#1 "Food Rules: An Eaters Manual" by Michael Pollan

Read Jan 7, 2011
112 Pages

This hardly seems fair.  "Food Rules" is an itty-bitty (tiny, minuscule) hardly-qualifies-as-a-book-so-I'll-call-it-a-booklet, manual for healthier eating which was delivered to me at work on Friday at about noon and whose every word I had read by about 1:15.  At work.  It seems like a lame and even a bit auspicious way to start this year of high density reading (so much so that I considered leaving it out altogether) but in the end I figured: a) it *is* a book and I *did* read it, b) I'm behind a bit on "Kavalier and Clay" so I needed something to review for week #1 lest I fall behind before I even begin, and c) I'm going to take a book where I can get it!  52 books in 52 weeks is a lot!

And, I liked it.  It's nothing much new, really, but it is easy to read and easy to digest and makes a compelling and succinct argument for eating a cleaner, simpler diet.  As it stands, I eat pretty well - almost entirely vegetarian, very little non-plant based sweets, virtually nothing fried, tons of whole grains, etc etc - but there's always room for improvement (alcohol, for me, is one place) or at the very least room for more knowledge. 

The basic premise, famously, is "Eat Food.  Not too Much.  Mostly Plants." upon which Pollan expands further into 64 "rules" for better eating. 

A few struck me as particularly interesting or, maybe most importantly, relevant to my life:

• Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they're not, i.e. mock meats (which I eat once or twice or so a month.)
• "Flexitarians" - those that eat meat a couple times a week - are just as healthy as vegetarians.  (I eat meat RARELY... very, very rarely.  But I ate quite a bit of it while I was in China a few months ago and I've had some health guilt about it since.  This made me feel, well, better.  I don't plan, still, on making meat a regular part of my diet but this does further confirm that I *can* eat meat sometimes, should I want to, without ruining my health.)
• Don't overlook the oily little fishes.  Avoid tuna, swordfish, etc which are overfished and high in mercury and eat macherel, sardines, anchovies and herring instead.  (I love the "oily little fishes" but more often than not forget about them.  I've just bought some smoked herring at the store today!)
• Eat all the junkfood you want so long as you make it yourself. 
• Eat when you're hungry, not bored.  If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're not hungry.  (This is a gem which I have already implemented.)