Tag: Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan’s New Rule

Photo: Ken Light

It’s simple really:

“Don’t buy any foods you’ve seen marketed on television.”

In an interview this week with New York Magazine’s Adam Platt, food guru  (he hates the term, btw) Michael Pollan has this to say about Big Food:

…it’s very hard to stay ahead of the food industry. When I first published Food Rules, I said, “Don’t buy any processed foods with more than five ingredients.” Within a year, there was a Häagen-Dazs ice cream called Five. There was a Tostitos commercial on TV where this woman is buying chips for a party. She picks up a bag and says, “There are more ingredients here than I have guests coming to my party.” And then she reaches for Tostitos, which only has three ingredients. None of them particularly healthy, but only three ingredients. So I added a new rule: Don’t buy any foods you’ve seen marketed on television.

ELV loves this rule, obviously, and thinks it is a perfect companion to:

ELV’s Immutable Axiom (#137): The more a food is advertised on television, the more worthless it is.

Exhibit #1: Coca Cola.

Exhibit #2: Any and all diet foods.

Exhibit #3: American mega-brewed beer.

Exhibit #4:

http://media.fooducate.com/blog/posts/cheetos-girl-in-bath.jpg

(Feel free to add to the list in your comments below.)

The prosecution rests.

FOOD INC. – An Essential Movie

We at ELV really don’t like movies. As with most fiction and music, We consider most of them a waste of time.

We sort of make an exception for art, because great art makes you think. And when is the last time you could say that about some Hollywood film?

But occasionally a movie comes along with a message that makes you do just that….a message that entertains and informs and has you thinking about it long after you leave the theatre.

And Food Inc. is just such a film. It is a movie that sheds such a strong and important light on what we shove into our mouths everyday, that you cannot afford not to see it.

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