My humblest apologies for not noting in my e-mail to myself the first name of the Mr. Pollan who offered these tips so I could fully credit him for this information. He's very wise in my opinion. These tips are practical & doable:
1. Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "When you...eat something with 15 ingredients you can't pronounce, ask yourself, "What are those things doing there?" My tip added to his: READ LABELS to see what oddball ingredients are in things you buy, e.g. WHEAT (in cake icing that is homemade out of butter, confectioner's sugar, food coloring, & some sort of extract for flavoring?). After reading this stuff, you no longer wonder why people have food allergies cropping up!
2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, nor with any ingredients you can't pronounce. (Benza-WHAT?)
3. Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad. (In other words, avoid cookies, candy, "queso de squeezo" as one of my sons' former girlfriends called canned cheese spread, sodas, chips, etc.)
4. Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot. "There are exceptions -- honey -- but as a rule, things like Twinkies (or, my all-time favorite, Wonder Bread!) that never go bad aren't food."
5. It’s not just what you eat but how you eat. "Always leave the table a little hungry. Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'"
6. Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It's a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. "Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?" (I do! Since our sons left for college we've become slack in this arena but recognize the need to get back to it.)
7. Don't buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car. (Nor should you buy what you eat from the store where you buy your bait, but that’s a tale for another blog entry…)
