Michael Pollan's new book contains 64 simple rules for healthy eating.

The recent dawn of a new year is as good as time as any to resolve to eat better, but what does “better” really mean? (After all, isn’t one piece of crack pie better than two pieces?) Luckily, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual (Penguin, 2009) by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Penguin, 2007) and In Defense of Food (Penguin, 2009), provides 64 simple, common-sense rules for healthy eating. Pollan notes in the introduction that eating has become needlessly complicated: “But for all the scientific and pseudoscientific food baggage we’ve taken on in recent years, we still don’t know what we should be eating.” The answer, according to Pollan, is fairly simple, boiled down to seven words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

The book is divided into three sections — one for each of the aforementioned maxims — and each rule has a paragraph or two of explanation. The “Eat Food” section encourages the avoidance of manufactured food with rules such as “Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle,” because whole foods tend to be displayed near the refrigerated outskirts. (Pollan recently spoke about the high cost of cheap food on the The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.)

The second section addresses “What kind of food should I eat? Mostly plants.” Here you’ll find the Chinese proverb, “Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs and other mammals].”

The last section deals with fostering a healthier relationship with food, such as “Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it.” The last rule is “Break the rules every once in a while,” but also keep in mind Rule 60, “Treat treats as treats.” (Crack pie, here we come!)

Another must-read for those of us revising our diet this year is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals (Little, Brown and Co., 2009). The novelist and author of Everything Is Illuminated (Harper Perennial, 2003) spent three years researching the question of eating meat, as he decides what kind of diet he wants for his own family. Foer examines the harsh conditions of factory farms without being condescending or preachy to carnivores, including points of view from everyone from a factory farmer to PETA VP Bruce Friedrich. There are also some surprising sections, such as “I am a vegan who builds slaughterhouses” and “I am a vegetarian rancher,” from the wife of Bill Niman, the former owner of Niman Ranch. (Foer says that shortly before the book’s publication, Bill was driven out of his company, “because they wanted to do things more profitably and less ethically than he would allow while remaining at the helm.”) What makes this book stand out is that most everyone, from vegans to omnivores, when faced with the current conditions of factory farms would opt for a humane solution, whether it’s supporting one of the last independent poultry farmers or giving up meat altogether.

Reading these books has helped us to make informed decisions about eating better. For further inspiration, we’re also reading Mark Bittman’s Food Matters (Simon & Schuster, 2009), a guide to eating less junk food, meat and super-refined carbohydrates, which just became available in paperback. Do you have any of your own food rules to share?

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