Be the kind of person who takes supplements-then skip the supplements.

Eat all the junk food you want, as long as you cook it yourself.

Favor the kinds of oils and grains that have traditionally been stone ground.

Avoid sugary and starchy foods if you’re concerned about your weight.

“The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead”.

Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.

Eat sweet foods as you find them in nature.

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

Eat animals that have themselves eaten well (grass-fed).

“Eating what stands on one leg is better than eating what stands on two legs, which is better than eating what stands on four legs ”.

Treat meat as a flavoring or special occasion food.

What Kind of Foods Should I Eat? (Mostly Plants)

When you eat real food, you don’t need rules.

It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language (think Big Mac, Cheetos, Pringles).

It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car.

If it came from a plant, eat it if it was made in a plant, don’t.

Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.

Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans.

Eat foods made from ingredients that you can picture in their raw state or growing in nature.

Eat only foods that will eventually rot.Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.Get out of the supermarket whenever you can.Avoid foods that you see advertised on television.Avoid food that are pretending to be something they are not.Avoid food products with the word “lite” or the terms “low-fat” or “nonfat” in their name.Avoid food products that make health claims.Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.Avoid foods that that have some form of sugar (or sweetener) listed among the top three ingredients.Avoid food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup.Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry.Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.Eat food (not edible, highly processed, food-like substances).There is no ideal human diet, other than avoiding the Western diet that reliably makes people sick.Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don’t suffer from these chronic diseases.People who eat the Western diet invariably suffer from high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.The “Western” diet is characterized by lots of processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, and lots of refined grains.But I pick and choose ideas to include at my discretion. The following book summary is a collection of my notes and highlights taken straight from the book.

Food Rules by Michael Pollan