Book Review: Food Rules

I previously read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, which is a pretty good book.  I don't know where I came across his latest book, Food Rules: An Eater's Manual (2011), but I was intrigued. As someone who thinks there is a lot of wisdom to be had in the NoS Diet by Reinhold Engels, this book was certainly worth a look. 

In this book Pollan hypothesizes that eating has become unnecessarily complex and that we often feel at the mercy of food scientists. He points out 2 (perhaps 3) facts that most people agree upon. Fact 1: people who eat a primarily Western diet tend to have higher rates of all sorts of bad health outcomes and chronic diseases. Fact 2: People who eat a wide variety of traditional diets, even when the foods vary considerably, tend to be healthier than Westerners. The third fact is that people who get off the diet tend to see improvements in their health. 

To help the reader not become hyperfocused upon food science complexities, yet also alter their typical diet, Pollan offer 83 "food rules".  There was certainly some overlap and some that were more than commonsensical.  On the whole, however, this was an interesting, albeit brief read.  Here were my top 5 favorite food rules:

• Avoid food products that makes health claims.
• Eat all the junkfood you want as long as you cook it yourself. 
• Enjoy drinks that have been caffeinated by nature, not by science. 
• If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're probably not hungry. 
• Limit your snacks to unprocessed snack foods.

I also have to mention my son Ian's favorite, which makes him giggle every time he hears it: "The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead."