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Michael Pollan's Food Rules to Live By

FitSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:00:47 -0700

I've had a crush on Michael Pollan for a while now, and though the specifics of his food manifesto may be hard for everyone to adopt, I think his basic rules are ones to live by: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (And processed food is not food.)

Whenever finishing a book or essay by Pollan, I always walk away with a new food rule myself. I was excited to see that in this year's annual New York Times Magazine food issue, Pollan turns the tables, asking what food rules we the readers live by.

There were thousands of submissions, and of those, Pollan picked the ones he felt made the most sense for a healthy life. What I found interesting was what he said about the ones he didn't use, "a banquet of food policies that even when they made little, if any, nutritional sense . . . nevertheless opened a window on our current thinking about food: the stories we tell ourselves, the games we play and the taboos we invoke to organize our eating lives."

I've been guilty of this myself - eating something "healthy" when it was nothing more than processed crap.

Learn a simple rule when you read more.

The reader-submitted rules are fun and wise, and the NYT's presentation make them a treat to read through. One of my favorites:

Avoid snack foods with the "OH" sound in their names: Doritos, Cheetos, Fritos, Tostitos, Hostess Ho Hos, Etc. -Donna David

In this piece, Pollan offers up another one of his own rules that I adopted years ago: pick butter over trans-fat-loaded margarine. Surely he and Julia Child can't be wrong.

What food rules do you live by?

Must See Movie: Food, Inc.

FitSugar — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 09:00:00 -0700

With the amount of food recalls seeming to grown annually, it is easy to feel that our food system in the US is broken, and after watching the 94 minute documentary Food, Inc., you learn that it truly is.

From the opening shots of the supermarket, we begin to learn how corn and the fast food industry have changed the way Americans both grow and eat food. While the movie repeats many of the facts from Michael Pollan's informative book, In Defense of Food, the facts are just as interesting the second time around. Food, Inc. also delves deeper into the chemical giant Monsanto and its role in destroying the family farm from the seeds on up. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation shares the narrator role with Pollan, and these two tear down the food industrial food system starting with corn and moving quickly to the meat industry. The film is peppered with interviews with farmers - chicken, corn, and soy - whose lives have been dramatically altered by multinational corporations' interest in commanding the food chain. The film is disturbing to say the least, but it ends with tales from Polyface farm, a family operation that makes food seem wholesome again. I left the theater charged up to make changes not only in my daily diet, but to petition the government to give power back to their regulatory arms, the USDA and FDA, to help keep our food supply safe. The Food, Inc. website has a petition to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act. After watching this documentary, you may never look at food the same way again.

Check out the trailer after the break.

Weekend Reading: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

FitSugar — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:00:00 -0700

I have a new food bible. It is not written by a chef, a nutritionist or a dietitian, but a journalist. The irony of dispensing nutritional advice as a journalist is not lost on the author of In Defense of Food ($21), Michael Pollan.
He actively wonders throughout this great little book on the circumstances that led food, the sustenance of life, to become so vulnerable that it needed to be defended from bad government policy and bad science. The complexities of government politics and macronutrients lead the US population down a slippery slope of very processed low fat foods.

There's more so read more.
Pollan details our recent food history, back to The Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs or the late 1970s, and provides a little back history answering questions why cereal became a breakfast staple at the turn of the 19th century. If that sounds overly dry, like a piece of toast with no butter and jam, it is not. This book is a surprisingly exciting read. Yes, this eater's manifesto, as the sub title declares, is truly a page turner and it is useful too. Pollan has created some rules to serve as eating guidelines. The main tenet is simple: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Easy to follow and apply at every meal – these seven words could change your life. There is a catch though; Pollan doesn't consider processed food to be actual food. He's a label reader too and shuns unpronounceable ingredients.

The last third of the book breaks down his basic principle of eating into many sub rules for more guidance. The book is worth reading and the guidelines worth following. You can buy the book at Amazon, but chances are high it is for sale at your local bookstore too.

Two Healthy Flicks Now on DVD

FitSugar — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:00:19 -0800

You can give your next at home movie night a healthy focus; two of my favorite docs of the year are now out on DVD.

Enlighten Up!: Filmmaker Kate Churchill, a yoga devotee, takes yoga cynic Nick Rosen on a wild ride through the range of yoga styles to see if the ancient art has universal power. Both filmmaker and subject are affected by the process. Available for purchase ($22) or add the title to your Netflix queue.
Food, Inc.: The underbelly of the food industry is exposed in this documentary narrated by Omnivore's Dilemma author Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser of Fast Food Nation. Arguing for sustainable food production, the film's antagonist is not the farmer or the carnivore but multinational corporation Monsanto. Purchase ($14) the 94-minute film or Netflix it.

Smarter Eats: Don't Be a Slave to the Label

FitSugar — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:00:27 -0700

Michael Pollan's food rules and the news that we're not eating enough fruits and veggies has me inspired. I'm resolving to always make conscious food choices that will improve my diet.

One tip I learned from Chow is to eat things that don't have a label. I know that all packaged food isn't bad, but a lot of it is processed, or synthetic versions of whole foods. Even a lot of packaged "healthy" has been altered in some way. If I can, I try and make the real deal at home or buy my food from the farmers market, bakery, or my local butcher. By skipping the label I'm getting more whole, healthy, natural food and less processed, chemically altered, unpronounceable stuff. I also cut back on a ton of packaging!

