Unhappy Meals

– Michael Pollan – Published: January 28, 2007 – New York Times

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. I hate to give away the game right here at the beginning of a long essay, and I confess that Im tempted to complicate matters in the interest of keeping things going for a few thousand more words. Ill try to resist but will go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like: A little meat wont kill you, though its better approached as a side dish than as a main. And youre much better off eating whole fresh foods than processed food products. Thats what I mean by the recommendation to eat food. Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket. These novel products of food science often come in packages festooned with health claims, which brings me to a related rule of thumb: if youre concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that its not really food, and food is what you want to eat

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