Thursday, April 23, 2009

Words to Eat By

Michael Pollan asks us to “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” and lays out a few simple rules to complement this adage. Ask your students to create their own rules for eating that preserve their health and the health of the planet.

Michael Pollan at Yale, wikimedia
Words to Eat By

Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims.

Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are

a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number—or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.

Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.

You are what you eat eats too.

Eat more like the French. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or the Indians. Or the Greeks.

Do all your eating at a table.

Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does.

Eat slowly.

From Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food, New York, Penguin, 2008.

More from Michael Pollan: "The Omnivore's Next Dilemma" >>