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Re. #9; A friend of ours from New Zealand has commented on how they can't get corn-fed beef there. When she gets to the U.S. for an occasional visit, corn-fed beef is something she seeks out on a regular basis simply because it tastes so much better than grass-fed.

Re #1: This statement is a cute metaphor but it is wide open to various interpretations. I think it means the difference between highly processed foods and simple homemade dishes. My grandmother would recognize clams but not collards since she lived in Rhode Island and I live in Mississippi. And she would most definitely recognize Swanson TV dinners!

Regarding #1: one of my grandmothers was from Ohio and probably cooked with a lot of things Pollan wouldn't want me to eat. The other was from the Ukraine and ate a lot of things I don't recognize as food.

These are better as guidelines than commandments, but cute to have a list anyway.

I think good grass fed beef is way better than corn fed (or finished) beef for anything where you want a lot of flavor. I eat beef because I want to taste the meat, not because I want some sad, chicken-like neutral protein source that serves as a blank slate for whatever I throw at it. You do have to be more careful about overcooking it and never serve it more than medium rare, but I'm convinced the anti-grass fed beef lobby is crazy. :)

OK, definitely way too over-simplified. As with most things there are boundary conditions that very much do not fit into the rules listed.

For instance:

1. "Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."

Having lived in and associated with people both in larger cities and very small towns, I've seen people that never leave where they live their entire life. Up through several decades ago some of those in the smaller areas might have had a hard time finding certain imported items/ideas like mangos, kangaroo, kimchee, etc. Is this item in the list a back-handed way of endorsing the "eat local" movement, or is it just ignoring that there have been some people with very limited exposure to the "other" that would actually reject some of those very other items as "not food"?

3. "Don't eat anything that won't eventually rot."

Some foods seem nearly too perfect, like honey: If we can find it still edible, however desiccated, after thousands of years, then that rule is certainly right out.

5. "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket; stay out of the middle."

Big presumption on layout of the market...or maybe not. At any rate, go near the center of most I shop in and you'll find the flours, dried pastas (yes, they're generally better fresh but the certainly do not have to be), rice, beans, lentils, etc. What you have there are some of the basics that there is no way I'd consider avoiding.

I have similar thoughts and comments on many of the other rules, but will have to save those for another time since I gotta run right now.

These are so redudant. Did he really need 12 commandments to say the same thing? Seek out locally grown fresh food and cook it yourself?

i try to follow #12 partially, and that is to eat with pleasure, in the company of others.

and eat meals at tables? can that be the same table where my keyboard and mouse is?

i also assume that the rules are completely up for personal interpretation and ideas like don't eat foods your grandmother would not recognize, really isn't strictly what it means. i tend to think people should just eat what they eat, even if it makes them unhealthy.

while on the subject, the incentive for eating healthy is... feeling better? living longer? one could make the argument that eating everything in sight makes one happier. and are there longitudinal studies that show an organic only vegan lives X number of years longer than a twinkie loving counterpart? without numbers, i can say there are old dudes in china who smoke and eat stir fried meals with MSG and live to 90.

Foodinmouth: I have to vigorously disagree with "I tend to think people should just eat what they eat, even if it makes them unhealthy" and "the incentive for eating healthy?" comment.

Personally, it pisses me off that society has to bear the cost of our country's poor eating habits. Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, to name just a few, are often a direct result of unhealthy eating (and lack of exercise), and those rates are having a HUGE impact on health care costs for everybody. And, meanwhile, the government gives money to companies who provide the raw materials to the companies that make these unhealthy foods. So the tax payer is paying for the production of the healthy food and for the care of those who eat it. Nice.

Second, the impact on the environment of factory farming has been well documented, including the impact those farms have on those who live in surrounding areas.

If I had time, I'd cite further examples of why you are wrong. But these two alone are evidence that this whole debate is about far more than whether somebody chooses to eat healthy or not.

With that, I'm going to pull a pound of locally-produced grass-fed beef from the freezer for some burgers this evening, which we'll eat with sweet potato fries made from our CSA's last picking of the year.

I would like to add: don't eat anything with one of the main ingredient corn syrup. Also, eating fresh, unprocessed food does not mean you need to spend more money than when you load up on TV dinners, chips and soda.
I've done it and actually saved a lot of money by buying either fresh or dried vegetables, fruit, some meat and replaced soda with tab water. I saved a lot of money and my health improved.

