I’ve been reading an interesting book that was recommended to me by a friend, who also has an interest in healthy food. The book is “Food Rules” by Michael Pollan The author has written many books on the subject of healthy food, and for a long period of time was a contributor to the New York Times Magazine.

Food Rules is a simple little book of only 140 pages, but with a very sensible approach to healthy eating. Here are Pollan’s Rules:

1.  Eat Food (real 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 foods that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three  ingredients.

6.  Avoid food products than contain more than five 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 word “lite”or the terms “low fat”or “nonfat”in their names

10. Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not eg. margarine, soy “meat”products

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 eg to farmer’s market

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 eg. Big Mac,

22. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves

23. Treat meat as a flavouring or special occasion food

24. Eating what stands on one leg (mushrooms and plant foods) ios better than eating what stands on two legs (fowl) which ias better than eating what stands on four legs (cows, pigs, and other mammals)

25. Eat your colours

26. Drink the spinach water

27. Eat animals that have themselves eaten well

28.If you have the 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 bneen predigested by bacteria 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 colour of the milk.

37. The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead

38. Favour 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 like 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 too 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 a 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 the space, a window box if you don’t

63. Cook

64. Break the rules once in a while

This is all good advice, that our grandparents and great grandparents would have followed without even thinking about it.