While most people are looking for the best (and easiest + fastest) ways to lose weight (www.bestwaytoloseweight.org), I chanced up some simple eating wisdom foodie and journalist Michael Pollan in his book "Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual."
Here are some points in his book that I want to highlight:
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.
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.