Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

by Michael Pollan

The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

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

If you wouldn’t cook with them yourself, why let others use these ingredients to cook for you?

Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.

Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.

Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.

Avoid food products with the wordoid “lite” or the terms “low-fat” or “nonfat” in their names.

better off

If you keep to the edges of the store you’ll be much more likely to wind up with real food in your shopping cart.

Eat only foods that will eventually rot.

If you’re going to let others cook for you, you’re much better off if they are other humans, rather than corporations.

Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.

If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.

“Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals].”

Eat your colors.

Drink the spinach water.

Avoid big fish at the top of the marine food chain—tuna, swordfish, shark

a few of the most nutritious wild fish species, including mackerel, sardines, and anchovies, are well managed,

Sweeten and salt your food yourself.

That’s why you’re always better off eating the fruit rather than drinking its juice.

“The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”

As far as the body is concerned, white flour is not much different from sugar.

They’re typically more health conscious, better educated, and more affluent.

As we age,

recommend drinking,

Drinking a little every day is better than drinking a lot on the weekends, and drinking with food is better than drinking without it.

something a bit more elusive but no less important:

If you spend more for better food, you’ll probably eat less of it, and treat it with more care.

Choose quality over quantity, food experience over mere calories.

“Better to pay the grocer than ...

Stop eating before you’re full.

Nowadays we think it is normal and right to eat until you are full, but many cultures specifically advise stopping well before that point is reached.

To say “I’m hungry” in French you say “J’ai faim”—“I have hunger”—and when you are finished, you do not say that you are full, but “Je n’ai plus faim”—“I have no more hunger.”

So: Ask yourself not, Am I full? but, Is my hunger gone? That

Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.

Try to be aware of why you’re eating, and ask yourself if you’re really hungry—before you eat and then again along the way.

As in so many areas of modern life, the culture of food has become a culture of the eye.

if you take less than twenty minutes to finish a meal, the sensation of satiety will arrive too late to be of any use.

“Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.”

If it is a food experience rather than mere calories you’re after, the slower you eat, the more of an experience you will have.

“Drink your food, chew your drink.”

“Put down your fork between bites.”

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

“Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper.”

Do all your eating at a table.

When eating somewhere other than at a table, stick to fruits and vegetables.

Try not to eat alone.

light eaters will eat more when they dine with others