I’m curious what folks think would be the most effective advice in the fewest number of words if added to Michael Pollan’s classic pithy nutrition advice in the title.
I truly think Pollan’s seven-worder is a gem and even some nutrition researchers admit to being envious of him for coming up with that. To the uninitiated, “eat food” means eat real food with ingredients grandma would recognize as food. If you only had one word, the best nutrition advice is just “eat” coz we would all die otherwise. The next most important advice is arguably to not eat too much as caloric limitation is about the only thing that’s scientifically known to promote longevity and reduce risk of a whole host of weight-correlated diseases. “Mostly plants” is maybe very slightly debatable (especially by the keto and other cults), but I’m convinced that’s solid advice based on research and is also consistent with the eating patterns of all of the Blue Zones.
So if you had more words, what would you add to it? I’ll go first: as someone who never has had to worry about weight increasing (and instead need to be careful to eat enough), for me personally, “not too much” although is solid population advice, is superfluous as my appetite naturally restricts what I can eat, but what I would really like to add to the “mostly plants” advice if I had two more words would be “highly diverse”, ie eat as many different kinds of foods as you can with your appetite budget.