"food rules" news and stories

Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of "In Defense of Food" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma," has a new book out which is basically a guide to his food philosophy. Called "Food Rules: An Eater's Manual," it contains 64 rules for eating wisely.

Slashfood: How did you come about the idea for this book?
MP: I got the idea from a couple of doctors after "In Defense of Food" came out. They were saying they would love to have a pamphlet of very simple, memorable rules to help out patients. We don't have time to give them a big nutritional lecture, and they don't need to know all the science behind it but they do need some guidance. People are very confused about what to eat. I thought that kind of chimed with the work I was doing, leading to the conclusion that nutrition was a lot simpler than people have been led to believe both by the media, the government, the food industry and this whole blizzard of health claims out there and this controversy over fats and carbs was really obscuring some pretty simple truths. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." So the rules help people navigate the supermarket, navigate the restaurant menu and navigate their own kitchens.

Read the rest of our interview and get a sneak peek into Michael Pollan's new book, "Food Rules."

My sister has gone through a number of different diet schemes over the years. First she was a vegetarian. Then she shifted to vegan (but missed cheese too much to go on). Then for a while, during some really lean times, she was a freegan, eating anything that she didn't have to pay for. These days, she distills her eating principle down to the basic phrase, "I don't eat things where the female of the species carries its young in a uterus." This means beef is out, but poultry is in.

I'm sure that there are lots of you out there who have equally quirky and specific dietary guiding principles and Michael Pollan, the man who coined the phrase "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." wants to know what they are. On Monday, he put a call out on New York Time's Well blog, soliciting these food mottos from readers. He's looking for something that is both poetic and appropriate.

So what's yours?

Source

When I was growing up, nearly every night my family ate dinner together. No matter what else was for dinner, there was always a green vegetable. On the rare occasion that we'd have breakfast for dinner, my mom would serve apple slices and tell us to pretend that they were green (cauliflower and all squashes counted as green). Because of this early conditioning, I have a very hard time feeling like my dinner experience has been complete if there wasn't a green vegetable on my plate.

I realized that this wasn't the norm about a week ago when I was making dinner. Scott wandered into the kitchen and asked what we were having. I replied, "Turkey burgers and baby bok choy, gotta have a green veggie." He looked at me strangely and so I explained my mom's rule of dinner. He said that wasn't the rule in his house when he was growing up, but that he could see how it made some sense.

So now I'm curious. What were the food rules in your house growing up? What are the rules that you've made for your own kids? I've got a couple of others that were also the law in my house growing up, but before I share those, I want to hear yours.