The above is due to Michael Pollan whom the CC deeply respects (even on the few occasions when he disagrees with him, and even though the Berkeley-preachy earth-mother persona gets a little tiresome.)
It's basically a credo for food, and within each lie a few subtleties.
The first one is, paradoxically, the hardest. If not food, then what? What Pollan means however is a little more precise:
The CC will add an addendum: "Don't eat anything someone's great-grandmother wouldn't recognize."
The CC knew his great-grandmother till age thirteen, and is quite confident that she would not have thought of sushi as food. However, food it is as legions of Japanese great-grandmothers undoubtedly would tell you.
The point is simple : if you don't recognize the ingredient, or can't pronounce it, don't eat it.
Modified food starch? Soy lecithin? Ethoxylated diglyceride?
PASS!!!
The economic pattern driving this is clear. If you cook from scratch, there is very little that companies can sell you. Hence, the drive for "convenience", or "enhanced nutrition", etc.
But if you eat a nutritionally varied diet, there is no need for "enhancement" so that one is pretty much bullshit straight out of the bull. The "convenience" part you will have to tangle with yourself. The CC cannot help you there.
Lest it not be clear, the CC's repeats his position: processed food = bullshit food.
The second point should be self-evident. We live in a world of excess not of starvation like our ancestors. Eat till you are 80% full, as they say.
The most important part is to have a healthy relation with your food. The key is balance. Remember that fat-phobia and carb-phobia are media creations, and they have no basis in science (the CC will be happy to elaborate at bloody length, and bore the living crap out of anyone who's interested.)
In short, enjoy your food, and make peace with your personal demons, whatever they may be.
The CC has made his peace with duck confit, lard and goose fat. Not to be eaten frequently but nevertheless to be savored and celebrated in moderation.
That's a natural segue into the last point.
The health argument for eating "mostly" vegetarian is overwhelming. The flavor argument for many a fish and meat is equally overwhelming. However, we are best served by treating meat as a herb or a spice (which is exactly what you will see in Italy, incidentally) than as a foundation of a meal. The fish issue used to be more straightforward in days of yore but in modern times, there are other issues with it like ingesting mercury, etc.
Incidentally, this brings us to something that deeply rankles the CC to his core.
It's the inability of US Dept. of Agriculture to talk about issues related to nutrition in an honest manner. The reason is clear -- at the intersection of food and economics, the money masters win out.
It is their policy that the so-called "food pyramid" be done in a way that "agrees with American tastes". Never mind the fact that nobody knows what "American" tastes are. They seem to embrace everything from pizza and fried calamari to pad thai and phô but the bureaucrats have some peculiar notions.
The pyramid must be designed to "American tastes", and it can't be changed; and why can't you change it? Well, because it would go against "American tastes".
Hellooo, Heller!
The reality as anyone with an iota of a brain can figure out is that lentils and legumes are superior to meats both economically and nutritionally. You could eat for a month for the same price that you are paying for a single meal, and you can take the difference in money to make all the meals vastly more interesting and diverse (thus satisfying George Orwell's criticism as well.) Kudos to the Washington Post for pointing this out a few years ago!
(For those interested, the Guardian has generously printed the entire last chapter of Pollan's book.)
Once again then, the CC reiterates Pollan's principle:
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