Food. Ohhh how I love food. Especially plants! 
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto is not only educational, but an entertaining book. Pollan’s main message is: Eat whole foods, chow down on lots plants and make eating a social experience. If you want to learn more about the intersections between your health, the food industry, public policy, and “nutritionism,” read Pollan’s book.
Pollan helped put my worries over what types of foods to eat in perspective. I plan on incorporating 15 of Pollan’s personal eating guidelines into my diet. Escaping the Western diet will be difficult, but these guidelines will help the transition tremendously:
1. Eat lots of plants.
2. Avoid food products that are predominantly processed, unpronounceable, have more than 5 ingredients or include high fructose corn syrup.
3. Avoid products that make health claims.
4. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.
5. Get out of the supermarket and shop at the farmer’s market.
6. You are what you eat (This includes what other animals eat and what is in the soil too).
7. If you have space buy a freezer.
8. Eat like an omnivore. Diversity in diet is a good thing.
9. Eat well grown food from healthy soil.
10. Get off the Western diet. But don’t look for the “magic bullet in the traditional diet.”
11. Have a glass of wine with dinner.
12. Buy higher quality foods and eat less of them.
13. Choose quality over quantity and good experience over calories.
14. Eat meals and less snacks.
15. Cook and if you can plant a garden.
Why is this important?
Pollan’s take on food is really interesting. He argued that we need to enjoy our food more and by doing so, eat less of it. Ohhh and eating more fruits and veggies is important too. 
This isn’t shocking news, but since the Western diet is literally killing us (linked to obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes), it’s probably a good thing to implement these guidelines into your diet.
Especially since the stuff (aka “food”) sold at grocery stores isn’t really food. Take a serious look at the ingredients of the products you are buying. If you don’t recognize the name of the ingredient or can’t pronounce it’s name, you are not buying food.
Cutting costs?
We are always looking for ways to decrease our expenses and lately we have been focused on cutting food costs. But now I’m not too sure about this strategy. The types of food we eat directly correlate to our physical health (and maybe mental health too), so I am beginning to think it is silly to cut back on an expense that is so important to our health. We have the privilege to purchase good food; food from local farms with amazing soil. Many people don’t have access to high quality foods, especially farmer’s markets and organic produce.
Instead of cutting food costs at the grocery store, we are going to eat out less, subscribe to a CSA (community supported agriculture), and start making our own good stuff, with local products.
Note image from: www.michaelpollan.com
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