I am ending week five a day early. Today is Valentine's Day. I am going to make chocolate mousse for my husband from scratch using a recipe from White on Rice Couple's blog. I will eat my share, I will not feel guilty and I will not blog about it. Well, not really.
Week 6. Avoid Food Products Containing More Than 5 Ingredients
The important caveat in rule 6 is that recipes with more than 5 ingredients don't count. So my lemon-rosemary-garlic roasted Rocky the Free Range chicken on a bed of baby potatoes, kale and Brussels sprouts doesn't count. Each ingredient only has one ingredient. Does that make sense? Of course it does. The Doritoes on the table at the Superbowl buffet last weekend. No go. An ingredient list longer than the indeces of an academic journal.
An interesting thing has happened to me as this project has progressed. In my travels for work and trips to the grocery store I have started considering the items in the "middle aisles" a little (a lot) differently. In lunchtimes of desperation, I used to enter a gas station mini-mart and look around for the most healthful thing to put in my mouth. A sandwich, a granola bar, etc. At the grocery store I have always concentrated on the outside aisles; produce, butcher, dairy. Now I am even less inclined to enter the middle aisles with their splashy labels and bright plastic packaging. The items in these aisles and in gas station mini-marts no longer really occur to me as viable food options. I am planning ahead more successfully (for lunches and breakfasts on the go) and hence not getting stuck in the rut of fast food drive-through salads or the gas station mini-mart lesser of all evils.
However, I recognize that the aftermath of the zombie-infection/alien invasion/armageddon, all bets are off. I will be using Food Rules as torch fuel.
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2 comments:
Interestingly, Michael Pollan appeared on a local alternative TV News program in NYC recently. He mentioned that Haagen-Daz has used his '5 ingredient' directive as part of its own promotional campaign for 8 new 'all-natural' ice cream flavors, called 'Five' - so, for example, the five natural ingredients in the flavor MILK CHOCOLATE:
SKIM MILK, CREAM, SUGAR, EGG YOLKS, COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI.
Sugar? And of course, that's the five they list.
The saturated fat content in each flavor appears to be no less than 30% for 1/2 a cup.
Personally, all the flavors sound yummy and I'll definitely taste each one, but healthy? I'm not so sure.
Pollan's response to all this is that the market is just too nimble to keep up with - they manage to jump ahead of him every time.
Pollan does discuss eating sweets and the place treats have in our diet in both Omnivore's Dilemma briefly and again in Food Rules. Something naturally unhealthy is still something unhealthy, but at least we know what we are dealing with. He suggests that if you want a treat, make it yourself. This point will be further discussed later on in this blog.
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