1. This is a bit spurious. I wonder if my grandmother would recognize sashimi as food...

2. This is too general, as commented above. This refers to synthetic additives, not ingredients in foreign languages, but really, its about education.

3. Agreed. Except for salt. And certain things that take a very very very long time to rot, such as cured meats.

4. Agreed. That includes soy products, artificial sweeteners and fats such as Splenda and margarine and spray fats like Pam. Eat REAL milk, butter and sugar (in moderation)!

5. Except if you live in NYC or another city where stores are often shoehorned into awkward spaces.

6. "Better yet, buy food somewhere else: the farmers' market or CSA."

7. Actually, while this may seem counter intuitive, this is extremely true: since the end of WW2, Americans have spent less and less on what they eat, and at the same time health care costs have risen astronomically. The two are absolutely correlated.

Poor people ESPECIALLY need to spend what little money they do have on higher quality food. Spending more on food doesnt mean going to fancy restaurants, it means choosing fresher, less industrially processed, more organic foods. Stop buying 2 liter bottles of soda. Stop buying frozen dinners, wonder bread, Jiff or Skippy peanut butter, etc etc. That stuff is killing you!

Doctors, hospitals and prescription drugs are much more expensive than higher quality foods. If you dont eat high quality food, you will be unhealthy and get sick. And that is much more expensive, especially if you dont have any health insurance. Americans need to shift into a mentality of PREVENTION instead of REACTION. Eating well is preventative medicine. Two birds, one stone.

8. Humans are omnivores. The more variety in our diets, the happier and healthier we are.

9. Agreed, for health reasons, but it's true that grain fed tastes better. Just like us, cows that eat grains like corn and soy get fat. I bet Americans are super tasty!

10. Agreed. If you live in a city, you can grow your own herbs if you have sunlight in your apt. You can even grow some veggies like tomatoes. Also, there are some co-op gardens you can join, where you either get your own little plot and do your own thing, or you all contribute and divide the crop.

I love the idea of more people growing their own food though. I was thinking, there are so many people with big yards who dont have the time, interest, or physical ability to cultivate a part of it. If you dont have a yard, but have a neighbor who does, ask them if you can cultivate part of it. Give them part of your harvest in exchange...

11. Ed, does this mean no more eating hotdogs standing up? ;)

12. True dat.

BaHa: There is often no accounting for genetics and for behaviors such as regularly smoking pot for 30+ years. Cause and effect, indeed.

WWMPD

Ed, since you're down with the brother, review your own list of seven go-to foods for the New Year with a critical eye. As a neophyte in the professor's church, what changes might you make?

I haven't read Pollan's new book, but I'm going to hope that a New Yorker has ready access to the kind of bialy that would make the final cut. The lack of specificity when it comes to vegetables suggests that you're embarking on a difficult spiritual journey, though. Our prayers are with you now that you've turned your back on the Demon Splenda.

Seyo,
in terms of cost per calorie, fresh food is indeed more expensive in the US. a bag of chips has way more calories than a (bigger) bag of carrots, for example, but it probably costs the same or much less. so purely in terms of energy you'll get out of it, it's much cheaper . . which can be important when you're trying to wring the most out of every cent. but eventually of course it has an impact on health.

Ed,
corn-fed beef might taste better, but it's a pretty indefensible practice nonetheless. in this country, corn-fed usually means industrially-produced, which is a disaster in several ways:

- environmentally, because of pollution from the cows themselves, monoculture and pesticide use on the corn, gas used transporting things all over the country, and a number of other reasons.

- economically. governmental policies are dicatated by agribusiness, and are good only for the companies that process food and sell pesticides and etc - they're not good for any farmers, even the ones who work for them. agribusiness almost completely fails to deal with externalities like pollution and etc, which are not reflected in the cost to the buyer - we pay it through taxes or we leave it for our children to deal with.

