Rethinking Healthy Eating: 6 Tips from Michael Pollan

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It’s important to know where your food comes from, and how it was grown, but when it comes down to it, we all just want to know “what’s for dinner?” Author and food journalist Michael Pollan shares 6 easy tips for healthy eating.

Michael Pollan is one of my favorite authors ever – not just about food! Anyone who can make the history of corn interesting is a great writer in my book. 🙂  He shows you that eating healthy doesn’t have to be hard, or hard to understand….

Pollan has researched, studied, and experienced food and food cultures from many different places, and distilled healthy eating into a set of simple rules that can really change our health – both individually and as a nation – and mitigate many of our food-related environmental problems at the same time.

Here are 6 good ones to start with (#6 is my favorite!):

1. We’ve got to keep it real (and not packaged).
“The first step in reforming appetite is going from processed food to real food. Then, if you can afford organic or grass-fed, fantastic. But the first step is moving from processed industrial food to the real thing….

2. Just because GMOs are deemed safe doesn’t mean that they’re good for us.
“…Corn and soy are not feeding us; mostly we’re feeding them to cars (about 30 percent of what we grow) and feed (about 40 percent). On the whole, we’ve had 15 years of GMOs in the marketplace and have accomplished remarkably little. What we’ve gotten is food soaked in glyphosate, pesticides… I think [GMOs are] a huge disappointment….”

3. It’s okay to eat some meat, and here’s why…
“There are a great many moral and ethical reasons to not eat meat. I eat it; besides the fact that it’s delicious, I want to support good agriculture [that creates] a virtuous circle of nutrients. All meat isn’t created equal. The first way to lower meat consumption is only eating pasture-raised and grass-fed [meat]….”

4. Don’t fall for nutritionism (AKA food marketing lingo that sounds like science).
“The dairy industry has really done a good job on us—[they have us thinking] you’d have no bones if you don’t drink it. [Dairy’s] absolutely not necessary; you get more calcium from spinach than milk. Low-fat milk is kind of a joke.”

5. The food movement needs to become a political movement.
“This movement, if it deserves to be called that, needs to get people to the ballot box. Politicians aren’t afraid of us; food companies are….”

6. But ultimately, the secret to healthy eating might just be in your kitchen.
“The more I’ve been working on these issues, the more I realize that cooking is the solution. Cooking food yourself: There’s no single step you can take that will automatically solve so many problems. It’s also key for the food movement—I believe it’s a political act. The way you support farmers is by shopping and buying raw ingredients.”

Check out the full article – plus the trailer to Pollan’s new documentary, In Defense of Food – at WellAndGood.com.

 

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