20. Don’t ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap.
21. If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.
These three tricksy rules, particularly number 21, have been the bane of my existence since this project began.
When you think about it, what isn't made in a plant? Other than your most basic produce, pretty much everything can fall under some definition of having been made in a plant. Let's just start with breakfast: the coffee I drink every morning is roasted in a plant; the bread I eat it with - even if I bake in with my very own hands, the flour was probably milled in a plant (and they probably wore surgical caps too). Breakfast cereal is automatically out (which would answer my previous question), but what if I made my own granola? Well, would I put oats in my granola? Where were they rolled? (Answer: probably a plant.)
And, I suppose, this is sort of Pollan's point. Fresh produce, whole grains. That's it. That's about all that doesn't come from a plant, and at the core of the matter, that is all we need to be eating. And if it's so difficult to strip the rest of it away, well, that's what these rules are for - to make us aware of what we eat versus what we really need.
Which is all well and good on a philosophical level, but I don't knw about you, but I need a little more than that to get along, even for six weeks. A little milkfat. A little animal protien. A little sugar. And it's worth noting that nowhere in this book does Pollan explicitly advocate vegan/macrobiotic diet - which is what an all-whole grain and produce diet would resemble - although he sure seems to suggest it implicitly in this and other rules.
The fact is, if you take this rule at its strictest word, you don't even need the other 82 rules, because you're already going to be churning your own butter, Amish-style.
Okay, so obviously, we need to loosen our interpretation of "made in a plant," to some degree.
My first impulse was to say, okay, if it's packaged in a plant, but is more or less the same thing it was when it went in, that's okay. Allowable under this rule would be things like rice and certain brands of canned beans.
But that still leaves out a lot of very necessary items - most notably flour. Because how am I supposed have bread if I can't buy it in the grocery store and can't use flour to make my own? I sure wasn't going to grind my own flour and, while I see the benefits of reducing one's intake of processed grains, I think giving up bread completely is - like veganism - extreme to the point that it loses sight of the purpose of Pollan's book. Which is simple. And not extreme. Eat food. Eat real food.
Okay, so how about: foods that are basically one thing, and that one thing leaves the plant in a different form, but is still essentially just that one thing are also okay. Flour goes on this list, obviously. So does peanut butter, as long as it's just ground peanuts and maybe salt.
These were the rules that I had set and was prepared to follow until that fateful day that I opened up the refrigerator and realized I couldn't eat anything whatsoever. I'm not sure where things like cheese and yogurt fell on this spectrum, but to be safe, I had decided that I would either make them myself or buy them at the Farmer's Market.
Reminder: I have not yet made it to the Farmer's Market. So that should tell you a little of how well that idea went.
Honestly, I think I would have had to tinker with my interpretation of the rules anyway, because as they stood, they barred the consumption of soy sauce, a product Pollan specifically instructs me to eat (Rule 36) So... that can't be right.
Anyway, long story short, the rule that I eventually fell upon is sort of a bunch of the rules smooshed together and modified. If it follows ALL of the other rules, and it especially has less than 5 ingredients, and I can at least imagine a human being making it, then okay. Okay fine. It counts.
Oh, additionally, if it's reasonably possible it myself rather than buying it, then it's off the nice list and on to the naughty list. Unfortunately, "reasonably possible" is a subjective term which has frequently resulted in me thinking, I am running out the door and I NEED BREAKFAST. It is not reasonably possible for me to make yogurt! Yogurt from Trader Joe's is my breakfast! and then thinking later, making yogurt isn't THAT hard. I shouldn't have done that. And then subsequently becoming filled with feelings of guilt and failure.
Anyway, now that I see it written down, I can't really explain my math for why the sum of all these rules equals "not made in a plant," but... it still sort of makes sense on an intuitive level. I suppose I can allow myself to believe that while, say, Cinnamon Toast Crunch definitely made in a plant, things like yogurt or cheese or my corn tortillas that contain corn, lime juice and salt might be made in a facility equipped for mass-production (ie, a plant) but they're essentially being made the way human beings have made them for years and years, just on a much larger scale.
Yep. That's how I'm playing this. I don't feel good about it. Just, shhhh. Just go with it.
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