ManicDDaily

I have long been a careful eater.  Some might call me picky.  This isn’t really fair, because my refusal to eat certain foods has never arisen from finicky taste buds, but from strong ideas about health, morality and the environment.    I won’t burden you with these here, partly because it would take too long, and partly because, unlike the classic picky eater, I try to stay fairly quiet about my no-no foods, and to graze among the acceptable possibilities.

This pickiness, combined with the wish not to be a pain (especially when a guest), has sometimes exposed me to hunger.  And ridicule.   For years, for example, I was the subject of jokes among office mates due to my bringing carrot sticks and plain yogurt to a Yankees’ baseball outing.  (I have recently learned that the new Yankees’ stadium actually serves hummous and carrot sticks as one of its standard offerings.  Which just goes to show that my eating habits were not ridiculous but simply ahead of the curve.)

Last week, The New York Times published twenty rules for healthy eating chosen by Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food.  These were rules that Pollan had gleaned from readers, promoting among other things, the eating of apples when hungry, and the un-multi-tasked meal.

I’m not sure I’m capable of eating the un-multi-tasked meal on a regular basis, though I do love apples.  Still, after reading these, I came up with ten eating rules of my own:

1.  Avoid foods that are fire engine red, flame orange, any kind of blue, or electric green, unless they are unadulterated products of the vegetable kingdom.  In other words, yes fruit, nix Loops.

2.  Learn to say no to anything deep fried.  (This is relatively easy for me since I was raised by a mother who made all around her peel the skin off fried chicken, even her own 88-year old mother who used to groan “but that’s the good part.”)   If you have to have something deep fried, get your dining partner to order it, then sneak the occasional bite off of his or her plate.

3.  Ditto with dessert.  Get your partner to order it, and then sneak spoonfuls.  If you have dessert at home, refuse it at the meal, and then have small careful wedges standing at a counter or in front of the open fridge.   (Such wedges, eaten at midnight and intended to “even out” the dessert’s edges, have the advantage of being absolutely calorie-free.)

4.  Don’t buy things you can’t resist.  You will not be able to resist them.

5.  Don’t buy baked goods that come in packages that are easily stacked.  Actually, it’s probably advisable to generally avoid stackable food, especially if raw.  I make an exception here for crates of clementines (even though they are probably horribly sprayed) and those plastic cartons of organic salad (which are environmentally awful, but awfully convenient.)  (I would avoid non-organic salad mixes if stackable.)    This rule does not apply to cooked or dried foods – i.e. cans of beans, cases of plain yogurt (yes, yogurt has been heated), and any kind of whole grain.

6.  As a cook and mother, you basically have two choices:  either give in to the urge to taste constantly while you are cooking, serving, and cleaning up, and don’t eat anything during the actual meal; or steel yourself to taste absolutely nothing (not even that bit that will go to waste otherwise), and sit down and eat from your plate with the rest of your family.

7.    Here’s a couple of travel rules, learned, thankfully, not from my own experience, but from watching a husband: when traveling,  pay attention to the cues of waiter or waitress:  i.e. (i) do not order the “meat sandwich” in India, if the waiter tells you at first that they are out of it, and (ii) do not order a dish, even a “regional specialty,” if the waitress, shaking her head, keeps trying to dissuade you.

8.  Learn to like vegetables in all forms and varieties.  (I make an exception here for okra.)

9.   There are two fairly unadulterated, high antioxidant, foods that are (either one or the other) generally available in almost any establishment:  (i) tea; (ii) red wine.  (White, if not red, though lower in reservatrol).   In situations where the food is either doubtful or deep-fried, stick to one of these.  Unless–

10.  Unless, you are really really starving, already jittery and/or tipsy, and not in hummous-filled Yankee Stadium.   In that case, go for the scrambled eggs.