Just Eat Food (and other avant-garde advice)

Its time for many of you to be in the "resolution" zone...either making one, breaking one, or faking one. I'm here to remind you that sensible committed healthy practice really works. There is no magic and there are no secrets. We all keep looking for them but it really is this simple:

Food theorist and high priestess /scholar of nutrition, Marion Nestle has a simple message, "Eat less, move more, eat fruits and vegetables, don't eat too much junk food, and enjoy every bite you eat." (Nestle, What to Eat) The key here is ENJOY every bite. Don't eat crap. Eat great stuff and love it. I think PASSION (rather than compulsion) is the key to health & fitness. (On that note...Thanks, Juliet, for sending those sublime torrone from Modern Pastry in Boston's North End!)

Food journalist and author Michael Pollan sums it up simply, too. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." [In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Penguin 2008] His newest tome is another fabulous discussion of the cultural backdrop of eating in contemporary U.S. life. The title alone makes the book worthwhile to me but this gives you a sense of the Manifesto's message:

• "The first time I heard the advice to "just eat food" it...completely baffled me. Of course you should eat food--what else is there to eat?...Taking food's place on the shelves has been an unending stream of foodlike substances, some seventeen thousand new ones every year--'products constructed largely around commerce and hope, supported by frighteningly little actual knowledge.' " (Pollan, 147)
• "EAT MEALS. This recommendation sounds almost as ridiculous as "eat food," but in America at least, it no longer goes without saying." (Pollan, 188)

Michael Pollan is the Knight Professor of Journalism at Berkeley and award-winning author of In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire. Marion Nestle, Ph.D. is Professor of Nutrition and Public Health at NYU. What to Eat and Food Politics are among her many publications.

Read these books. They're food for thought. Oh... and keep running, moving, walking, etc. While not terribly exciting or sound-bite suited, these really are the secrets to my "After." So don't give up on those resolutions just yet.