Food Rules

at 5:53 AM

Michael Pollan is out with a new book Food Rules, an Eater's Manual. He is the author of several books and has written articles for the New Yorker and the National Geographic. Here are a few of his rules:

1. Don't buy anything that your great grand mother wouldn't recognize as food.

2. Don't buy products with ingredients that cannot be found in an ordinary pantry. (if it sounds like it belongs to a chemistry textbook, it can't be natural!).

3. Don't buy anything that lists sugar in its first three ingredients.

4. If it came from a plant, get it. If it was made in a plant, skip it.

5. Shop the periphery of the grocery store and stay away from the middle isles.

6. If it says lite, low-fat, or non-fat on the package, pass it by.

7. Avoid foods making health claims on the package.

8. Avoid foods advertised on television.

9. Avoid food that is pretending to be something it is not.

I would like to say a few words about these wonderful rules. Did your great grand mother have 1% or 2% milk? Is our generation less obese because we now have all theses other options? Keep in mind just because we have low fat foods in the grocery store, doesn't mean they are healthier for us. Those foods probably have more sugar in them to mask the lack of flavor that may occur with removal of fat. Have you ever seen an advertisement about spinach or apples? But you have seen ads for cheesy crackers that have 'fiber' in them to make them seem healthier. Well, avoid the latter and go with the spinach and the apples! One of my favorite examples of rule #7 is cereals. I may have mentioned this before but at the risk of being redundant I really need to mention it again. I am sure you have seen the commercial about the cereal that will lower cholesterol in 6 weeks. This may sound shocking but, no food singularly will lower your cholesterol. Changing cholesterol levels is complex and multi factorial. And this one is just my opinion but getting your fiber from fruits and vegetables is not the same as getting it from sweeteners with added fiber.