No refined sweeteners such as sugar, any form of corn syrup, cane juice, or the artificial stuff like Splenda
Nothing out of a box, can, bag, bottle or package that has more than 5 ingredients listed on the label
No deep fried foods
No "fast foods" Please leave a reply below if you have any questions about what is okay to eat during your pledge.

How to Avoid Processed Food in General

If you feel that you have the will, but not the skill to do the 10 Days of Real Food pledge then here are some general lifestyle changes to consider instead .

Read the ingredients label before buying anything. For years, if I even looked at food labels, I was reviewing items such as fat grams, calorie count and sugar content. While this may be important to some, the best indicator of how highly processed a food is can actually be found in the list of ingredients. If what you are buying contains more than 5 ingredients and includes a lot of unfamiliar, unpronounceable items you may want to reconsider before buying.

Increase your consumption of whole foods especially vegetables and fruits. I am sure you’ve heard similar advice a thousand times, and I hate to tell you that it couldn’t be more true. This will help to displace the processed foods in your diet, and will actually make your food selections in general very simple. No more counting calories, fat grams, or carbs when your only concern is selecting whole foods that are more a product of nature than a product of industry.

Buy your bread from a local bakery. I actually used to eat white bread, but what I bought for my husband from the grocery store was what I thought was whole-wheat bread. When we finally checked the ingredients and found 40 different items on the list, including white flour and sugar, we decided it was time for a change. Why would there be so many on the list if it only takes a handful of ingredients to make bread? We since started buying our bread from Great Harvest Bread Company. Not only do they grind their own wheat every morning, but their honey whole-wheat loaf only has five ingredients - whole-wheat flour, water, yeast, salt and honey.

In addition to your bread choice, when selecting foods like pastas, cereals, rice, and crackers always go for the whole-grain option. And don’t just believe the health claims on the outside of the box. Read the ingredients to make sure the product is truly made with only 100% whole grains - not a combination of whole grains and refined grains which is unfortunately how a lot of "whole grain" products are made. The white flour or other refined grain alternative is simply high in calories and low in nutrition.

Avoid store-bought products containing high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and those "that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients" according to Michael Pollan. Despite the mixed research on if HFCS is really worse for you than good ol’ white sugar, it just happens to be "a reliable marker for a food product that has been highly processed".

Don’t order off the kids’ menu. The next time your family is out to dinner try to avoid the kids menu. Those selections are most often things like pre-made chicken nuggets, fries, and pasta made with white flour, among other things. Instead try assembling some sort of side item plate (like baked potatoes and whatever else your kid will tolerate) and/or try sharing some of your meal.

Visit your local farmers’ market the next time you need to restock your fridge. According to Michael Pollan not only will you find "food that is in season, which is usually when it is most nutritious", but you will also find a selection of pesticide-free produce and properly fed meat products. It is also better for our environment to purchase locally grown products as opposed to the supermarket produce, which travels on average 1500 miles from the farm to your plate.

Lastly, to once again quote Michael Pollan, he says to "eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself." If you had to peel, chop and deep fry potatoes every time you wanted French fries then you might not eat them very often. Only eating "junk food" such as cakes, sweets, and fried foods as often as you are willing to make them yourself will automatically ensure the frequency is appropriate.

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Rules of Thumb for Eating "Food" from Michael Pollan*



Eat food and not food products - If it comes in a bag, box or can, it is highly processed, avoid it.

Don’t eat anything your great grand mother wouldn’t recognize as food.

Avoid foods products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number, or that include d) high-fructose corn syrup

Avoid food products that make health claims. - When Whole Grain Lucky Charms starts making health claims, it’s time to start ignoring health claims. When was the last time you saw a health claim on an apple? But there they sit, ever so quiet, in the produce section!

Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle. - This is where you find the meat department, the dairy and produce sections. The middle of the store is where the processed food products are located, i.e. anything in a bag, box or can, often seen with FDA approved health claims.

Get out of the supermarket whenever possible - Seek out locally grown organic food, picked at the peak of freshness. Join a CSA (community supported agriculture) program. Buy food at farmers markets. Reconnect with the land and the growers of your food. You will be reducing your environmental carbon footprint and reducing the use of toxic pesticides and fertilizers on the land. Growing food commercially in this country consumes 20% of our nations’ fossil fuels (fossil fuel based fertilizers/pesticides, farm equipment machinery, transportation/shipping, and processing), MORE than what we put into our cars!

Eat local foods that are in season: Do you really need to eat asparagus flown in from Argentina and grapes flown in from Chile in the wintertime? These foods are "soaked" in fossil fuels . Again, reduce your carbon footprint!

Eat mostly plants, especially leaves (and much fewer seeds) - Seeds are storehouses for omega-6 fats, while leaves are high in omega-3 fats. The average American consumes 10-30 times more omega-6 fats than omega-3 fats. Omega-6 fats are pro-inflammatory, pro-cancer, pro-arthritis. Omega-3’s do the opposite.

Pay more for food. - In 1960 Americans spent 17.5% of their income on food and 5.2% on healthcare. Since then, those numbers have reversed: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9% and healthcare has climbed to 16% of national income. One can’t help but think that these parameters are linked together.

Eat less - There is no money in the message "eat less" in our society. Our agricultural system for over 100 years has devoted its energies to quantity and price rather than quality. Dollar for dollar, you get more calorie bang for you buck in the snack aisle, than in the produce section.

Eat meals together, not alone. - We are snacking more and eating fewer meals together, which leads to over consumption, loss of culture, and a lack of social family time together.

Do all your eating at your table. - Your office desk is not a table. One fifth of our meals are eaten in the car and now 50% of our eating is done out of the home.

