Tired of complicated diets and looking for a few, easy rules for food? Author Michael Pollan’s new book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, breaks down the science into bite-size, easy-to-remember guidance. Diets low in vegetables and high in processed foods, meats, refined grains and added sugar and fats are associated with “Western diseases” of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer, Pollan writes. Getting off that diet, he argues, can reverse those effects. In addition to adding extra sugar, fat and salt, Pollan says that processing food can reduce its nutritional content, expose you to potential toxins in its packaging and make food easier to absorb, leading you to eat more than you need. “Most of these items don’t deserve to be called food—I call them edible food-like substances,” he writes. His conclusion: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” We’ve selected a dozen of our favorite Pollan rules—he suggests thinking of them as your “personal policies”—about what and how to eat.
