Michael’s 64 Food Rules (in summary)
Michael Pollan is a US food campaigner, whose book 64 Food Rules makes good reading. It’s also small, so you can even carry it in your pocket to the grocery store, to learn while you shop!
He’s not vegetarian, so you can use this whatever your diet. It basically encourages you to eat natural and more ethical food, and not be fooled by supermarket greenwashing.
He also is clear that food companies and groceries only change due to consumer habits. Michael writes: ‘The food industry is terrified of you!’
Read up on food safety for people and pets. For tinned ingredients, rinse/remove lids (or pop ring-pulls over holes) then step on upper cans to pinch rims together, to stop wildlife getting trapped.
Unless you have food waste bins, just bin pepper and allium scraps (onion, leeks, garlic, shallot, chives), citrus/tomato/rhubarb scraps. To avoid acids harming compost creatures.
Here are just a few of Michael’s rules. Could you imagine if everyone in England followed these? The food industry (and what supermarkets offered us) would change overnight.
Even farm shops and health shops would change what they served people (not expensive cuts of meat at a farm shop with a few veggies, or aisles of supplements and dried goods at health stores).
They would all have to serve proper affordable organic food for the masses, and the NHS would save a fortune as a result:
- Don’t eat anything your great grand-ma wouldn’t recognise as food. Or anything a child can’t pronounce.
- Avoid foods with sugar (or sweeteners) as one of the top three ingredients. Salt and sweeten food yourself.
- Avoid products with more than five ingredients. And anything with high-fructose corn syrup or with ‘low-fat’ or other health claims.
- Avoid foods you see advertised on TV.
- If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don’t.
- It’s not food, if it arrived through the window of a car.
- It’s not food if it’s called the same in every language.
- Eat well-grown food from healthy soil.
- Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the colour of the milk.
- The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead!
- Occasional junk food is fine, if you cook it yourself.
- Pay more, less less. And enjoy a glass of wine with dinner!
- Serve a proper portion, and don’t go back for seconds.
- Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does!
How to know what to eat
Good nutrition is not just about avoiding sweets at the checkout. Michael gives you the knowledge you need that you likely already knew – supermarkets don’t really care about your health, they care about profit. He gives a few indicators that you can try looking for yourself:
When we watch TV, our brains go into ‘alpha mode’ (like meditation). Surveys have asked people in supermarkets why they have certain brands in their trolleys, and many have no idea! Think about which foods the big supermarkets advertised last time you saw an ad. Were they advertising special offers on organic broccoli? Not likely.
Bit supermarkets have no clocks or supermarkets, so you lose track of time. They are designed to make you stressed, so you buy more to eat more. Co-op blasts loud music (which could cause pain for older customers with hearing loss). Same reason why McDonald’s is bright red and yellow.
Supermarkets have a couple of aisles of fresh produce, then aisles of processed high-profit foods plus:
- ‘Tanning salons’ for part-baked bread
- Milk at the far end (so you have to pass lots of junk food)
- Porridge not at eye level (Frosties are)
- More aisles of alcohol than fresh greens
How did humans manage to choose foods and stay healthy, before there were nutrition experts and food pyramids or breakfast cereals promising to improve your child’s focus, or restaurant portions bigger than your head? We relied on accumulated wisdom (your mum). Michael Pollan
