Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”

As 2018 draws to a close and the mind turns towards New Year Resolutions, consider this great piece of advice from Michael Pollan, award-winning journalist and author of Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual. For more tips from the master, read on.

Eat food? What does that mean? Well, supermarket shelves around us are full to overflowing – not with ‘food’, but with food products. Learn to distinguish between the two.

To elucidate further, see Rule no 19 of the book: If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.

Food Rules is a snappy, to-the-point volume of 64 rules to follow while eating. Its author, Michael Pollan, is an award-winning journalist who writes on food, farming, cooking and consuming.

Pollan points out that humans have adapted to all kinds of diets. In fact, most of the world’s traditional cuisines have evolved according to availability and necessity.

Unfortunately, our choices today are no longer shaped by need, but are influenced, rather heavily, by commercial food producers.  We have thrown our native wisdom and our grandmother’s recipes for good health into the wind and are floundering in a sea of artificial produce and scientific data.

These 64 rules bring you back on track with practical tips and good humour.  Nudging you to adopt a more nutritious diet simply by avoiding the typical Western diet, which is chock full of saturated fats and refined carbohydrates, and leave no room for healthy fibre and omega-6 fatty acids.

Forget the jargon, urges Pollan, and fall back on common sense. And if you’ve lost your food radar under the onslaught of commercial messages coming at you from food manufacturers, follow these rules.

Divided into 3 parts, Food Rules tell you what to eat (eat food), what kind of food (mostly plants), and how to eat it (not too much)! Seven seemingly simple words which are translated into a very do-able set of practices for food consumption in your daily life.