Eat slowly, consult your gut. - Your sense of fullness or satiety is a slow signal process from your stomach to your brain, taking about 20 minutes. Don’t rely on your eyes to tell you when your full. i.e., "My plate is empty." Listen to your gut. The French are better at this than us. When researchers asked French diners how they knew when to stop eating, they replied, "When I feel full." When Americans were asked the same question they said: "when my plate is clean or when I run out."

Cook and, if you can, plant a garden - Food marketers have for many years successfully portrayed cooking as drudgery. It really does not take very long to cook a nutritious meal from scratch. Reconnect with the land by growing your own fresh vegetables and fruits. Teach your children that a carrot is a root that comes from the ground and not a machine lathed "bullet" that comes in a plastic bag!

*Michael Pollan is the author of: "In Defense of Food, an Eater’s Manifesto" and "The Omnivores Dilemma." Both books are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and are REQUIRED reading for all omnivores! http://www.drrisley.com/html/rulesofthumb.html

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In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan Quotes In Defense of Food Quotes "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

"He showed the words "chocolate cake" to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. "Guilt" was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: "celebration."

"You are what what you eat eats."

"Don't eat anything incapable of rotting."

"The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture."

"While it is true that many people simply can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time or both, many more of us can. After all, just in the last decade or two we've somehow found the time in the day to spend several hours on the internet and the money in the budget not only to pay for broadband service, but to cover a second phone bill and a new monthly bill for television, formerly free. For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. p.187"

"Shake the hand that feeds you."

"If you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a strong indication it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat"

"The human animal is adapted to, and apparently can thrive on, an extraordinary range of different diets, but the Western diet, however you define it, does not seem to be one of them. "

"Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word "organic" is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic."

"The sheer novelty and glamor of the Western diet, with its seventeen thousand new food products every year and the marketing power - thirty-two billion dollars a year - used to sell us those products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and government and marketing to help us decide what to eat."

"Culture, when it comes to food, is of course a fancy word for your mom."

"[Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa."

tags: accountability, food, government, politics, trust "That eating should be foremost about bodily health is a relatively new and, I think, destructive idea-destructive not just the pleasure of eating, which would be bad enough, but paradoxically of our health as well. Indeed, no people on earth worry more about the health consequences of their food choices than we Americans-and no people suffer from as many diet-related problems. We are becoming a nation of orthorexics: people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating."

"Is it just a coincidence that as the portion of our income spent on food has declined, spending on health care has soared? In 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent of national income on health care. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on heath care has climbed to 16 percent of national income. I have to think that by spending a little more on healthier food we could reduce the amount we have to spend on heath care."

"But human deciding what to eat without professional guidance - something they have been doing with notable success since coming down out of the trees - is seriously unprofitable if you're a food company, a definite career loser if you're nutritionist, and just plain boring if you're a newspaper editor or reporter."

"The first thing to understand about nutritionism is that it is not the same thing as nutrition. As the "-ism" suggests, it is not a scientific subject but an ideology. Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions. This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it's still exerting its hold on your culture. A reigning ideology is a little like the weather--all pervasive and so virtually impossible to escape. Still, we can try."

"When you're cooking with food as alive as this -- these gorgeous and semigorgeous fruits and leaves and flesh -- you're in no danger of mistaking it for a commodity, or a fuel, or a collection of chemical nutrients. No, in the eye of the cook or the gardener ... this food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some not, but each of them dependent on each other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight."

"Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar B) unpronounceable C) more than five in number or that include D) high-fructose corn syrup"

"American farmers produced 600 more calories per person per day in 2000 than they did in 1980. But some calories got cheaper than others: Since 1980, the price of sweeteners and added fats (most of them derived, respectively, from subsidized corn and subsidized soybeans), dropped 20 percent, while the price of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent."

"That anyone should need to write a book advising people to "eat food" could be taken as a measure of our alienation and confusion. Or we can choose to see it in a more positive light and count ourselves fortunate indeed that there is once again real food for us to eat."

"Half of all broccoli grown commercially in America today is a single variety- Marathon- notable for it's high yield. The overwhelming majority of the chickens raised for meat in America are the same hybrid, the Cornish cross; more than 99 percent of turkeys are the Broad-Breasted Whites."

"You may not think you eat a lot of corn and soybeans, but you do: 75 percent of the vegetable oils in your diet come from soy (representing 20 percent of your daily calories) and more than half of the sweeteners you consume come from corn (representing around 10 perecent of daily calories)."

"The soybean itself is a notably inauspicious staple food; it contains a whole assortment of "antinutrients" - compounds that actually block the body's absorption of vitamins and minerals, interfere with the hormonal system, and prevent the body from breaking down the proteins of the soy itself."

"Okinawa, one of the longest-lived and healthiest populations in the world, practice a principle they call hara hachi bu: Eat until you are 80 percent full."

"But don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health."

"Depending on how we spend them, our food dollars can either go to support a food industry devoted to quantity and convenience and "value" or they can nourish a food chain organized around values—values like quality and health. Yes, shopping this way takes more money and effort, but as soon you begin to treat that expenditure not just as shopping but also as a kind of vote—a vote for health in the largest sense—food no longer seems like the smartest place to economize."

"The cook in the kitchen preparing a meal from plants and animals at the end of this shortest of food chains has a great many things to worry about, but "health" is simply not one of them, because it is given."

"But I contend that most of what we’re consuming today is no longer, strictly speaking, food at all, and how we’re consuming it—in the car, in front of the TV, and, increasingly, alone—is not really eating, at least not in the sense that civilization has long understood the term."

"You are what you eat eats."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan

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