Nutritionist, activist and author, Michael Pollan, has a new book which distills many of the ideas presented his earlier works, “The Omnivoire’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” and “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” into simple food rules. These are wonderful rules to teach to children of any age. Whether kids follow them regularly when we parents are not around, we can feel confident that the little voice in their head that acts as our proxy will speak up, and over time, prevail.
Here are a few beautifully simply examples of Pollan’s wisdom:
1. Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can’t pronounce.
3. Don’t eat anything that won’t eventually rot…There are exceptions — honey — but as a rule, things like Twinkies that never go bad aren’t food.
4. Always leave the table a little hungry.’
5. Eat meals together, at regular meal times.
6. Don’t buy food where you buy your gasoline. In the U.S., 20% of food is eaten in the car.
7. Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
This Papa wants to interject that he has started the year off on a wheat & gluten free (and dairy free) foot after reading a convincing article on HuffPo stating that gluten can cause serious health complications for many, with Celiac disease at more serious end of the spectrum and allergies at the other. I had been eating Beano regularly before meals and taking Lactaid pills everytime dairy was encountered to deal with digestive discomfort, bloat and gass (both kinds!). In addition to being a far from perfect solution, popping those digestive enzymes was getting to be quite expensive.
Eight days in I can report that cravings for all types of trigger food have nearly disappeared, so if you are worried that following Pollan’s rules could be derailed by impossible cravings for your go-to dishes, perhaps try a test, as the article’s author, Mark Hymann, MD, suggests and do a 2-4 week gluten ellimination diet as a test. After this period, re-introduce gluten into your diet and compare the ways that you feel. Only you will know the answer.
If any of you Red Pill Parents decide to give the gluten ellimination diet a chance, please report your findings in the comments section.
Extra credit: do your children suffer from food allergies? If so, what kinds?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I was just talking about the whole gluten free diet with a MD friend the other day. So, just a word of caution for those wanting to know if gluten-free is best for you. When you re-introduce gluten to your diet after trying the 2-4 week elimination diet, it is quite common for your body to react badly to it (after not having had to digest it for sometime), so you should look at the long term feeling of the reintroduction, not the immediate reaction.
I have a 2 1/2 yr old who suffers from food allergies. His worst are Cashew nuts and green Kiwifuit (not gold ones). Lesser ones are egg and other nuts. We generally stick to Pollan’s rules that you mentioned, but I have to say that it seems far easier to buy foods like this in New Zealand than in the US.
I wholeheartedly agree with this post – gluten yes, should be off limits, but have you tried raw (unpasteurized) milk? I believe that this is possibly the missing connection. Wed drink 10 litres a week and have done for the past three years and my children are healthier than they have ever been.
Lou x
p,s, I think that all you need is number one from Michael Pollan’s list above, but make that great-grandmother