The U.S. health care crisis is in large part a crisis of the American diet -- roughly three quarters of the two-trillion plus spent on health care in the U.S. goes to treat chronic diseases, most of which can be prevented by a change in lifestyle, especially diet.
A healthy diet is simpler than the food industry would have you believe. After spending several years trying to answer the supposedly incredibly complicated question of how people should eat in order to be maximally healthy, Michael Pollan discovered the answer was shockingly simple -- eat real food, and get off the modern western diet, with its abundance of processed food, refined grains and sugars.
In his book Food Rules, Pollan sets out to collect and formulate some straightforward, memorable, everyday rules for eating, a set of personal policies that would, taken together or even separately, nudge people onto a healthier and happier path. His rules include:
#11 Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
#19 If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.
#36 Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.