Food Rules by Michael Pollan

1. Eat Food

2. Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food

3. Avoid food products containing ingredients no ordinary human would keep in the panrty
    Cellulose? Ammonium sulfate?

4. Avoid high-fructose corn syrup

5. Avoid foods that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients
   There are 40 types of sugar used in processed food, barley matl, beet sugar, brown rice syrup,  
   dextrin, turbinado sugar, glucose, etc... SUGAR IS SUGAR

6. Avoid food products that contain more than 5 ingredients.

7. Avoid food products containing ingredients a child cannot pronounce.

8. Avoid food products that make health claims.
   It's the products of modern food science that make the boldest health claims, often founded on
   incomplete and often bad science.
  The healthiest food at the market- the fresh produce- doesn't boast about it's healthfulness, because
   growers don't have the budget or the packaging.

11. Avoid foods you see advertised on television

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, go to 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. (Big Mac, Cheetos, Pringles)

22. EAT MOSTLY PLANTS, ESPECIALLY LEAVES.

23. Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food.
      (a couple times a week is healthiest)

25, Eat several different colors
     Which will reflect different antioxidant phytochemicals.

27. Eat animals that have themselves eaten well.
      Eat well-grown food from healthy soil

28. Eat some foods that have been predigested by bacteria or fungi.
      (exp. yogurt, sauerkraut, soy sauce, sourdough bread- good sources of vitamin B12)

34. Sweeten and salt food yourself.

35. eat sweet foods as you find them in nature

36. Don't eat breakfast cereal that change the color of the milk.

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

41. Eat like the French, Japanese, Italians, Greeks-
     People who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than
     those of us eating a moern Western diet of processed foods.

HOW should I eat?

44. Pay more, eat less...  Eat Less
     You get what you pay for.

46. Stop eating before you are full
    The Japanese say to stop when you are 80% full
    "A full belly is 1/3 food, 1/3 liquid, 1/3 air."
   
47. Eat when you're hungry, not when you are bored.

48. Consult your gut, not your American Jumbo Size to determine how much you eat.

49. Eat slowly.

50. "the banquet is in the first bite." No other bite will taste as good.

51. Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it

53. SERVE A PROPER PORTION AND DO NOT GO BACK FOR SECONDS!

54. "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper."

56. Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant food.

57. Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does.
      Do not eat food from a gas station.

58. Do all your eating at a table.

59. Try not to eat alone.

60. Treat treats as treats.
      Start making special occasion foods yourself. If you bake your own dessert, fry your own chicken, you wont go to that much trouble every day. Sense of occasion needs to be restored.

61. Leave something on your plate.
     "Better to go to waste than to waist." or "Leave something for Mr. Manners"
     Practice not cleaning your plate; it will help you eat less in the short term and develop self-control in
     the long term.

63. Plant a vegetable garden or a window box. Cook with it.

64. Break the rules once in a while.