SweetReviews: Food Rules By Michael Pollan

I'll admit I haven't finished a book since the Twilight series last Spring. I know, pathetic. Whatever, I'm over it. I have always loved books about the world behind things, like Color Stories and Animal Factories. There is just something about reading about how your food is produced, or  make up came to be that excites me. Don't get me wrong- I loved Twilight and I am not ashamed to admit it. It was great writing but- I've never really been a fiction kind of girl.

I first encountered Michael Pollan on NPR talking about his new book The Omnivores Dilemma. It's a great interview that you can listen to here. I picked up his second book In Defense of Food and couldn't finish it. Not sure if it was that I had just had a baby, hormones, lack of attention span, you name it. Just couldn't finish it. I stumbled upon Pollan's newest book Food Rules at the library and decided to give it a try.

Food Rules is 140 pages of short tips and tricks about what you should eat, how much, and what kind. Its a really quick read. I read it in less than a day, picking it up from time to time between diaper changes and laundry. Needless to say, its readable.

I loved the the ' rules' written in Pollan's quirky style:

Rule#2: Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

Rule# 3: Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.

Rule#10: Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.

Rule#19: If it came from a plan eat it; if it was made in a plan, don't.

The book is filled with lots of layman's explanations of why certain foods are better than others, doesn't get too technical and isn't verbose ( like this sentence!) Its not a diet book per se, its more of words to live by, lots of which we heard from our grandparents. For example ' eat a colorful plate.' the rules remind us to go back to simpler times, less is more, eating on smaller plates, eating meals not snacks etc.

Overall, I recommend this book for a nice quick reminder of the things we should be eating. We all need a swift kick this time of year to jumpstart healthy lifestyles.