Many of the "back to basics" food movements have a certain worthwhile logic, while also being riddled with rules that make no sense and are not scalable. Why is that?

Heh. This.

I support his philosophies in a general kind of way, but when he gets specific, Michael Pollan annoys the living shit out of me. I can't read more than a few sentences into any of his columns before I want to roll up the magazine and start beating him with it. He's like the Michael Moore of foodie-ism.

And mostly this. Because I can get behind "Eat Food, Not too much, mostly plants" (or whatever it is), but when you introduce Rules, I got 2 words for you: nuh and uh.

--Avoid food products containing ingredients that 
a) are unfamiliar

Does this mean foreign food? Even if it's plant-based?

b) are unpronounceable

Whole lotta shit I can't pronounce. Like foreign food. Which Pollan espouses below.

c) are more than 5 in number

Dude. Arbitrary much?

--Avoid foods that make health claims

No problem. Twinkies definitely don't make health claims.

--Eat meals, don’t snack


That doesn't work with a lot of people's (1) lifestyles and/or (2) metabolisms. If I couldn't snack, I'd keel over before dinner.

--Eat mostly plants, especially leaves (not seeds)

What's the problem with seeds? Seeds (punkin, et al.) and nuts are a great source of protein and healthy fat.

--Eat more like people with traditional food cultures (the French, Italians, the Japanese, Indians, Greeks)

Okay, but I'm supposed to avoid food I can't pronounce, and that my great-grandmother wouldn't recognize, which eliminates a LOT of French, Italian, Indian, Greek, and especially Japanese food. I *still* don't know how to pronounce "omakase," and my great-grandma McCarthy would have put it on the end of a fishing pole as bait.

Some of my great grandparents lived on biscuits, cornbread and cured pork products, plus a couple of kinds of vegetables cooked to mush with more pork products.

Whole lotta shit I can't pronounce. Like foreign food. Which Pollan espouses below.

I was visiting a friend in the 'burbs a couple of weekends ago and her local Jewel had a section of British food in their "ethnic" foods section. I bet you could pronounce that. . . although some of it probably wouldn't fit in with his other categories.

In his defense, he is going to be 32. And also I myself don't understand game systems, and think they're for kids, but apparently I'm wrong and all 30-year-olds play video games.

I spent part of the weekend playing Assassin's Creed and I'm 37. LOVE IT, too.

Some of my great grandparents lived on biscuits, cornbread and cured pork products, plus a couple of kinds of vegetables cooked to mush with more pork products.

My grandfather lived to be 88 on this diet. Including smoking non-filtered cigarettes at age 12, working in coal mines his entire life and being a raging alcoholic who made his own moonshine.

I was listening to Pollen on NPR this am.

1) He has no problems with you eating a big mac if you want a big mac- but it should be a treat not a norm. He can't eat them after being in a feed lot.

2) his feeling is that Intuit - on their seal blubber and lichen diet - were/are healthier than the average American do to what the average American. ( Of course - if I could eat like that I wouldn't be healthy - because my lifestyle doesn't match)

and by the way - he doesn't like the word commandments or even rules - he has some other word he prefers. - but I forgot what it was.

the other things mentioned were not addressed in the snippet I heard.

Things I do know - Lots of people do not digest corn well. If you are having digestive issues getting rid of things like corn oil, many american non-microbrewed beers, and high fructose corn syrup may actually cause digestive issues to disappear ( corn meal as well, of course).

snacks - do you think of snack as 'extra' food or are they part of you nutritional plan? That tells you if you should be eating snacks.

I'm still chewing on the great-grandmother thing, and realizing that, although it's intended as one of those "go back to Primordial Days! When everything was Fresh! and Wunnerful!" exhortations, it actually makes no sense at all, in the US. 1900 was a terrible year for Primordial Days cooking! Food was just getting industrialized, and was full of stupid mistakes and botulism outbreaks and strange things pickled and stuffed into cans! The Jungle hadn't even been published yet, which means there wasn't an FDA!

There's a fantasy in there, about the wonderfulness of the agrarian past, that wasn't even true in the past. I hate the idea of attempting to rest my concept of best practices on a fantasy -- sounds like a recipe for failure to me!

snacks - do you think of snack as 'extra' food or are they part of you nutritional plan? That tells you if you should be eating snacks.

For me, it's part of my plan and there's usually some protein involved. I guess they're less "snacks" and more "mini-meals."

I always took the "what grandparents would recognize as food" suggestion as an elimination of things like "methylchloroisothiazolinone".

For me, it's part of my plan and there's usually some protein involved. I guess they're less "snacks" and more "mini-meals."

Yeah, my snacks are stuff like edamame or grapes.

I always took the "what grandparents would recognize as food" suggestion as an elimination of things like "methylchloroisothiazolinone".

Yeah, this is clearly what he means -- and as such I agree with it -- but the fact that I've had this same conversation a bunch of times tells me dude has some serious communication issues.