Positive Energy Tip
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Food Rules
Most people want to eat healthy, but figuring out how to do that has become quite complicated. Should we limit the amount of fat or carbohydrates in our diet? Should we worry about gluten? Will our breakfast cereal protect us from heart attacks? Google the term "healthy eating" and you get 80,500,000 results!
I recently read Food Rules by Michael Pollan, a list of 64 simple, sensible, common-sense principles for eating healthy. His list is thought-provoking, direct, amusing and encouraging. And it can be a perfect guide for anyone who wants to eat healthy without reading through a lot of science and nutritional research. In fact, he sums up his entire list in seven words: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.
Here are some of my favorite rules from the book:
- It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car.
- Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
- Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself. There is nothing wrong with occasionally eating sweets, fried foods and pastries. But if you made all the french fries and cakes that you ate, you would eat them much less often.
- Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it.
- Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does. Gas stations now sell more food than gas. But the food choices aren't typically healthy.
- Be the kind of person that takes supplements-then skip the supplements. People who take supplements are generally healthy, but controlled studies show that supplements aren't particularly effective. Supplement takers must be healthy for other reasons.
- If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.
- It's not food if it's called by the same name in every language. Think Big Mac, Cheetos, Pringles.
- Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
- Don't eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
- Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce. Fructo-oligosaccharides, ethoxylated, propionate.
- Break the rules once in a while.
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| Energy Challenge | |
 Choose Your Rules
If eating healthier is a priority for you, choose three or four principles from Pollan's list or come up with your own list of rules to follow this week. Or simply live by the seven words that sum up his list - Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. It can't get much simpler than that!
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