The next time you're out shopping see if you can cut back on labels, too - you'll find that you have a better idea of exactly what you're putting into your body.

Food News: Restriction on Antibiotic Use in Livestock

FitSugar — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:00:22 -0700

After reading Michael Pollan's books - especially The Omnivore's Dilemma - and watching the new film Food Inc., I was pleased to read the news that the Obama administration is looking to restrict the use of antibiotics in livestock.

The principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs testified that feeding antibiotics to livestock to encourage rapid growth must stop, and that farmers should only be able to use the drugs with the supervision of a veterinarian. The reason behind this recommendation is that the rampant use of antibiotics has strongly influenced the development of bacteria immune to many treatments, rendering common antibiotics useless in fighting infections. This point of view has long been accepted by the medical community. According to estimates by the Union of Concerned Scientists, chickens, pigs, and cattle receive 70 percent of antibiotics used in the United States. While the American Medical Association backs the proposed restriction, it is no surprise that meat producers are opposed to it.

Trend Alert: Antidiet Diet Books

FitSugar — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:00:00 -0700

Move over, Atkins and South Beach: antidiet books are the new diet books. Lately I've noticed a slew of what might be called weight management, rather than weight loss, books landing on my desk, reinforcing the ever-growing sentiment that diets, at least in the traditional sense, don't work. But changing your eating habits does.

People like Maria Langer, who I heard interviewed on NPR the other day, are admitting that the diet books they bought over the years turned out to be a waste of money. But the publishing industry is filling the void with books about how to stop dieting and keep off the weight, among them Naturally Thin: Unleash Your Skinnygirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting by Real Housewives star Bethenny Frankel and The Big Skinny, an instructive memoir from a woman who learned to keep off the pounds without dieting. For more on the trend, read more.

Other very recent additions include The Skinny by Louis J. Aronne and Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels (stay tuned for more on that), both of which purport that managing your body's chemistry and metabolism is far more effective than dieting. Similarly, some of my favorite food books of the past year, including The Daily Fix by Alexa Fishback, have focused not on short-term fixes but on changing your eating habits for the better, for good.

I'd even put in this category Michael Pollan's books The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, which have changed many people's eating habits more than any old diet book could. What's your favorite antidiet diet book?

King Corn Coming to Theaters Near You

FitSugar — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 03:00:00 -0700

Corn, it is an ingredient in just about everything. The cob is manufactured into fillers, oils and sweeteners. Many have theorized that the rise in obesity is due to the increased use of high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener. While the jury is still out on that particular connection, many see the corn subsidy as the underlying problem with American food production and agriculture.
In light of all this, two recent college graduates decided to plant an acre of corn in Iowa in an attempt to learn more about the crop that is taking over America. The tale they tell in the documentary King Corn is entertaining, enlightening and funny. Regardless if you have or haven’t read Michael Pollan’s treatise on agriculture in the U.S. - The Omnivore's Dilemma - you should see this film. If you are what you eat, then we are all corn!

King Corn will be shown in select theaters around the country this October. If you can't make it to see the film, don't fret. You can read about the film and its protagonist / antagonist, corn, on their website.

Words that Move You . . .

FitSugar — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:00:00 -0700

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
- Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food

Need more motivation? Check out all my words that move you.

Source

The Skinny On: High Fructose Corn Syrup

FitSugar — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:30:00 -0700

When I started reading food labels, way back when, I must admit that I thought high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was made out of fruit, because of the "fructose," as well as corn. Now that I have been schooled over the years, I know that this sweetener is made from cornstarch that goes through a serious amount of processing.

The Corn Refiners Association has started the sweet surprise ad campaign to try to reclaim consumers' hearts and dollars. Corn and all its permutations have been getting a bad rap of late, from sources like the documentary King Corn and Michael Pollan's treatise on eating In Defense of Food. The parallel growth of HFCS consumption and the obesity epidemic is the stuff from which seemingly correct, but nevertheless faulty armchair science is formed. Recent studies have found that HFCS as an ingredient isn't solely to blame for the obesity epidemic, since the human body processes HFCS and sugar in the same way and that they have the same caloric load.

To see how high fructose corn syrup differs from sugar, just read more.

The truth is though that HFCS is not chemically the same as sugar. Sugar is sucrose and HFCS is made from glucose and fructose, but not a single molecule of sucrose. Fructose turns into fat in the liver, which is not healthy because it is not broken down earlier in the digestion process. Fructose has a negative impact on insulin and the hunger hormone leptin creating increased appetite. Even though HFCS is made from cornstarch degraded into glucose by using chemicals or enzymes degraded, then altered again with enzymes to convert fractions of glucose into fructose, it can still be labeled natural according to the FDA. This is as long as no synthetic fixing agents touch the sweet syrup in the manufacturing process.

The truth is that even after all that ecologically devastating processing, HFCS is cheaper to produce than sugar. In fact, the average American consumes 78 pounds of it a year and 500 of it calories a day. Cheap processed ingredients make inexpensive processed foods, and because they are cheap, widely available, with long shelf lives, more and more processed food is eaten. Leading to overeating foods that don't offer much nutritionally.

Once again, moderation is the key when it comes to any sweetener, processed or natural. Just like they say in those sweet surprise ads. If you need some corn in your life, why not just eat straight off the cob?

Source