You Really Are What You Eat

Food is important. And as with most important things, there are rules. It would be easy if there was just one set that everyone agreed on…but there are a lot of conflicting interests shouting at us, and it can be confusing. Most dangerous are the ones trying to get us to buy “healthy” processed foods, with prominent nutrition labels (hint: the healthiest stuff doesn’t have those). I wanted to know more about the food we eat, and I started reading and watching everything I could find to help me understand.

There’s a great little book called Food Rules by Michael Pollan that I highly recommend.  I like this guy—he makes a lot of sense. And he says great things, like “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” In this book he gives us 64 easy-to-understand food rules, including:

• “Pay more, eat less.” You get what you pay for, and I don’t want cheap food. If it's really good stuff, you don't need to eat as much of it.
• “Eat all the junk food you want, as long as you make it yourself.” The idea is that if it’s harder to get, you’ll naturally eat it less often.
• “Have a glass of wine with dinner.” - one of my favorites. Not all of the rules are hard to live by!

I appreciate what Jamie Oliver has been doing. Did anyone besides me watch his Food Revolution show? I thought it was a fascinating commentary on eating in America, even if they did manage to find the most hard-headed, impossible Americans to illustrate that. If you don’t have any idea what I'm talking about, you can learn more here. These food rules, which I picked up from Jamie Oliver, hang in my pantry:

1.    Cook at home

2.    Avoid packaged foods

3.    Avoid too much refined sugar

4.    Trade refined grains for whole grains

5.    Eat lots of fruits and vegetables

6.    Teach my kids to cook and use many different ingredients

7.    Read labels and reject what I don’t understand

8.    Choose food grown and raised close to home

9.    Try new foods

I have a harder time with #8 than the others, because I’ll just never be a complete locavore. Pineapple, mangoes and bananas are simply too good to live without. But I do try to buy from farmers markets whenever I can, and find out where and how the food was grown. #3 is hard, but "too much" is vague enough that I can work with it.

Does your family have its own list of specialized rules? I made this list from some of the crazy food requests I get. Since it’s put together from several peoples’ preferences, there are naturally some contradictions…

Never, under any circumstances, eat the end of a banana.

For that matter, edges/crusts of bread are no good.

The end of a meat loaf is not that good either. (I totally disagree!)

Chocolate chips are fine in cookies, but never in pancakes.

Chocolate chip pancakes are the only ones worth eating.

Chocolate chips belong in cookies. With coffee, the perfect breakfast.

Don't even consider toasting a bagel.

Toast the bagel only if it’s been in the fridge.

Bagels should always be toasted.

Bagels must be plain white, with plain white cream cheese.

Only whole wheat bagels with crunchy peanut butter.

I’ll take the cranberry bagel with fancy cream cheese.

Pizza shall never be served without wings.

Cheese pizza, and it cannot be served without Ranch dressing.

Pizza must have vegetables. Minimal meat is okay, but not necessary.

Meat lover’s pizza only.

No blue M&Ms (this one is all mine -- I'm still steamed about the tan ones).

Quirky requests aside, I go by some pretty simple rules when gathering what we eat, based on the straightforward idea of eating Real Food:

• Whole foods are best. Did the food look like this when it was alive? Was it ever alive?(Think whole chicken vs. McNugget. Farm-fresh eggs vs. "egg substitute.")
• Packaged foods should have few, understandable ingredients and NO food dyes or HFCS. (Good examples are Triscuit and Breyer’s vanilla bean ice cream.)
• There should be more whole foods than packaged ones in the cart.
• Food is supposed to go bad. If it doesn’t have that potential, it might not be food. (A cucumber will rot. A Twinkie won’t. Ever.)

Are we perfect? Goodness, no. Oreos occasionally sneak in. Dr. Pepper invades my fridge. Since we don't have them every day, they can be special treats. 

I read a lot of labels and reject a lot of things. It takes time and often costs more to shop this way, but I believe it is probably the single most important thing I can do for my family’s (and my own) health and eating pleasure. And that’s a responsibility I can’t help but take seriously!

Interested in Real Food? I love this blog, 100 Days of Real Food. She's very committed and has some great ideas.