"Eat Food, not too much, mostly plants".

So begins this fantastic book by Michael Pollan. As yogis, we are interested in our health. We practise yoga to increase our vitality and take care of our bodies the best way we know how. And as Bikram yogis, we work our bodies very hard and must fuel them accordingly. However, in a world of nutritionism, when new studies come out every day, it's not always easy know what is best for us to eat. What the nutritionists tell is healthy today, they may change their minds about tomorrow! This book takes the decision making about what we should eat away from the food scientists, and gives it back to us. In simplest terms. The opening statement is a good example. Here are a few more:

If your great grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it! Culture and family have always played a part in how and what we eat. Pollan shows that as these things become less important, our health has declined.

You are what "what you eat" eats too!
For those of us who eat meat, as the diet of the animals has become refined to grains, with little to no grazing, so has the vitamin content of the become greatly reduced. But this statement is not only to do with meat eating. Industrial farming has robbed the soil of minerals and other nutrients. An apple grown today has about half the nutrition than an apple grown 50 years ago.

Shake the hand that feeds you.
In other words, shorten the food chain. Buying produce from farmers markets, or, if you can, growing it yourself, puts integrity back into the growing process. 

This book is a fascinating discussion of how our food culture has changed over the last hundred years. In our efforts to become healthier, we have turned to food scientists. Unfortunately the effect has been the opposite. Let's get back to simply eating food. Real food.