Easy to read this in one sitting. Lots of common sense here. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Many of the rules in this book are designed to help you avoid heavily processed food – which I prefer to call “edible food like substances.“ 83 rules here: 1. Eat food. 2. Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. 3. Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry. 4. Avoid food products that contain high fructose corn syrup. 5. Avoid foods that have some form of sugar or sweetener listed among the top three ingredients. 6. Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients 7. Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third grader cannot pronounce. 8. Avoid food products that make health claims. 9. Avoid foods with the word “Lite“ or the terms “low-fat “non-fat“ in their names. 10. Avoid foods that are pretending to be something there or not. 11. Avoid food juicy advertised on television. 12. Get out of the supermarket whenever you can. 13. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle. 14. Eat only foods that will eventually rot. 15. Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature. 16. Go food shopping every week. 17. Buy your snacks at the farmers market. 18. Eat close to the Earth. 19. It only foods that have been cooked by humans. 20. Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap. 21. If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t 22. It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car. 23. It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language. (think big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles.) 24. When you eat real food, you don’t need rules. 25. Eat, mostly plants, especially leaves. 26. Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food. 27. Eating what stands on one leg (mushrooms and plant foods) is better than eating what stands on two legs ( foul ), which is better than eating what stands on four legs ( cows, pigs, and other mammals ). 28. Eat your colors. 29. Drink the spinach water. 30. Eat animals that have themselves eaten well. 31. If you have the space, buy a freezer. 32. Eat like an omnivore. 33. Eat well-grown food from healthy soil. 34. Eat wild foods when you can. 35. Don’t overlook the oily little fishes. 36. Eat some foods that have been pre-digest by bacteria or fungi. 37. Sweetened and salt your food yourself. 38. Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature. 39. Don’t eat breakfast cereals that changed the color of the milk. 40. Make water your beverage of choice. 41. Milk is a food, not a beverage. 42. The wider, the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead. 43. Avoid sugary and starchy foods if you’re concerned about your weight. 44. Favorite the kinds of oils and grains that have traditionally been stone ground. 45. Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself. 46. Love your spices. 47. Be the kind of person who takes supplements – then skip the supplements. 48. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Were the Italians. Or the Greeks. 49. Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism. 50. Avoid ingredients that lie to your body. 51. Enjoy drinks that have been caffeinated by nature, not food science. Z. Coffee and tea can make us happy, alert, and more energetic, which might help explain why scientists work so hard to find something wrong with them. 52. Have a glass of wine with dinner. 53. Pay more, eat less. 54. Eat less. 55. Stop eating before you’re full. 56. Eat when you’re hungry, not when you are bored. 57. If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you’re probably not hungry. 58. It’s OK to be a little hungry. 59. Don’t let yourself get too hungry. 60. Consult your gut. 61. Serve the vegetables first. 62. Eat slowly. 63. The banquet is the first bite. 64. Try to spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it. 65. Give some thought to where your food comes from. 66. Don’t become a short order cook. 67. Buy smaller plates and glasses. 68. Serve a proper portion and don’t go back for seconds. 69. Order the small. 70. Breakfast like a king, lunch, like a prince, dine like a pauper. 71. Eat meals. 72. Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods. 73. Do all of your eating at a table. 74. Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does. 75. No labels on the table. 76. Place a bouquet of flowers on the table and everything will taste twice as good. 77. Leave something on your plate. 78. Eat with other people whenever you can. 79. Treat treats as treats. 80. Compost. 81. Plant a vegetable garden if you have the space, a window box if you don’t. 82. Cook. 83. Break the rules once in a while.
. . . . . Not food-like substances
. . . . . additives colors plastic-packaging
. . . . . additives you can’t pronounce
. . . . . not worse than sugar, but a reliable marker for a food product that has been highly processed.
. . . . . they’re there are now some 40 types of sugar used in processed food, including barley, malt, meat, sugar, brown, rice, syrup, cane juice, corn sweetener, Dexter, dextrose, fruit, legal, saccharides, fruit, juice, concentrate, glucose, sucrose, invert, sugar, polydextrose, sucrose, turbinado sugar, and so on. Organic sugar is sugar too.
. . . . . Another key indicator of highly processed food
. . . . . the healthiest foods in the supermarket – the fresh produce – doesn’t boast about its healthfulness, because the growers don’t have the budget or the packaging.
. . . . . carbohydrates can also make you fat.
. . . . . imitation butter – a.k.a. margarine – is the classic example
. . . . . who made the biggest food manufacturers can afford to advertise their products on television, only 5% of food ads promote whole foods.
. . . . . you will find fresh, whole foods harvested at the peak of their taste and nutritional quality.
. . . . . processed food products dominate the center aisles of the store, while the cases of mostly fresh food – produce, meat and fish, dairy – line the wall walls.
