There are some good rules of thumb here, but this:
> 2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
This just smacks of so much ignorance as to be disgraceful. Something isn't good for you just because there's a short word for it, or bad for you because it has a scientific name. And it's definitely not bad for you
just because it has more than 5 ingredients.
People should do research and be informed, not make ridiculous decisions about food based on whatever words happen to be associated to their ingredients.
This is true but the purpose of such lists of rules is that they are easy to follow for people who otherwise would have no idea what to do. Every rule has exceptions and once someone tries such a system for a time they'll probably learn them. Having them avoid such food until then and start eating healthier right now would be more beneficial than waiting.
Most of rule #2 would be encapsulated by rule #1 anyway, it just reinforces it.
> This just smacks of so much ignorance as to be disgraceful.
This is a wildly uninformed, reactionary statement, Michael Pollan is literally an expert in this field in multiple domains (professor, journalist, consultant). If you stop and think for a second, perhaps an expert is choosing his words carefully, and consider that he is trying to make rules for people who think Arby's 7 nights a week is healthy, not folk who are health conscious and informed.
But hey, if you want to point me to all of the books you've written and research you've done on nutrition, I'll take a seat.
> 2. Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
This just smacks of so much ignorance as to be disgraceful. Something isn't good for you just because there's a short word for it, or bad for you because it has a scientific name. And it's definitely not bad for you just because it has more than 5 ingredients.
I remember hearing how people were duped in the past by the dangeous chemical dihydrogen monoxide: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dangers-dihydrogen-monoxid...
People should do research and be informed, not make ridiculous decisions about food based on whatever words happen to be associated to their ingredients.