. It's basically a follow-up to his previous book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
. In that book, he developed his stance on how and what humans should eat:Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
In his new book, he came up with 64 rules to help us adhere to those 7 words (you can also check out an interview he did with the New York Times HERE).
The beauty of Food Rules is that each one is based on science, culture, and tradition (he says he interviewed many grandmothers and great-grandmothers). Despite this, each rule is easy to understand, memorable, and often funny (e.g. Don’t buy cereals that change the color of the milk). In case you are thinking that 64 rules is quite a few to remember, he actually doesn't advocate adhering to all 64. He suggests that you start with one or perhaps a few, and several of the rules overlap anyway and would accomplish basically the same thing. There are three sections of rules, one to cover what someone should eat ("Eat food"), one to cover what kind of food someone should eat ("Mostly plants"), and finally one to cover how someone should eat ("Not too much").
is that each one is based on science, culture, and tradition (he says he interviewed many grandmothers and great-grandmothers). Despite this, each rule is easy to understand, memorable, and often funny (e.g. Don’t buy cereals that change the color of the milk). In case you are thinking that 64 rules is quite a few to remember, he actually doesn't advocate adhering to all 64. He suggests that you start with one or perhaps a few, and several of the rules overlap anyway and would accomplish basically the same thing. There are three sections of rules, one to cover what someone should eat ("Eat food"), one to cover what kind of food someone should eat ("Mostly plants"), and finally one to cover how someone should eat ("Not too much").This book can pretty much be read in one sitting, but there are quite a few important take-home messages despite its brevity (more than 64 in fact). Here are a couple of my favorites:
Nutrition science, which after all only got started less than two hundred years ago, is today approximately where surgery was in the year 1650 - very promising, and very interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate on you?
Four of the top ten killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet. [He's referring to the "Western Diet"]
Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don't suffer from these chronic diseases.
While it is true that we generally live longer than people used to, or than people in some traditional cultures do, most of our added years owe to gains in infant mortality and child health, not diet.
For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it's more likely to be a processed rather than a whole food. Don't take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.
Since the low-fat campaign began in the late 1970's, Americans actually have been eating more than 500 additional calories per day, most of them in the form of refined carbohydrates like sugar.
I pretty much didn't even get into the rules with my review, but that's actually a testament to how valuable I think his (brief) introduction is. I highly recommend buying this book, and it only costs $5 on amazon.com.
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