Adding Michael Pollan to my reading, listening list...

I have Google Alerts set up on a number of topics, some fun, most serious and related to health (mine or someone in my family). I remember seeing Michael Pollan's name in some of the articles I've read but have not taken the time to listen or find out more. He has been around for quite some time.

Based on some quick reading this morning, Pollan speaks common sense. I love his 7 Rules for Eating. I agree with so much that was attributed to him in the article.

We are obsessed with health in the United States. Yet we have some of the worst eating habits and the worst rates of diseases. It seems everyone is on a diet. I prefer not to think of what I do as a diet --- that is a brain thing as to me a "diet" is negative in my mind, it is something temporary with a specific goal of losing weight for the majority. Sometimes it's a change in reaction to a health scare (heart attack, etc.).

I also think everyone has to find their own way, find a way of eating 

I eat a certain way, I tweak it as I learn more, as I pay attention to my body...but what I'm trying to do is follow Pollan's #1 rule --- I don't eat anything that my grandmother (in my case, my great-grandmother) wouldn't recognize as food. As part of that, I basically try to eat like most did before manufacturers started messing up our food by processing it, spraying our foods with tons of chemicals and pesticides, modifying our foods so they wouldn't die when sprayed with pesticides, filling our cattle with hormones and antibiotics, feeding fish, chickens, and cattle with "foods" they were not intended to eat...I could go on.

We wonder why we are so ill? Why younger people are in the midst of a diabetic epidemic? Why ADD is happening with more and more frequency? Why Alzheimer's Disease and dementias are rising...and to younger and younger ages? Why our population is so obese? It's more than one thing, it's not just food. But food plays a huge part in it!

OK, stepping down from that soapbox! 

I like his 2nd "rule" --- don't eat anything with more than 5 ingredients or ingredients you can't pronounce. And his 3rd --- stay out of the middle of the grocery store, shop the perimeter... and definitely his 4th --- don't eat anything that won't eventually rot!

On the 4th I do bend it a bit. Only because in a tiny, tiny way I am a mini-prepper. I want to have enough food to eat if we lose electricity for a few weeks (which happened to us a few years back during a winter snowstorm). I like frozen foods much, much better than canned or freeze-dried, but if you don't have a freezer ya gotta have somethin' to eat.

The rest of his rules are good also. 5 - don't eat so much, leave the table a little hungry, 6 - eat around the table with family, not the TV and 7 - don't buy food where you buy gas (or I gather if you read the rest, at fast food joints).

Of course, I paraphrased his rules. I would add a few others --- eat organic whenever possible (but especially the Dirty Dozen) and go Non-GMO to avoid all the extra pesticides if you can't find organic.

He is correct when he notes that our food "rules" have changed over the years. One day something is bad, the next it is good. Villains change to heroes overnight. We find that studies promoting certain lifestyles were done by the food industries that would benefit. We find that studies done that changed our way of eating were flawed. New science decides that salt isn't all bad, that cholesterol isn't the bad-guy they thought it was, that it's good to eat fats...and so on.

I'm going to check a few of his books out of the library. I'll let you know what I think. I may just go see if he is on YouTube first. I'll add some links below if I find anything interesting or new.

Ha --- just took a look at the videos and it seems that in addition to talking diet and food Pollan talks a lot about psychedelics. (Here's a first-pass search result: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=michael+pollan&qpvt=Michael+Pollan&FORM=VDRE)

https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20090323/7-rules-for-eating#1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan