Michael Pollan's Rules to Eat By

May 8, 2008 — -- "It's one way to distinguish between the food and foodlike substances. If [your great-great-grandmother] picked up a pack of portable yogurt tubes, would she recognize this? I don't think she would," Pollan told "Nightline's" John Donvan.

"You know your dentist, you know your doctor, you know your mailman. Don't you think you should meet the guy/gal who is providing your sustenance?" Pollan said.

"Real food costs more than edible foodlike substances, by and large. You can do it but … if you don't have the money you're going to have to put more time in. I think we need to begin to spend more on food, both in terms of money and in time," said Pollan.

"On the price issue, real healthy food, food that you get at the farmers' market, organic food, it does cost more. There's no question. And that there are people who can't afford to eat well in this country, and that's really a shameful situation. And I think it has to be addressed at the level of politics. There is a reason that the processed food is so cheap and that reason has a lot to do with our agricultural policies in this country. We subsidize soy and corn. We don't subsidize fresh produce."

"I'm arguing we don't, that the experts have not been guiding us very well and that people ate very well long before they had nutrition science, long before they knew what an anti-oxidant was, and that we would do well to go back to that time where culture instructed us in how to eat."