24 May / Food Rules: A User’s Manual by Michael Pollan [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
Lauded (worshipped?) food journalist/activist Michael Pollan has seven simple words for us here: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” In the third iteration of his 2009 bestseller (#2 was a charming 2011 illustrated collaboration with artist Maira Kalman), Pollan takes the mic 11 years later to recite 64 rules – more timely now than ever – introduced with a sane, logical treatise on what, what kind, and how we should eat.
Skip the complicated diets, drop the “pseudoscientific food baggage.” Why? “Nutrition science is today approximately where surgery was in the year 1650,” he writes, “very promising, and very interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate on you? I think I’ll wait awhile.”
While waiting, eat food, not “edible foodlike substances.” Eat food cooked by humans, not corporations. Eat mostly plants: “Vegetarians are notably healthier than carnivores, and they live longer.” “The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.” “Eat when you’re hungry, not when you are bored.” Grandma was right: “‘Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper.’”
And, of course, “Break the rules once in a while.” With the audio clocking in at just 80 minutes, Pollan makes these Rules easy to savor again and again.
Review: “Media,” Booklist Online, May 15, 2020
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2020