"Eat (real) food. Not too much. Mostly plants." - Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

This quote basically tells you everything you need to know about eating well. So simple, so clean, so memorable…and so hard to do! But why? What’s so difficult about embracing these three uncomplicated concepts, when they could have such a positive effect on personal and global health?

Let’s break it down.

It's not just about what you eat but also how you eat it. What you eat certainly matters, but how you eat it matters just as much, if not more.

In the last few decades, we seem to have lost that common-sense cultural know-how - or maybe it's just hard to remember in our fast-paced, drive-thru, take-away world. Here are some basic ground rules.

Eat Real Food

Eat real food means eating whole food that is unprocessed and doesn't come from a factory. The idea is that whole food doesn't have labels or an ingredient list. Think of a piece of steak or a head of broccoli.

Real food doesn’t have a long ingredient list, isn’t advertised on TV, and it doesn’t contain stuff like maltodextrin or sodium tripolyphosphate. Real food is things that your great-grandmother (or someone’s great-grandmother) would recognise. Your great-grandmother would not recognise margarine or Coco Pops, or Nature's Fresh white bread. She wouldn’t know what to do with a Coke or V energy drink.

Populations that eat a Western diet - lots of highly processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains - suffer high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. But populations that eat more traditional diets don’t. Our great-grandmas knew what they were doing.

In our current, complicated world, food exists on a spectrum, from just-out-of-the-garden to 'is-that-actually-edible?' In general, eat the foods that you want to eat that are closest to how they would be in nature. We don't have to be perfect and if we can't always make the best choice, simply make the better choice.

Here are some of Michael Pollan's Food Rules tips:

Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the colour of your milk.
It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car.
Avoid food products containing ingredients that a seven-year-old cannot pronounce.
Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
Eat only foods that will eventually rot (except honey, honey is delicious).
The whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead.
Eat animals that have themselves eaten well.

Not Too Much

If everybody decided to practice these three little words, the diet industry would collapse.

Food portions today continue to get bigger and bigger, except perhaps in fine dining.

As humans, we're wired to eat and to enjoy it. In today's world, when we eat too many simple carbohydrates, we get a blood sugar spike, and then an insulin spike and blood sugar crash, and the result is that we feel hungry again, even though we just ate. Many processed foods kick-start this reaction, making moderation and portion control goals seem insurmountable.

It's not just what you eat but how you eat. Many cultures have rules that you stop eating before you are full. "Hara hachi bu" is an ancient Japanese saying instructing diners to quit eating when they are 80 percent full. It’s good advice. Islamic culture has a similar rule, and in German culture, they say, 'Tie off the sack before it's full.'

For most of us, "not too much" is especially hard. Two reasons to slow down and practice mindful eating are one, to increase the enjoyment of eating and two, actually taste your food and to pick up on your body's signals that indicate you're getting full.

A simple way to increase your satiation and slow down the blood sugar roller coaster is to eat some protein with every meal and snack.

For breakfast, add an egg or some tofu, or add some nut butter to a smoothie or your oatmeal. Add nuts, hummus or a little bit of meat to your snacks. The same goes for lunch and dinner. Beans, lentils, peas, and lean meats will do the trick.

Food Rules tips:

Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored. If you're not hungry enough to eat an apple, then you're not hungry.
Stop eating before you're full.
Leave something on your plate.
Buy smaller glasses and plates - your portions will seem larger.

Mostly Plants

Don't worry, you don't have to live on silverbeet alone. This 'mostly plants' advice just reminds us of the importance of eating more plant foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains (aka real food).

Some people eat only plants (which is great) but this isn't about eating only plants, it's a reminder that having plants make up the bulk of your diet is the best way to go. Less meat is a good idea and consuming ethically-raised and sourced meat is ideal.

Plant foods are the richest, most bountiful sources of vitamins and minerals as well as fibre. They contain hundreds of thousands of phytochemicals, and many of these contain disease-fighting properties that a laboratory can’t duplicate.

You can always add more plants to your plate. Add fruit to your breakfast (hello avocado), a leafy green and one other vegetable to lunch, and a leafy green and three other vegetables to dinner. Plus, whatever else you want to eat because it’s your dinner, and you should enjoy it (ahem, preferably real food).

Food Rules Tips:

If it's a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don't.
Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
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.

Be human

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.

Slow down, really taste and enjoy your food. Do all your eating at a table and try not to eat alone. Mealtime can be a beautiful way to take a break, spend time with friends, practice gratitude and feel connected to all the people that helped bring this food to your table.

Just try to eat as much real food as you can, and try not to eat too much of it, and try to eat mostly plants. It’s easier than you think and the more you do it, the easier it gets.

The final Food Rule - Break the rules once in a while.

Food Rules - Eating Made Simple