Happy, Healthy New Year
IL Fiorello wishes everyone a happy and healthy and prosperous New Year.
Enjoy our olive oil with good food and much happiness. Be thankful.
Doesn’t everyone make the usual New Year’s resolution to try to eat better to improve their health? I would suggest that it really is very simple. Follow some of the “food rules” by Michael Pollan- writer, author, Professor at UC Berkeley, and author of In Defense Of Food, (Penguin Press, 2008).
Pollan has three basic rules and they are:
Eat food. Meaning real food not packaged or manipulated
Not too much. Don’t over eat
Mostly plants. Consider a plant based diet, occasional meats are fine
If you are interested, watch the movie just released December 30, 2015, following his book In Defense of Food. It is a true common sense approach to the health issues (read “diabetes and obesity”) in the civilized world.
The following statements are taken from his writings:
- “Eat food” means to eat real food — vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and, yes, fish and meat — and to avoid what Pollan calls “edible food-like substances.”
- Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. Pollan says, “When you pick up that box of portable yogurt tubes, or eat something with 15 ingredients you can’t pronounce, ask yourself, ‘What are those things doing there?’”
- Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce.
- Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store. Real food tends to be on the outer edge of the store near the loading docks, where it can be replaced with fresh foods when it goes bad. Just a personal note, many markets now have fresh food front and center. Stay there to shop for real fresh food.
- Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot. “There are exceptions — honey — but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren’t food,” Pollan says.
- It is not just what you eat but how you eat. “Always leave the table a little hungry,” Pollan says. “Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. In Japan, they say eat until you are four-fifths full. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture they say, ‘Tie off the sack before it’s full.'”
- Families traditionally ate together, around a table and not a TV, at regular meal times. It’s a good tradition. Enjoy meals with the people you love. “Remember when eating between meals felt wrong?” Pollan asks.
- Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.
Pollan often ends his presentation with a quote from Oscar Wilde, “everything in moderation including moderation.”
We are human and derive enjoyment from food. So celebrate and enjoy, but be wise.
Ciao