- internationally. the industrial growing of corn requires pesticides and etc that are derived from petroleum. it takes something like five barrels of oil, iirc, to produce one slaughter-ready industrial cow. if corn is grown on non-industrial farms, practices like crop rotation eliminate the need for that kind of chemical input. our petroleum use is, to say the least, a factor in a number of worldwide conflicts, not to mention global warming and etc.

but even if you leave all that aside, cows aren't meant to eat corn. their digestive systems aren't equipped to handle it, so for them to survive on that kind of diet and not get sick and die, they have to be pumped full of drugs. antibiotic use on factory farm feedlots is a huge contributer to the development of drug-resistant strains of germs, and if it doesn't stop, someday soon we're going to learn what it was like to live in a world before antibiotics because ours just won't work anymore.

long story short: it might taste better, but it's terrible in virtually every way and is also full of drugs and nastiness. unless you're saying grass-fed is somehow inedible, it has to be the way to go.

(most of this was drawn from Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma," by the way, which i can't recommend highly enough.)

2. "Avoid foods containing ingredients you can't pronounce." Hey, what about bouquet garni?

I abide by that one... and one further, I once was told why even buy food with an ingredient list? I guess that goes along the lines of always trying to buy stuff that would eventually rot...

KarmaFree Cooking

I think we can all shape our individual living footprint into the maximum food producing space. 1) If you own a lawn get rid of it, even the smallest yard plotted correctly and planted with the season will more than sustain a family of 4. 2) Living in Alaska taught me that a good grow light can produce a plentiful supply of tomatoes, lettuce and herbs. The cost of operation is approximate US$22 per month for 2 lights.
3) Grass fed beef is great, but better yet when in New Zealand eat the grass fed venison and your in food heaven.
4) Even if your in NY city you can shop at farmers market of small produce shops where the travel from farm to retails is at a minimum.
Cheers

Here they are, Michael Pollan's Twelve Commandments for Serious Eaters, from his new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.

Did Pollan use the term "Twelve Commandments"? It doesn't sound like him.

It makes a difference, rhetorically. Ethos, Logos, Pathos.

Pathos is being strung out to a vibrating chord with the use of the term "Twelve Commandments", which alters the perception of those reading the phrases.

There's also the fact that context sometimes can be everything. Take one of these KISS statements out of context and it might appear different than it is exactly meant to be in the original context of the complete written material.

Regarding #1, in the book he says your great-grandmother, or if you're middle aged or older, your great-great grandmother. And the point is that it's a decent mnemonic for discerning what's food and what is a food product, not a literal rul to live by.

re #10: I brought my potted jalapeno into the house this fall (we live in New England) and it recently started flowering. I've got two little peppers on the way! Peppers are self pollinating, so one plant is enough, but I would think two would be better. We have been using tufts of dog hair as a sort of paint brush to move pollen from one flower to another since we don't have bees in the house. So, it is possible to grow a little bit of food indoors in the winter.

Okay, as a general guideline I like the rules. I think that they would be very difficult to adhere to all the time, and perfectly, as they are written, but they're generally decent rules. There is one exception, and it's as much about the other comments as the rules. Everyone is very keen to help "The Poor" eat healthier - get more fresh foods, less processed foods, etc. In principle, I'm bang alongside that. In practice, that won't necessarily help. Having a refrigerator stocked to the brim, for free, with good things won't be all that useful to a lot of the working poor. If you're working two jobs, trying to get your kids to and from school, possibly caring for a sick relative, etc, food is just going to slip to the bottom of the priority list. (I have a very good friend going through all that right now). You're going to pick up convenience foods that probably taste like feet, but fill you up and get you out the door quickly. Given that there will always be a certain segment of the population that is dependent on convenience foods, perhaps there needs to be more focus on making those foods less harmful than on eliminating them from use.

He actually said "great-grandmother," not grandmother. And he doesn't mean to exclude things like sushi--it's made of fish and rice, which is obviously food. What isn't "food" are basically the items referred to in #2--things that aren't whole foods.

I am SO tired of hearing people complain that eating healthy is expensive. Eating ORGANIC is expensive, but buying and eating lots of fresh produce and cooking at home is much cheaper and better for you than processed, fat&sodium laden crap that is turning the poor/middle class fat. Fast food is a convenience - if you take a *little* time to cook real food, you'll find that it doesn't break the bank and will do wonders for your health. Yes, this can be difficult for those working two jobs or just otherwise stretched to the max, but there are PLENTY of people who aren't so overburedened that they can't cook a simple meal.