“Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants” - from Michael Pollan's Seven Words and Seven Rules for Eating.
The posting of this drawing is not a coincidence, as I've decided to spend this month re-examining how I eat. And what better month than the awful, cold and gloomy February to do it. I eat pretty well (for the most part) and exercise but the holidays are a great excuse to slack off. I don't want to turn around in May and see that my shorts are a lil' snug. It's not a nice look.
Eating properly isn't that hard, it just takes a little more planning and a lot of discipline. I'm keeping a food diary to keep tabs on what I eat for the next month, cutting back on beer (sad face) and cutting out the junk. Wish me luck!
The seven rules according to Pollan are as follows:
- Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. "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?”" Pollan says.
- 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.
- 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.
Illustration details: Hand-lettered, scanned and recolored in Photoshop. Watercolor paper background. There was minimal cleanup in Photoshop to keep the loose, hand lettered feel.
