Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual by Michael Pollan, illustrated by Maira Kalman, 203 pages

Pollan has become something of a food guru, with his bestselling In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma. Food Rules presents some simple suggestions culled from Pollan's books, as well as from his readers and others in the organic food, slow food, and nutrition community. Pollan presents 83 "rules," as well as simple explanations. For example, "don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food" (warning off the Go-gurts of the food world) or "it's OK to eat junk food, as long as you make it yourself" (the idea being that junk food takes so much work to make deep-fried Twinkies that you won't make them very often). He notes in the foreword that these are rules that he's come up with, but they're more suggestions, and he doesn't expect anyone to abide by all of them. Rather, he hopes that a handful will stick with his readers, and make them think the next time they go grocery shopping.

Pollan's rules are punctuated by some fantastic artwork by Maira Kalman. I'll admit that Kalman's work is a large reason that I picked up this short volume. I was captivated by her work in Daniel Handler's young adult novel, Why We Broke Up, (which is also worth picking up), and in this book, she doesn't disappoint. Check out this short volume, and enjoy Kalman's quirky, funny art working perfectly with Pollan's simple writing style. It's well worth the hour that you'll spend reading it.