Thus begins “Unhappy Meals”, an article by Michael Pollan published in yesterday’s New York Times, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.” Now this is a diet I can get behind.
There’s a good reason seemingly half the blogosphere is linking to this article. Pollan presents a concise explanation of what you should probably be eating and why, sort of a distilled version of his famous book The Omnivore’s Dilemma which I recently purchased (though have yet to read). While there’s way more to this article than the typical online screed-demon paragraph or two, this is somehow appropriate given its condemnation of fast foods and heavily processed supermarket products. I’d recommend printing it out or downloading to a handheld (where’s my damn e-paper already?!) and savoring it.
But if you take anything away from the article, this is perhaps the best part (save the terse first sentence),
Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.
There’s much more to learn, though in the process you begin to be able to ignore all the needlessly complicated and contradictory “nutritionistic” voices out there.
Eat food. Sounds like a good plan.
