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A few weeks ago, a friend and I went to hear Michael Pollan speak at UC Berkeley.  Given his passion for eating “real food”, the audience was surprised to see him walk on stage with two plastic bags filled with food packaged food-like substances.   He pulled each item out of the bag, and mocked the marketing claims that covered their packaging.  Gotta love this one: vitamin enhanced water… in powdered form!

Before he began his presentation, which was similar to the one I heard last year, he told us a funny anecdote about a conversation he recently had with a college freshman.   When she received his tome (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) in the mail before his fall class began, she thought that it would ruin her summer.  But she was happy to report that it ruined her parents’ summer, instead.  Turns out that she spent the remainder of the summer nagging her folks about how they should change what they were eating.  Why would I be thrilled by the idea of children pressuring their parents?  Because this was one of the main reasons I started my business of teaching children to cook!  By encouraging children to eat well, I could influence entire families.

This article, Rules to Eat By, from the New York Times, summarizes some of the key aspects of the presentation, probably more eloquently than I could here.  So instead, I’ll skip ahead to some of my favorite quips he included in his talk.  I’ll call them “Pollan-isms.”

• Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot.  Like the twinkie that has been sitting in my desk for 2 years.  I reach down and give it a squeeze every once in awhile, just to be sure.
• There is no placebo for broccoli.  You know if you are eating it or not.
• The bar (for earning a Smart Choices Check Mark on food packages) was set at such an altitude that Froot Loops can get over it.  All because they are “better than donuts,” in the words of a scientist.
• Don’t get your fuel at the same place your car does.
• If your grandmother looks at a food-like substance (such as Gogurt) and can’t figure out how to get its contents into her body, don’t eat it.
• We have trouble enjoying things that animals also do.
• We don’t know what is happening in the soul of a carrot. (This comment came up in a discussion of supplements, such as beta-carotene, and how they aren’t the same as eating “real” food.)
• Nutrition science now is like surgery was in the 1650’s: promising and fascinating to watch.
• When schools feed our kids tater tots and give them 10 minutes to eat, our government is creating a generation of fast food consumers.
• We need to get our children into the kitchen and teach them how to cook.  (Maybe I should give him a stack of my business cards!)

Does your family have any Food Rules?

Here is one that I use in my cooking classes for kids:  If you don’t recognize the ingredients listed on your food packages, they probably come from a laboratory instead of from a farm.

Pollan’s new book, Food Rules, is coming out in January.