This has nothing to do with programming, ColdFusion, JavaScript, or things nerdy. It’s far more important that that.
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
That’s the “seven word summary” of the book, In Defence of Food by Michael Pollan, and it should be required reading for all people who eat. It’s a relatively quick read, and it covers our history of eating from an evolutionary perspective, to the way it has changed in the past hundred or so years. His premise is that most of the things we eat are not actually food. He does not advocate vegetarianism, or any specific diet at all, or the eating of any specific food. He takes a holistic approach to eating that focuses on a total diet of foods that are fresh, unprocessed, and when possible, local. When you eat fresh plants and animals that come from a natural source, it is difficult to go wrong.
He ends the book with some good tips for picking out things that are, in fact, food, and are therefore, good to eat. In summary, they are:
- If your great-grandmother would not recognize it as food, it is probably not food (squeezable yoghurt tubes, for example.)
- If it has more than five ingredients, it is likely processed to the point where it is no longer food.
- If it has any ingredients that you have never heard of, or cannot pronounce, it is probably not food.
- If it contains high-fructose corn syrop, it is most definately not food.
Read it. It’s only 15 bucks.