. . . . . the more processed of food is, the longer shelflife, and the less nutrition it typically is there are a few exceptions: example, honey has a shelflife measured in centuries.
. . . . . this rule will keep all sorts of chemicals of foodlike substances out of your diet.
. . . . . keep fresh ingredients in the kitchen
. . . . . fresh or no I haven’t dried fruits and nuts
. . . . . the very best guy to the healthfulness of a food is the degree to which it has been processed: the number of steps in the amount of time between field and Fork.
. . . . . corporations cook with too much salt, fat and sugar, as well as with preservatives colorings and other biological novelties. They also aim for immortality in their food products
. . . . . in countries where people eat a pound or more of vegetables and fruits. A day, the rate of cancer is half what it is in the United States. Be a diet that is primarily plant based, you’ll be consuming for fewer calories. Vegetarians are notably, healthier than carnivores, and they look longer.
. . . . . there’s evidence that the more meat there is in your diet – red meat in particular – the greater your risk of heart, disease, and cancer.
. . . . . the few of the feet, the better the meat.
. . . . . the colors of mini vegetables reflect the different antioxidant phytochemicals they contain. Space many of these chemicals help protect against chronic disease, but each in a slightly different way, so the best protection comes from a diet containing as many different phytochemicals as possible.
. . . . . the water in which vegetable vegetables are cooked as rich in vitamins and other helpful plant chemicals. Save it for soup or add it to sauces.
. . . . . the food from these animals will contain much healthier types of fat as well as appreciably higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants. It’s worth looking for a pastured animal foods in the market.
. . . . . freezer will enable you to put up food from the farmers market and encourage you to buy produce in bulk at the height of its season, when it will be most abundant – and therefore cheapest.
. . . . . the greater the diversity of species you eat the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional basis.
. . . . . soil is rich in organic matter produce more nutritious food.
. . . . . two of the most nutritious plants in the world – lambs – quarter and pursers lane – our weeds, and some of the healthiest, traditional diets, like the Mediterranean, make frequent use of wild greens.
. . . . . wild fish among the healthiest things you can eat, yet many wild fish stocks are on the verge of collapse because of over fishing. Avoid big fish at the top of the marine food chain – tuna, swordfish, shark – because they’re endangered, and because they often contain high levels of mercury. Fortunately, a few of the most nutritious, wild species, including mackerel, sardines, and anchovies, are relatively well managed, and some cases are even abundant.
. . . . . yogurt, sauerkraut, soy sauce, kimchi, and sourdough bread.
. . . . . whether soups or cereals or soft drinks, foods and beverages that have been prepared by corporations contain far higher levels of salt and sugar than any ordinary human would ever add.
. . . . . in nature, sugar is almost always come, packaged with fiber, which slows their absorption and gives you a sense of satiety before you ingested too many calories that’s why you’re always better off eating the fruit rather than drinking juice.
. . . . . this should go without saying.
. . . . . do what animals do when they’re thirsty: drink water. In most places, the cheapest and best quality water comes from the tap, so skip the bottled water.
. . . . . as a soda, beer, fruit, juice, and any other liquid containing lots of calories. In general, we’re better off, getting our calories from solid foods, which reliably fill us up, rather than liquids switched out.
. . . . . this rather blunt bit of grandmotherly advice. Suggest that health risk of white flower have been popularly recognized for many years. As far as the body is concerned, white flowers, not much different from sugar.
. . . . . this is conventional wisdom from grandma.
. . . . . when grind stones were the only way to refined flour and oil, flour and oil were generally more nutritious.
. . . . . there’s nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking a soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formally expensive and hard to make treats so cheap and easy that we’re eating them every day.
. . . . . herbs and spices can add richness in depth to food without adding salt, fat, or sugar.
. . . . . supplement takers are healthy for reasons that have nothing to do with the pills. They’re typically more health, conscious, better educated, and more affluent. They’re also more likely to exercise and eat whole grains.
. . . . . any traditional diet will do; if it were not a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around.
. . . . . it might represent an evolutionary improvement, but chances are it doesn’t.
. . . . . such as artificial sweeteners and flavoring, fake starches, and fats, MSG, and texturizers.
. . . . . wind may not be the magic bullet in a French or Mediterranean diet, but it does seem to be an integral part of these dietary patterns. Most experts recommend no more than two drinks, a day for men, one for women. Drinking a little every day is better than drinking a lot on the weekends, and drinking with food is better than drinking without it.
. . . . . there’s no escaping the fact that Better food – measured by taste or nutritional quality cost more. If you spend more for better food, you’ll probably eat less of it, and treat it with more care. And if that higher quality food taste better, you will need less of it to feel satisfied. Choose quality over quantity. As grandma used to say better to pay the grocer than the doctor.
