Cholesterol Solutions Today:The Good & The Bad

Michael Pollen’s new book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto argues for simplification of dietary habits in this world of complicated food products. This is what he has to say in a nutshell:

What to Eat?
Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food (non-dairy creamer?)
Avoid food products with ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than 5 in number, or that contain high-fructose corn syrup (none of these is necessarily bad in itself, but they raise red flags).
Avoid food products that make health claims. Broccoli and tomatoes are silent. If a product needs to crow about being healthy, chances are it isn’t.
Shop the periphery of the supermarket where the fresh food resides
Get out of the supermarket and shop at a farmers’ market
Eat mostly plants: more leaves than seeds
Choose quality over quantity
Eat until you’re no longer hungry, not until you’re full.
Sit down to real meals with other people; eat slowly and mindfully; enjoy your food

Or put simply in the authors own words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”
Reference: Science Based Medicine
So what does “Not too much” food mean?
Does it mean that we should eat till our appetite is satisfied. Or does it mean that we should eat till we no longer feel hungry. There is an excellent article in Scientific American which explains that eating behavior is influenced by two mechanisms in the human brain:

Hypothalamic center which controls the need to eat
Higher cortical centers mediated by dopamine reward system which controls the desire to eat

The answer to “How much food should we eat” seems clear enough.

The desire to eat can override the need to eat, leading people to consume tasty foods even when they’re not hungry. The inability to forego these rewarding aspects of food intake override long-term homeostatic control, contributing to obesity.

Reference: Scientific American
Books by Michael Pollen

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