Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

FAB RESEARCH COMMENT:

The idea for this book followed on from Michael Pollan’s last book, In Defence of Food, which ended with a handful of tips for eating well: simple ways to navigate the treacherous landscape of modern food and the often-confusing science of nutrition.

After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how we should eat in order to be maximally healthy, he discovered the answer was shockingly simple: eat real food, not too much of it, and more plants than meat. Or, put another way, get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refined grains and sugars, and its sore lack of vegetables, whole grains and fruit.

He set out to collect and formulate some straightforward, memorable, everyday rules for eating, a set of personal policies that would, taken together or even separately, nudge people onto a healthier and happier path. He solicited rules from doctors, scientist, chefs, and readers, and then wrote a few himself, trying to boil down into everyday language what we really know about healthy eating. And while most of the rules are backed by science, they are not framed in the vocabulary of science but rather culture - a source of wisdom about eating that turns out to have as much, if not more, to teach us than nutritional science does.

For thousands of years, humans have eaten well and stayed healthy without nutritional scientists or even knowing what an antioxidant is.

So which of the modern world's hundreds of rules do we actually need?

EAT FOOD.  NOT TOO MUCH.  MOSTLY PLANTS.

Seven simle words of plain English. In Food Rules, internationally acclaimed journalist Michael Pollan gives us straightforward and invaluable rules from these seven words for day-to-day living, such as avoiding food advertised on TV or that your recent ancestors wouldn't recognise. These rules are simply designed to help you eat real food in reasonable amounts.

Phrased in everyday language and collected from grandmothers, folk wisdom, science and common sense from around the world, this book is all you need to eat healthily, dine happily and live well.