Look for pasture raised, grass fed animal products. But still, the industrial food chain keeps mass producing cheap animal protein at the expense of our health. If you eat meat, dairy or eggs, the nutritional quality of your animal protein is greatly influenced by both the quality of the food the animal eats and the way it was raised. Eat animals that have themselves eaten well. There are tremendous health benefits from taking this approach. To eat a plant based diet you don’t need to become a vegetarian, just shift to building your meal around the veggies, not the meat. One thing just about every dietary theory out there can agree on, is that eating fruits and vegetables (especially vegetables) is highly beneficial and we all need to eat more, especially the green leafies. This includes former favorites like margarine, which pretends to be butter, fat-free cream cheese, which contains neither cream, nor cheese, highly processed soy “mock meats” and processed food products that make health claims on the package (you know the ones…”good source of whole grains!” “good for heart health!”). Avoid food products pretending to be something they’re not. Real food is not processed from corn or soy, has no chemical additives and is not contained in toxic plastic packaging. Pay attention to how much of your diet actually consists of what Pollan likes to call “edible foodlike substances” (ie: processed food). Seems basic enough, right? But what he means is real food. You probably know most of these things, but maybe struggle to consistently take them to heart. I’ve picked a sampling of 10 of my favorite Michael Pollan food “rules” to help you keep it simple too.

He summed it all up in a concise bit of wisdom you have likely heard, “Eat food. He’s got 83 food rules in the most recently published volume (the original had 64), but many of them are versions of the same theme, which drive home his point. So I just appreciate this book and the simplicity of it’s message. There are so many theories swirling around out there, and conflicting advice… and its all plastered all over the internet.

I enjoy reading this book as a reminder to encourage people that daily decisions about food don’t have to be so hard. It’s a book less about rules, really, than rules of thumb. It aims to keep eating simple, and teaches that food is as much about pleasure and community as it is about nutrition and health. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a small book of food wisdom about what real food is and how we should eat it. This is one of the very first books I read on my journey to discover true health, before I ever began studying nutrition. I recently picked up Michael Pollan’s Food Rules to re-read.

Pollan's 7 rules for eating