The Food Issue - Michael Pollan's Favorite Food Rules - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

The Food Issue - Michael Pollan's Favorite Food Rules - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com: "Food Rules: Your Dietary Dos and Don'ts"
How did humans manage to choose foods and stay healthy before there were nutrition experts and food pyramids or breakfast cereals promising to improve your child’s focus or restaurant portions bigger than your head? We relied on culture, which is another way of saying: on the accumulated wisdom of the tribe. (Which is itself another way of saying: on your mom and your friends.) All of us carry around rules of thumb about eating that have been passed down in our families or plucked from the cultural conversation. Think of this body of food knowledge as samizdat nutrition: an informal, unsanctioned way of negotiating our eating lives that becomes indispensable at a time when official modes of talking about food have suffered a serious loss of credibility.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11food-rules-t.html