Over the last few years, we’ve noticed big change happening in how lots of North Americans are looking at food. Instead of an incessant focus on individual ingredients, miracle supplements, and the latest food-science discoveries, a lot of people have been turning back towards a purposefully simple philosophy of food, one that rejects all the complex dietary facts we’ve amassed, in favor of something much more manageable, and far more simple.

We’ve been reading a lot about these new developments in food culture here at Bodyrock, and today we’re introducing a series called Real Food 101. Don’t be misled by the title — the educational focus is just as much for Zuzana and me, as we hope it’ll be for you guys.

This is something we’re still learning about and still exploring, and we’ve decided to chronicle that experience alongside our readers.

Michael Pollan’s Super-Simple Manifesto

We’ve found that the undisputed philosopher or ‘guru’ of this whole movement is a guy named Michael Pollan. He’s written a few books and currently writes for the New York Times, but the two most important books of his are 2006’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and his recent In Defense of Food.

Defense has a big, beautiful head of lettuce on the front, with an elastic around it. Printed right on that elastic is a manifesto on changing your entire approach towards food, and it could not be more simple. It’s 3 sentences long, and only 7 words in total. It goes like this:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Why So Simple?

Well, it turns out that all the big problems that we face when deciding what to eat can be traced back to not following one of those three principles. Pollan’s whole proposition is pretty radical, because he suggests that all the complicated diets and big-time information overload that most of us have been exposed to are completely unnecessary.

We’d be lying if we didn’t find this kind of approach really liberating, as it promises to give you something you can easily refer back to, whenever you need to think about food and your diet.

But how simple is it, really? How can you start using it right now?

Turns Out, The Word ‘Food’ Is Actually Pretty Tricky.

Here’s why he’s able to make the manifesto so very simple: when Pollan talks about food, he’s referring specifically to real food. Not processed, not made with additives, chemicals, preservatives, nothing with a ‘healthy’ badge on the outside of it — none of that. Just food.

Does this mean only vegetables? Only entire, ‘whole’ foods and nothing else? Not exactly, no — if you want to get more specific, his suggestion is not to eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as ‘food’. This means you get to keep all the obvious stuff in there (bread, yogurt, butter, and so on), but you have to eliminate stuff that was obviously created in a ‘food science’ lab (stuff like margarine, complicated granola bars, meal-replacement shakes).

Another little guideline is to not eat anything that can’t spoil — you can still use canned vegetables and beans, obviously, but if a ‘food-like substance’ can sit out on a counter for weeks without visibly changing much (and remaining edible), it’s best to stay away. The famously indestructible Twinkie would presumably not be making Pollan’s list.

The Rest of the Manifesto, and Why It’s Important.

His second sentence — ‘Not too much’ — appeals to common sense. Don’t overeat, basically. And ‘mostly plants’ is a plea to cut down on our meat consumption, which is really high — higher than it’s ever been, actually, and not doing wonderful things for our health, either.

There’s a lot of science, sociology, research, and a big, general philosophy behind this manifesto, a lot of which is covered in Pollan’s books, plus in films like the recent Food, Inc. And we’re still learning about it.

But because all of this is specifically designed to get people back towards simplicity, this manifesto is right on the front page of the book, and is designed to be useful even to someone who hasn’t read about all of this stuff, who doesn’t know exactly why processed foods aren’t that great for our diets.

Instead, it’s a starting point, and that’s how Zuzana and I are using it, and that’s how we want to present it to you. Elsewhere on the site, we’ve talked about Tosca Reno and her Eating Clean diet, and we’ve discovered that she basically shares the same philosophy — it’s just packaged a little more like a traditional diet book.

Away We Go…

We’re going to keep talking about this Real Food movement, but for now, just see if that manifesto sticks in your head — eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Can you remember it 24 hours later?

And of course, we want to turn it over to your comments. This time, we’ve got a specific question in mind:

If you’ve thought about giving up ‘bad’ foods, what’s the one thing that’s the absolute hardest to give up? It might be soft drinks, it might be sugary breakfast cereals, or it could be a fast-food milkshake.

But what’s the one thing that you just know is loaded with preservatives, additives, and processing agents, worked over dozens of times in multiple labs and processing plants, and finally re-assembled into what ’seems’ like a food — and yet you just can’t give it up?

Tell us! Don’t worry, we won’t judge. It happens ;)