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Dec. 16, 2011
Enjoy eating good food well
Illustrated manual offers sound eating advice and beautiful art.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
It may seem odd to publish a new edition of a book a mere two years after the original was published, but the Penguin Press’ 2011 Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan is a visually delectable update of its 2009 predecessor, featuring not only many additional tidbits of wisdom from Pollan, but colorful and imaginative illustrations by Maira Kalman.
According to Pollan’s website, “Food Rules began with his hunch that the wisdom of our grandparents might have more helpful things to say about how to eat well than the recommendations of science or industry or government.” The inspiration for the new edition is said to have come from readers of the first edition: “Many chimed in with personal policies they had found useful in navigating the supermarket, or rules they recalled hearing from their mothers and grandmothers. Several of the new rules – ‘Place a bouquet of flowers on the table and everything will taste twice as good’; ‘If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re probably not hungry’; ‘When you eat real food, you don’t need rules’ – underscore the central teaching of the original Food Rules, which is that eating doesn’t have to be so complicated, and food is as much about pleasure and communion as it is about nutrition and health.”
Pollan, who grew up on Long Island, N.Y., is a professor of journalism at University of California Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism. Among his publications are In Defence of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008), The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006) and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001). There has been a young readers version of The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2009) and a PBS documentary based on The Botany of Desire (2009). An award-winning writer, Pollan has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, National Geographic, Vogue and many others, including several anthologies.
Kalman was born in Tel Aviv and moved to New York with her family at a young age. Now living in Manhattan, she has written and illustrated 13 children’s books; her most recent one, 13 WORDS (Harper’s), being a collaboration with Lemony Snicket. Kalman is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and is currently creating an illustrated column for the magazine, based on visits to museums and libraries. Among her many recent projects are two monthly online columns for the New York Times; one about her life, the other about American history and democracy, both of which have been published in book form by Penguin Press.
The collaboration of Pollan and Kalman on the illustrated Food Rules has resulted in a really nice, compact book full of useful information and playful artwork. Pollan fleshes out most of the rules, generally in a paragraph or two. When there isn’t any scientific evidence to support a concept, he duly notes that fact. For example, in Rule 70, which recommends breakfasting like a king, lunching like a prince and dining like a pauper, he writes, “Eating a big meal late in the day sounds unhealthy, though the science isn’t conclusive ... some researchers believe a calorie is a calorie, no matter what time of day it is consumed. Even if this is true, however, front-loading your eating in the early part of the day will probably result in fewer total calories consumed, since people are generally less hungry in the morning.”
Since many of the rules are the same as those in the 2009 edition, owners of that book may not find this one a worthwhile purchase, though there are 19 additional rules offered, but Kalman fans and new readers will prefer this edition to the previous one. There are so many paintings that merit a call-out, but one that immediately comes to mind is that of people, young and old, fat and thin, from a variety of cultures, shopping in a supermarket, with the word EAT painted on the top of one set of grocery shelves and MORE on the other; the product categories are based on some of the reasons we eat: boredom, sadness, anxiety, despair, ennui and anger.
The rules themselves are also too numerous to mention – there are 83 – but more than one will stick with you because they are so clearly and briefly articulated. For example, in addition to those listed above, common-sense recommendations include “Eat only foods that will eventually rot,” “It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language (think Big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles),” “Make [tap] water your beverage of choice” and “Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.”
Rules that may surprise readers include “Avoid food products that make health claims,” because they’re more likely to be processed and “only the big food manufacturers have the wherewithal to secure FDA-approved health claims for their products, and then trumpet them to the world.” Along similar lines, “Avoid food products with the word ‘lite’ or the terms ‘low-fat’ or ‘nonfat’ in their names.”
There are rules that will be harder to follow than others, such as “Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients” and “Go food shopping every week,” but there are rules like “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself,” the theory being that, if you have to make something from scratch, it’ll be healthier than anything store-bought, but also that you’ll do it less often, given the time it takes to bake or cook. There’s also “Love your spices” and “Enjoy drinks that have been caffeinated by nature, not food science” – and then there’s Rule 83: “Break the rules once in a while.”
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