Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Michael PollanRead
A lot of what you see in the supermarket I would argue is not really food. It's what I call edible, food-like substances.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Many supermarket products are not real food but rather processed substances that resemble food.
In this quote, Michael Pollan emphasizes the distinction between whole, natural foods and processed items that are engineered to mimic food. He encourages consumers to be critical of the products they choose, suggesting that many items in supermarkets lack genuine nutritional value and integrity, leading to a reliance on 'edible' items that do not contribute to health in the same way that real food does.
Themes
FoodNutritionHealthProcessedSupermarket
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a health seminar to discuss the importance of eating whole foods.
More from Michael Pollan
All quotes →You look how much sugar is in a typical supermarket loaf of bread: it's a lot of sugar. It's just become one of those sugar delivery systems in our food economy.
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There is nothing wrong with eating sweets, fried foods, pastries, even drinking soda every now and then, but food manufacturers have made eating these formerly expensive and hard-to-make treats so cheap and easy that we're eating them every day.
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Meat is a mighty contributor to climate change and other environmental problems. The amount of meat we're eating is one of the leading causes of climate change. It's as important as the kind of car you drive - whether you eat meat a lot or how much meat you eat.
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[Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa.
Michael PollanRead
He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.
Michael PollanRead
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