Food Rules - a quickie review of Michael Pollan's latest book

I love this book. I bought it for about $8 from The Book Depository (free shipping to anywhere in the world and cheaper AND faster to ship than Amazon - I highly recommend it).

Michael Pollan is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: Food Rules: An Eater's Manual (2010); In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (2008); The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World (2001). He's pretty sharp. He was named in the 2010 TIME 100, Time Magazine's annual list of the world's 100 most influential people. Suffice to say, he writes darn well and he's pretty sharp.

It's a lovely little book. He's managed (quite brilliantly I think) to distill healthy eating principles into 64 simple food rules. Even better than that, he's simplified those 64 rules even further into seven little words:

"Eat food.
Mostly plants.
Not too much."

Brilliant. 


Here are ten of my favourite rules to whet your appetite.

2. Don't eat anything that your great grandmother wouldn't recognise as food.
13. Eat only foods that eventually will rot.
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.
24. "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 (pigs, cows and other mammals)."
32. Don't overlook the oily little fishes.
39. Eat all the junk food you like as long as you cook it yourself.
41. Eat like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.
46. Stop eating before you're full.
49. Eat slowly.
60. Treat treats as treats.
63. Cook.
64. Break the rules once in a while.

Ok, so that was more like 13, but if  I'm honest, they are all my favourites - it really is a brilliant little book. I recommend it. In fact, if I lost my copy I'd buy it again. So there you go.

Happy eating to you.