A highlight of natural foodie Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food is the list of rules for good eating that is included therein. There is lots of great advice in those pages, including the rule not to eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food, always eating at a table and only choosing products with five ingredients or fewer.

Early last year we shared some of our rules of healthy eating that we thought should have been included in the book, such as:

• Don’t eat anything you have to shoo flies, or coyotes, off of
• Don’t eat anything thrown away by Michael Pollan
• Don’t eat anything that Donald Trump has called “too rich”

We thought our list was pretty great, but the New York Times has compiled another list of healthy rules to live by from the 2,500 responses received with Pollan requested additions to his list. Here, some of the highlights.

If all else fails, resort to prayer

One reader, Marta C. Larusso, offered up advice from her Italian parents, that you can’t leave the table until you have finished your fruit. Emma Fogt added that if you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re not hungry.

Donna David advises people should avoid foods with an “oh” sound in their name, such as Doritos, Ho-Hos, Cheetos and Fritos. Lorene Lavora says people shouldn’t eat anything they aren’t willing to kill, while Kirk Westphal says people should consume foods in inverse proportion to how much the food’s lobby spends to promote it.

John Forti, with more advice from Italian relatives, said it’s better to pay the grocer than the doctor, meaning that eating good food prepared well and with love is the best medicine out there. In a similar vein, Carol Jackson says “you don’t get fat on food you pray over,” suggesting that food prepared at home, eaten at a table and given thanks for tends to be both more nutritious and more appreciated than food eaten on the run.

Two final pieces of advice are worth considering for everyone: Make and take your own lunch to work (Hope Donovan Rider) and don’t eat egg salad from a vending machine (David A. Wilson).

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

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More dietary dos and don’ts a la Michael Pollan

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