. . . . . this is probably the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact, the scientific case for eating less than you currently do is compelling. Calorie restriction has repeatedly been shown to slow aging and animals, and many researchers believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. We eat much more than our bodies need to be healthy, and excess reeks havoc – and not just on our weight. When it comes to food, less really is more.
. . . . . the Japanese on Okinawa have a saying Hara Hachi boo – that councils people to stop eating when they are 80% full. The French say “I have no more hunger “when they are finished in instead of saying they are full.
. . . . . food is a costly antidepressant.
. . . . . if the idea of eating an apple doesn’t appeal to you, then chances are you reaching for food out of habit, boredom, or sadness. The urge will pass. But if you find the idea does appeal, then go ahead; have an apple.
. . . . . living in an environment where food is on offer 24/7, the temptation is to eat something the moment the tiniest pain of hunger strikes. Try not to.
. . . . . when we come to the table feeling starved, we’re more likely to overheat. We’re also more likely to opt for the most fattening foods. The same goes for food shopping.
. . . . . slow down and pay attention to what your body – not just your eyes – is telling you. This is what your grandparents were getting at with the adage “your eyes are bigger than your stomach.
. . . . . most people who eat meat, put the meat on their plates first and then the vegetables – which they call sides. If instead you serve the vegetable first, your app to take, and eat, more of them. Even better; you at least have your plate with vegetables and treat meat as the side dish.
. . . . . it’s slowly enough to savor your food: you’ll need less of it to feel satisfied.
. . . . . no their bike will taste as good as the first, and every subsequent bite will progressively diminish and satisfaction.
. . . . . there’s a pretty good metric that honors to cook for the care you or he or she has put into the meal at the same time that it helps you slow down and savor it.
. . . . . take a moment for a meal to reflect on the work, and the wonder, involved in the process that brings food from the Earth to your table to eat it with both more pleasure and more consciousness.
. . . . . when kids learn to think of the dinner table is a restaurant, they’ll eat the way most people do in restaurants; too much. When we eat, what is served, rather than what we might order or crave, we tend to eat more moderately.
. . . . . one researcher found that simply switching from a 12 inch to a 10 inch dinner plate caused people to reduce their consumption by 22%.
. . . . . you lose all control of proportion size when you have second helpings.
. . . . . restaurant portions of food have ballooned.
. . . . . front loading you’re eating in the early part of the day will probably result in fewer total calories consumed, since people are generally less hungry in the morning.
. . . . . we are snacking more and eating, fewer meals together. The constant sipping and snacking we do while watching TV, driving, working and so on.
. . . . . if you’re going to snack, try to limit yourself to fruits, vegetables, and nuts.
. . . . . no a desk is not a table. If we eat while we’re working, or while watching TV, or driving, we eat mindlessly – and as a result, eat a lot more than we would, if we were eating at a table, paying attention to what we’re doing.
. . . . . American gas stations now make more money inside, selling food and cigarettes than they do outside selling gasoline. But consider what kind of food this is; except perhaps for the milk and water, it’s all highly processed, imperishable snack foods, and extravagantly, sweet and soft drinks and hefty 20 ounce bottles. Gas stations have become processed corn stations. Don’t eat here.
. . . . . keep logos and food. Packaging off the dinner table. Take the food out of the containers and put it in on a platter. We’re on a plate. You’ll eat more slowly and enjoy the food more.
. . . . . practice, not cleaning your plate: it will help you eat less in the short term and develop self-control in the long.
. . . . . we tend to eat more slowly, since there’s usually more going on at the table, then ingestion. When we eat alone, we often eat more.
. . . . . there’s nothing wrong with special occasion foods, as long as every day is not a special occasion.
. . . . . it’s much easier to leave something on your plate when you know it’s not going to waste, but rather we’ll go to feed your garden so eventually you at a subsequent meal. Also having a compost pile helps us overcome any reluctance to buy fresh produce for fear will go bad before we can make use of it.
. . . . . to take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing, for your sustenance is the shortest way to escape the culture, fast food, and the value simplicity in it: that food should be fast, cheap, and easy; that food is a product of industry, not nature; the food is fuel rather than a form of communion with other people, and also with other species – with nature.
. . . . . cooking might be the single most important thing you can do for your dietary health. Letting other people or corporations cook for you means losing control of your eating life, of the portions as much as the ingredients. Not surprisingly the decline and home cooking closely, parallels the rise and obesity.
. . . . . obsessing over food rules is bad for your happiness, and probably for your health too. Our experience over the past few decades, suggest that dieting and worrying too much about nutrition have made us no healthier or slimmer. There will be special occasions when you will want to throw these rules out the window. All things in moderation. Including moderation.