Nutrition Unplugged

Food Rules Do I dare disagree with Michael Pollan?

There’s probably no one bigger today in the food world. Michael Pollan has become the prominent voice in defining what we should eat. And I like him. He’s a terrific writer, charismatic speaker and a tremendous thought provoker. Pollan is currently on a publicity tour promoting his latest book Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual.

Primarily, he’s preaching the importance of real food. It’s about simplicity, back to basics. I embrace that philosophy too. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t think people need to search for the next big thing and spend their hard-earned money on superjuices like Monavie or Vemma, buy an array of customized supplements sold by the Trump Network or put their faith in cookie diets and diet pills peddled by Jillian Michaels.

I agree that eating shouldn’t be complicated. And yes, we are all bombarded with complicated and conflicting nutrition information. Indeed, we need clarity! That’s what I like about his book….

Eating doesn’t have to be so complicated. In this age of ever-more elaborate diets and conflicting health advice, Food Rules brings a welcome simplicity to our daily decisions about food. Written with the clarity, concision and wit that has become bestselling author Michael Pollan’s trademark, this indispensible handbook lays out a set of straightforward, memorable rules for eating wisely, one per page, accompanied by a concise explanation.

Perhaps you caught one of Pollan’s recent interviews, including his appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or read his comments in this New York Times interview. The new book features 64 food rules, including some advice that Pollan received from readers that he solicited in the New York Times Well blog. Some rules are folkloric, others are what your grandmother might say. I like a lot of the rules, they’re concepts that are good to reinforce:

Eat your colors.
Stop eating before you’re full.
Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
Eat slowly.
Buy smaller plates and glasses.

But I have a harder time with some of the other rules. Are these truly realistic, attainable, instructive? I’m just not sure pithy soundbites are what we need right now to help people eat better and enhance their health.

If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.
Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.
Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.
Avoid food products that make health claims.
Avoid products with the words “lite,” “low-fat” or “nonfat in their names.
Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.
Avoid foods you see advertised on television.

The rules also tend to be negative, and as dietitian Susan Moores points out, they’re missing the joy of eating good food.

Though he never professes to be an “expert,” many people see him as one. His voice has impact. His advice is bouncing around in our heads as we order from a menu or swing through a grocery store. If much of his advice or “rules” are to:

Avoid

Limit

Stay away from

Eat only…

where is the joy — the joy of eating good food? Mr. Pollan boiled down his “eating well” message into seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. I sure wish he would have added two more. Have fun. It makes a world of difference if we hope to eat well and truly be well.

Yes, he’s missing the enjoyment factor and I don’t think he’s really providing actionable advice. How are these catchy mandates truly providing guidance to families who are desperately trying to get dinner on the table every night with limited time, limited budgets and a limited comfort level in the kitchen. An “avoidance” approach doesn’t provide the specific guidance that families need. So what can I eat? What should I buy?

One Pollan rule is: Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.

Really? I think there are plenty of cart-worthy options up and down the middle of the grocery store. What about packages of whole grain pastas, boxes of brown rice, bags of nuts, canned beans, soup, frozen vegetables and dried fruit. These were all made in a plant and you’ll probably see ads for them on TV. So?

Let’s give families reasonable options, make it simple but doable. If we make the ideal so lofty, it doesn’t seem attainable. It seems theoretical, not practical. I think it would be much more valuable to provide ideas on how to evaluate choices in those middle aisles instead of telling people to avoid them entirely (plus, a lot of supermarkets are not even organized the way Pollan describes, so the rule doesn’t hold true).

Are these memorable rules? You bet. Will they make a difference in how people eat? Not so sure.

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Photo illustration by Erwin Olaf for the New York Times

Of course, there are many reasons for America’s weight problem, but could we improve our collective poundage if everyone started cooking? That’s one of the questions posed in Michael Pollan’s excellent essay in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.

If you have not read this tremendous article, you must check it out: “Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch: How American Cooking Became a Spectator Sport, and What We Lost Along the Way.”

Once again, Pollan stirs the pot and makes some excellent points in his in-depth piece that tackles everything from takeout to “Top Chef.” He addresses many issues, but the one I was most drawn to was the idea that the “end of cooking” may be behind our growing behinds. Research conducted at Harvard by David Cutler and colleagues found that the rise of food preparation outside the home was associated with the increase in obesity in this country. The researchers found that as the “time cost” of food preparation has fallen, calorie consumption has gone up — particularly consumption of the sort of snack and convenience foods that are typically cooked outside the home. They found that when we don’t have to cook meals, we eat more of them. As the amount of time Americans spend cooking has dropped by about half, the number of meals Americans eat in a day has climbed. Since 1977, we’ve added about half a meal to our daily intake.

“Cutler and his colleagues also surveyed cooking patterns across several cultures and found that obesity rates are inversely correlated with the amount of time spent on food preparation. The more time a nation devotes to food preparation at home, the lower its rate of obesity. In fact, the amount of time spent cooking predicts obesity rates more readily than female participation in the labor force or income. Other research supports the idea that cooking is a better predictor of a healthful diet than social class: a 1992 study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were more likely to eat a more healthful diet than well-to-do women who did not.”

At the end of the article, Pollan includes a quote from the NPD Group’s Harry Balzer that really hits the nail on the head when it comes to the power of home cooking…

“Easy. You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short, it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.”

Certainly, it’s a darn good place to start.