Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan

Sometimes, you need some ground rules, sometimes simple ideas need to be spelled-out orderly and succinctly for one to take notice. Learning how to eat again is no different.

Author of the bestseller, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and it's distilled version, In Defense of Food, Pollan has further refined his arguments and crusade for mindful food into a slim, 140-page list of sixty-four rules to keep as a pocket guide for your meals, or a conscience sitting on your shoulder as you devour another can of Pringles.

A writer who had been most likely at the forefront of the "slow food" ethos which has begun to arise in recent years, Pollan has been a guru of sorts to a small group of Americans who have seen food, eating, and cuisine move farther and farther from its natural purposes of (1) nourishment and (2) enjoyment. In fact, much of the thesis of the earlier Omnivore's Dilemma is "why do we eat?" from which the reader begins to consider what foods are "worth" eating. I realize that the last sentence sounds a bit condescending, but the emphasis of the books is more of the nature where food is approached as an experience, rather than a necessity-- something to be enjoyed rather than simply done.

(in addition to those mentioned above, the 2001 Botany of Desire: A Plant's-eye View of the World is worth picking up)

As for the text itself, I was reminded of the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu in the simplicity and straightforwardness of its advice: Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. All of the text (as well as the other two above) can be boiled down to those three simple directions. The rules themselves in Food Rules are elaborations on each of these points, often just as simple (avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients; pay more, eat less; spend as much time enjoying a meal as it took to prepare it), which in fact, need little explanation in of themselves.

The spare "directions" for selecting what you eat, how you eat, and why you eat it are koan-like in their nature, as they were meant to be something you can mutter to yourself in the kitchen, rather than ideological advice to be preached. Often, the reader's great-grandmother is invoked, as a ghost born over a century ago clucking over your shoulder about whether or not you need that second cookie, or asking why you didn't eat your vegetables, or simply being uncertain as to what Pop Tarts are and how they should be eaten. Like the manner in which the advice is given, the advice itself is simple in that it asks for simplicity-- would anyone be able to recognize GoGurt or Squeez Bacon or this thing as a food in 1910?

By this point, my review has likely not been longer than the book itself. Brevity is an art in writing when it is well-done; read this book because for no other reason that you can do it in an hour. For a time-to-read/quality-of-material quantification, Food Rules is well-worth your investment (not to mention that I also bought the book for about $7 too).

You get out of life exactly what you put into it; your dinner plate is no different.