Reasons to love my workplace, #73: today we had a talk and Q&A with Michael Pollan, investigative journalist heavily featured in Food Inc and author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He came to talk to us about his new book Food Rules, or according to his talk today, The Omnivore’s Solution.
He’s a vibrant and interesting speaker without being preachy about food principles, and there’s way too much content to list here but his key mantra was: Eat food*. Not too much. Mostly plants.
* By food, he means “real” food and not the processed edible food replacements he produced from grocery bags when kicking off the talk following an earlier trip to Safeway.
He also spoke at length about the “Western diet”, pointing out what an extraordinary achievement it is that as a civilization we’ve managed to develop a diet which is responsible for making us sick (in the US obesity, most cases of heart disease and 30–40% of cancer can be directly traced back to diet).
My main takeaway was this: when you think you’re hungry, ask yourself if you’re hungry enough to eat an apple – otherwise you’re probably not really hungry. And if you are – eat an apple!
When I was in Mountain View, they were giving out copies of that book. I’ve still not read all the rules but I would find it very difficult to disagree with any of them. Of course, rules are made to be broken…
Check the final rule
About that: Pollan talked about the idea of creating a et of personal principles that are not too stringent, for example not buying food with ingredients with names that a 9-year-old couldn’t pronounce. This avoids having panic situations at the supermarket where you’re not sure what choices to make, given that eating better for most people will involve considerably changing their buying habits!