OBC Food Rules-day 15: Get Out of the Supermarket Whenever You Can

You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market.  You also won’t find any elaborately processed food products, any packages with long lists of unpronounceable ingredients or dubious health claims, anything microwaveable, or, perhaps best of all, any old food from far away.  What you will find are fresh, whole foods harvested at the peak of their taste and nutritional quality-precisely the kind your great-grandmother, or even your Neolithic ancestors, would easily recognize as food.  The kind that is alive and eventually will rot.

OBC Food Rules-Day 14: Eat Foods Made from Ingredients that you can Picture in their raw State or Growing in Nature

Read the ingredients on a package of Twinkies or Pringles and imagine what those ingredients actually look like raw or in the places where they grow:  You can’t do it.  This rule will keep all sorts of chemicals and foodlike substances out of your diet.

OBC Food Rules-Day 13: Eat Only Foods that will Eventually Rot

What does it mean for our food to “go bad”?  It usually means that the fungi and bacteria and insects and rodents with whom we compete for nutrients and calories have got to it before we did.  Food processing began as a way to extend the shelf life of food by protecting it from these competitors.  This is often accomplished by making the food less appealing to them, by removing other nutrients likely to turn rancid, like omega-3 fatty acids.  The more processed a food is, the longer the shelf life, and the less nutritious it typically is.  Real food is alive – and therefore should eventually die.  (There are a few exceptions to this rule: For example, honey has a shelf life measured in centuries.)  Note:  Most of the immortal foodlike substances in the supermarket are found in the middle aisles.

Food Rules-Day 7: Avoid Food Products Containing Ingredients that a 3rd Grader Cannot Pronounce

Basically the same idea, different mnemonic.  Keep it simple!

Food Rules-Day 4: Avoid Food Products that Contain High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Not because high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is any worse for you than sugar, but because it is, like many of the other unfamiliar ingredients in packaged foods, a reliable marker for a food product that has been highly processed.  Also, high-fructose corn syrup is being added to hundreds of foods that have not been traditionally sweetened-breads, condiments, and many snack foods-so if you avoid products that contain it, you will cut down on your sugar intake.  But don't fall for the food industry's latest scam:  products reformulated to contain "no HFCS" or "real cane sugar."  These claims imply these foods are somehow healthier, they they are not.  Sugar is sugar.

Food Rules-Day 3: Avoid Food Products Containing Ingedients that No Ordinary Human Would Keep in their Pantry

Ethoxylated diglycerides?  Cellulose?  Xanthan gum?  Calcium Propionate?  Ammonium sulfate?  If you wouldn't cook with them yourself, why let others use these ingredients to cook for you?  The food scientists' chemistry is designed to extend shelf life, make old food look fresher and more appetizing than it really is, and get you to eat more.  Whether or not any of these additives pose a proven hazard to your health, many of them haven't been eaten by humans for very long, so they are best avoided.

64 Days of Food Rules Starts Monday, April 29th

Eating doesn't have to be so complicated.  In this age of ever-more elaborate diets and conflicting health advice, Food Rules brings a welcome simplicity to our daily discussions about food.  Written with clarity, concision and wit, this indespensible handbook lays out a set of straightforward, memorable rules for eating wisely, accompianied by a concise explanation.  It's an easy-to-use guide that draws from a variety of traditions, suggesting how different cultures through the ages have arrived at the same enduring wisdom about food.  Whether at the supermarket or an all-you-can-eat buffet, this is the perfect guidefor anyone who ever wondered "What should I eat?"

Make a note now to follow each day to learn, what you will find to be, easy, sensible, honest and quick rules to view your food choices going forward!