Pollan's Rule #17? Eat Only Foods that Have Been Cooked by Humans. Large food corporations in general use too much salt, fat, sugar, preservatives, coloring...the list goes on. If food on the supermarket shelves is expected to have an extremely long shelf life, they've got to pack lots and lots of salt/sodium in those foods to make sure they still taste good months (years?) from now. And those carrots in the canned soup you're opening need to be a nice bright orange, so they have to use preservatives/sulfites. Now, I've got some canned foods on the shelves of the shops and in my pantry at home. But I try to keep the processed foods to a minimum and I'll be the first to tell you that a great, quick meal CAN be had in 15-20 minutes (using canned tomatoes with no salt added, troll-caught tuna with nothing added, beans, rice or pasta with little to no sodium, preservatives, etc. added) or heck, just bread and cheese.
Pollan expounds upon Rule 17 a bit more with rules 18-21:
*"Don't ingest food made by anyone made to wear a surgical cap"...well, maybe not so much in the City of Chicago, but you get the idea.
*"If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don't"
*"It's not food if it arrived thru the window of your car"
*"It's not food if it's called by the same in every language"...Big Mac, etc. Does this include the "Royale with Cheese?"
I have to disagree with #21 a little. Some food are the same in all languages because they originated from one language, and everyone adopted the name. Sushi is real food!
ReplyDeletetotally agree! there are definitely exceptions; I think Pollan is referring more to processed foods (he also mentions Cheetos!) than prepared foods like Sushi.
ReplyDeleteby the way, thanks for the comment! Glad to know someone's reading these ramblings!