Food Rules

• Eat Food
• Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food
• Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry
• Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup
• Avoid food products that have some form of sugar (or sweetener listed among) the top three ingredients
• Avoid food products that have more than 5 ingredients
• Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle 
• Eat only foods that will eventually rot
• Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature
• Get out of the supermarket whenever you can
• Buy your snacks at the farmers market
• Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans
• Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap
• If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t
• Eat mostly plants, especially leaves
• Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food
• Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs and other mammals].
• Eat your colours
• Drink the spinach water
• Eat animals that have themselves eaten well 
• Eat like an omnivore 
• Eat well-grown food from healthy soil
• Eat wild foods when you can
• Don’t overlook the oily little fishes
• Eat some foods that have been predigested by bacterial or fungi
• Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature 
• The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead
• Favour the kinds of oils and grains that have traditionally been stone-ground
• Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself
• Be the kind of person who takes supplements – then skip the supplements
• Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.
• Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism
• Have a glass of wine with dinner
• Pay more, eat less
• Eat less
• Stop eating before you’re full
• Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored
• Consult your gut
• Eat slowly
• The banquet is in the first bite
• Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it
• Buy smaller plates and glasses
• Serve a proper portion and don’t go back for seconds
• Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like  pauper
• Eat meals
• Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods
• Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does
• Do all your eating at a table
• Try not to eat alone
• Treat treats as treats 
• Plant a vegetable garden if you have space, a window box if you don’t
• Cook
• Break the rules once in a while
  
  Food Rules by Michael Pollan