FOOD RULES: AN EATER'S MANUAL

There are basically two important things you need to know about the links between diet and health, two facts that are not in dispute. All the contending parties in the nutrition wars agree on them. And, even more important for our purposes, these facts are sturdy enough that we can build a sensible diet upon them. Here they are:

Fact 1. Populations that eat a so-called Western diet - generally defined as a diet consisting of lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains, lots of everything except vegetables, fruits, and whole grains - invariably suffer from high rates of the so-called Western diseases: obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Virtually all of the obesity and type 2 diabetes, 80 percent of the cardiovascular disease, and more than a third of all cancers can be linked to this diet. Four of the top ten killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet.
The arguments in nutritional science are not about this well-established link; rather, they are all about identifying the culprit nutrient in the Western diet that might be responsible for chronic diseases. Is it the saturated fat or the refined carbohydrates or the lack of fiber or the transfats or omega-6 fatty acids - or what? The point is that, as eaters (if not as scientists), we know all we need to know to act: This diet, for whatever reason, is the problem.

Fact 2. Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don't suffer from these chronic diseases. These diets run the gamut from ones very high in fat (the Inuit in Greenland subsist largely on seal blubber) to ones high in carbohydrate (Central American Indians subsist largely on maize and beans) to ones very high in protein (Masai tribesmen in Africa subsist chiefly on cattle blood, meat, and milk), to cite three rather extreme examples. But much the same holds true for more mixed traditional diets. What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets. Except, that is, for one: the relatively new (in evolutionary terms) Western diet that most of us now are eating. What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!
(While it is true that we generally live longer than people used to, or than people in some traditional cultures do, most of our added years owe to gains in infant mortality and child health, not diet.)

There is actually a third, very hopeful fact that flows from these two: People who get off the Western diet see dramatic improvements in their health. We have good research to suggest that the effects of the Western diet can be rolled back, and relatively quickly. In one analysis, a typical American population that departed even modestly from the Western diet (and lifestyle) could reduce its chances of getting coronary heart disease by 80 percent, its chances of type 2 diabetes by 90 percent, and its chances of colon cancer by 70 percent.
Yet, oddly enough, these two (or three) sturdy facts are not the center of our nutritional research or, for that matter, our public health campaigns around diet. Instead, the focus is on identifying the evil nutrient in the Western diet so that food manufacturers might tweak their products, thereby leaving the diet undisturbed, or so that pharmaceutical makers might develop and sell us an antidote for it. Why? Well, there's a lot of money in the Western diet. The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes. The healthcare industry makes more money treating chronic diseases (which account for three quarters of the $2 trillion plus we spend each year on health care in this country) than preventing them. So we ignore the elephant in the room and focus instead on good and evil nutrients, the identities of which seem to change with every new study. But for the Nutritional Industrial Complex this uncertainty is not necessarily a problem, because confusion too is good business:  The nutrition experts become indispensable; the food manufacturers can reengineer their products (and health claims) to reflect the latest findings, and those of us in the media who follow these issues have a constant stream of new food and health stories to report. Everyone wins. Except, that is, for us eaters.

The rules in this section will help you to distinguish real foods - the plants, animals, and fungi people have been eating for generations - from the highly processed products of modern food science that, increasingly, have come to dominate the American food marketplace and diet. Each rule proposes a different filter for separating the one from the other, but they all share a common aim, which is to help you keep the unhealthy stuff out of your shopping cart.

1. Eat food
2. Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
3. Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.
4. Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
5. Avoid foods that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients.
6. Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.
7. Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.
8. Avoid food products that make health claims.
9. Avoid food products with the wordoid "lite" or the terms "low-fat" or "nonfat" in their names.
10.Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.
11.Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
12.Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
13.Eat only foods that will eventually rot.
14.Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature.
15.Get out of the supermarket whenever you can.
16.Buy your snacks at the farmers' market.
17.Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans.
18.Don't ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.
19.If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.
20.It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car.
21.It's not food if it's called by the same name in every language. (Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or Pringles.)

If you follow the rules offered thus far you will be eating real, whole food most of the time - the simple key to a healthy diet. Beyond that, you have a great many options. One lesson that can be drawn from the striking diversity of traditional diets people have lived on around the world is that it is possible to nourish ourselves from an astonishing range of foods - so long as they really are foods. There have been, and can be, healthy high-fat and healthy low-fat diets, but they have always been diets built around whole foods. Yet there are some whole foods that are better for us than others, and some ways of producing them and then combining them in meals that can make a difference. So the rules in this section propose a handful of personal policies regarding what to eat, above and beyond "food."

22.Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
23.Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food.
24."Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals]."
25.Eat your colors.
26.Drink the spinach water.
27.Eat animals that have themselves eaten well.
28.If you have the space, buy a freezer.
29.Eat like an omnivore.
30.Eat well-grown food from healthy soil.
31.Eat wild foods when you can.
32.Don't overlook the oily little fishes.
33.Eat some foods that have been predigested by bacteria or fungi.
34.Sweeten and salt your food yourself.
35.Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature.
36.Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
37."The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead."
38.Favor the kinds of oils and grains that have traditionally been stone-ground.
39.Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
40.Be the kind of person who takes supplements - then skip the supplements
41.Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.
42.Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism.
43.Have a glass of wine with dinner.

The rules in the previous two sections deal primarily with questions about what to eat; the ones in this section deal with something a bit more elusive but no less important: the set of manners, eating habits, taboos, and unspoken guidelines that together govern a person's (and a culture's) relationship to food and eating. How you eat may have as much bearing on your health (and your weight) as what you eat. This may well be the deeper lesson of the so-called French paradox: the mystery (at least to nutritionists) of a population that eats all sorts of supposedly lethal fatty foods, and washes them down with red wine, but which is nevertheless healthier, slimmer, and slightly longer lived than we are. What nutritionists fail to see in the French is a people with a completely different relationship to food than we have. They seldom snack, eat small portions from small plates, don't go back for second helpings, and eat most of their food at long, leisurely meals shared with other people.  The rules governing these behaviors may matter more than any magic nutrient in their diet. The rules in this section are designed to foster a healthier relationship to food, whatever it is you're eating.

44.Pay more, eat less.
45.... Eat less.
46.Stop eating before you're full.
47.Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
48.Consult your gut.
49.Eat slowly.
50."The banquet is in the first bite."
51.Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it.
52.Buy smaller plates and glasses
53.Serve a proper portion and don't go back for seconds.
54."Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper."
55.Eat meals.
56.Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods.
57.Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods.
58.Do all your eating at a table.
59.Try not to eat alone.
60.Treat treats as treats.
61.Leave something on your plate.
62.Plant a vegetable garden if you have the space, a window box if you don't.
63.Cook.
64.Break the rules once in a while.

Excerpts compiled by Leopoldo Costa from the book "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual",writed by Michael Pollan, Penguin Books U.S.A, 2009. Adapted and illustrated to be posted.