Connections to Health - In Defence of Food

THE ISHTA HOLISTIC HEALTH CENTRE

CONNECTIONS to HEALTH

"Eat food, not too much. Mostly plants."

Michael Pollan in his book In Defence of Food has managed to summarise his years of work as a nutritionalist into seven words. How fantastic is that?

Now you might think this is quite obvious.
Eat food, not too much. Mostly plants.
Well "not too much" is obvious. Obesity, the once strictly American art form has now 'crossed the pond' and we are rapidly catching up with them.

Mostly plants is obvious too. We are designed to have a mainly plant based diet with just a little meat. "Let your meat be a condiment to your vegetables" is a favourite quote. However, many people still don't get it. Sometimes when I'm taking a case history from a patient I think "Thank goodness they smoke. At least some vegetable matter is passing their lips!

Now what about "Eat Food" What else could we possible eat?

Well, virtually anything but food. We eat a lot of food-like substances but they are not really food.
This means they've be processed, invented in laboratories, refined, fortified, reduced in fat, increased in omega 3s, reduced in salt, altered, and generally meddled with.
Don't eat the following.
Anything with an ingredient that you wouldn't use if you were making the food yourself. For example I recently bought a ham sandwich. One of the ingredients was humectant. Now I've made many ham sandwiches in my life and have never felt the need to add humectant. Mustard yes, but humectant no. That sandwich is not food, but rather a food-like substance.
Anything with an ingredient you can't pronounce.
Anything with more than 5 ingredients.
Anything your grandmother wouldn't recognise as food.
Anything that makes a health claim on the label

There are more but read this book. If you only read one book about nutrition this is the one. you owe it to yourself and your family.

Buy from Amazon