Eat real food, in moderation, as your ancestors did. That's the message that foodie and journalist Michael Pollan delivers in his latest book, "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual."
Sounds logical and obvious, right? Except every day, we eat processed "food" that resembles nothing like what our grandmothers and great grandmothers would have considered to be "food."
The paperback book reminds us of our processed ways and aims to put us back on the path to better eating. It's a concise pocketbook guide of 'rules' and mantras to make us smarter -- and less complicated -- in the food choices we make.
It is a quick, inexpensive read ($11 retail, less on Amazon.com). For any Badass and Badass in training, it will be one of the best investments you make toward your health and fitness goals.
Pollan, who wrote the awesome "Omnivore's Dilemma," isn't a nutritionist and fully admits it. He's just a food lover who is as confused as we Badasses are about "lite," "organic," "trans fats," "folic acid," "saturated fats," and all the other nutrition buzz words out there today.
But guess what he found out when he did the research for this book? He found out that nutritionists still have a lot more questions than answers when it comes to nutrition science. It is a "young science," as he puts it, comparable to where surgery was in the mid 17th century.
Yet the basics of nutrition, the facts that the nutritionists he interviewed and the research he read all agree on, are what should guide us.
No. 1: The "Western diet," of processed foods and fats and sugars, is not good for the body. No. 2: Societies and groups that eat a diet rooted in tradition, even if it is an American Indian diet built around maize and beans or a high-fat Inuit diet, overall do not suffer the same diseases seen in Americans today.
From those two principles come Pollan's "rules." Some are so no duh, they're funny (Like, don't fuel your body with items that come from the same gas station where you fuel your car. Cuz that's not real food.) Others made me think long and hard about my own long-held definitions of "eating healthy."
I read this book in about an hour this past weekend, and then I read it again. And when I went shopping with my aunt at a natural grocery store in Boone, N.C., I found myself reading the ingredients labels more and putting back items that seemed too processed. As I watched my grandmother in her kitchen, cooking the way her mother-in law and mother had taught her, I thought about Pollan's advice of not eating anything our great-grandmothers wouldn't recognize as food. Something had clicked.
And of course I thought, "I need to let the Badasses know about this."
So I'm sharing below some of my favorite Pollan-isms, which I hope will help you all on your road to Badass! Let me know what you think, and if you have any food 'rules,' share them with us!
Pollan's Wisdom, Distilled
Eat food: Real food. Not edible food-like substances, as Pollan describes them.
Eat your colors: Fruits and veggies are naturally colorful, an indication of the nutrients in them. A real food rainbow.
Don't eat foods made in places where the workers have to wear surgical caps.
Don't feed yourself with "food" from the same place where you buy fuel for your car.
Shop the peripheries of the supermarket: The produce, dairy, and meats are on the outside. The Pop Tarts, chips, sugary cereals and other processed junk tends to be on the inside aisles (coffee, oatmeal and whole grain breads are a few exceptions).
Don't eat anything Grandma or her Grandma wouldn't recognize:
Avoid foods with ingredients a third-grader cannot pronounce: Disodium guanylate, anyone? Sounds like a spelling bee tie breaker, huh?
Get out of the supermarket when you can: Those produce markets and local spots have real food, real nuts, locally made baked goods. Real food.
If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.
It's not food if it's called the same in every language: Think Big Mac, Cheetos.
Stop eating before you're full: Want to know why the French tend to be leaner even while eating cheese and bread? They follow this practice. So should you. So leave the pooch pants and the adjustable waistbands to Grandpa Fred. Japanese, Chinese and Indian Ayurevedic cultures all advise eating only until you're between 70 and 80 percent full. It shows in their lower rates of overweight and obese citizens.
Leave something on your plate: Mom isn't around anymore to make you clean it, and this goes hand in hand with the rule above.
Treat treats as just that: No cake every night. Ice cream only as a special occasion. If you need dessert everynight, plan it into your caloric intake and make it usually healthy and only occasionally decadent.
Do you Badasses have your own food wisdoms? Share them in the comment box below.
