Idle food thoughts

More from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, which I read yesterday afternoon.

“The human animal is adapted to, and apparently can thrive on, an extraordinary range of different diets, but the Western diet, however you define it, does not seem to be one of them.”

“[T]oday corn contributes 554 calories a day to America’s per capita food supply and soy another 257.”

Omega-3. Get some. It’s essential and we don’t get enough. Get it from real food (not supplements). It comes from leafy plants (fish get it from algae).

“Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

“Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting.” (Twinkies, this means you.)

“Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar, B) unpronounceable, C) more than five in number, or that include D) high-fructose corn syrup.”

“Avoid products that make health claims.”

“Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.”

Buy local. “Shake the hand that feeds you.”

“Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does.”