Food Rules & giveaway winner!

The winner of Michael Pollan's new book

 Food Rules, An Eaters Manual

 is............

TheWilliamsFamily

Congrats! I'll get in touch with you!

(The winner was chosen by random.org

For those who didn't win, I'll share a few of my favorite rules from the book, how I put them into practice, and share some of my own rules too!

Michael Pollan's Food Rules:

Rule #3: Avoid food products that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.

I don't know about you, but I don't stock my pantry with any maltodextrin, red dye #5, hydrogenated soybean oil or many of the other ingredients  you see on labels. This rule helps you know what you are eating. It also means that before you eat (or buy) anything, you read the label. For years, I was a diligent label reader. I would scour that "nutrition facts" section for important information- How many calories? How many grams of fat? Now, I don't even look at that part. I just skip right down to the ingredients with one question in mind: what is this? and usually, when I read through that list, I put it right back on the shelf, because it's full of ingredients that are nothing I want in my kitchen or in my food.

Rule #15 Get out of the supermarket whenever you can.

As I've started to change the way I eat, I change the way I shop too. Every Saturday, we pick up locally grown, organic produce from our CSA group. Our beef was raised about 35 minutes away- on pasture- and slaughtered in a local meat shop where I went to pick it up. Our eggs are from happy, truly free range chickens that live outside on a local farm. The local beekeeper was able to tell me what the bees were eating when they produced our honey. There are still many things I buy at the grocery store, and I probably will never totally get away from that, but often healthier, more environmentally friendly choices can be found in other places.

Rule #33 Eat some foods that have been predigested by bacteria or fungi.

Sourdough bread, buttermilk and yogurt count! And someday I may be brave enough to try fermented vegetables.


Rule #39 Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.
Just last night we had a treat. It was homemade lemon pudding. I made it with 3 egg yolks, whole milk, cornstarch, sugar and a lemon. It was creamy and rich and delicious- and guilt free. I reduced the sugar, and the fats were from whole milk and those happy chickens I talked about earlier.  Preparing foods yourself not only means you control what goes in, but in all likelihood means that you'll eat it less often. And even though I make treats, I never make "junk."

My own rules:

Eat as healthfully as you can... but make sure it tastes good.

I learned to make sourdough bread a while back, because I'd read that it's good for you. But the truth is, I've never liked sourdough bread, and even though my husband does, he wasn't a big fan of my sourdough bread;)  So, after a few attempts, I realized: it may be healthy, but it doesn't do us any good if no one will eat it! If you've read my thoughts on sugar, you know that I don't think that's a good-for-you food... but it does make things taste good. I continually try to cut back, but honestly, I'll probably never eliminate it altogether because it is important to me that things taste good!

Eat food the way God intended it to be eaten.

I'm pretty sure corn was meant to be eaten as... corn. Or maybe ground into corn flour or corn meal. That's a lot different than the chemical process involved to make something like high fructose corn syrup or maltodextrin. I eat the whole egg, not just the white. Whole milk instead of skim. Wheat flour instead of white flour. As much as possible, I eat foods whole, because that is how God made them.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday and Pennywise Platter Thursday.