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After watching a recent episode of Oprah, I have become increasingly interested in knowing where my food comes from and knowing exactly what is in the products that I eat. Featured on that particular episode was Micheal Pollan, the author of several food-related books. As soon as the hour-long episode ended, I logged on to Amazon and ordered Pollan’s newest book, Food Rules. Since the day my order arrived in the mail, I have become more conscious of my eating and have improved the eating habits of some of my most stubborn family members. This slim, 139-page book has changed my life, and it has the power to improve the diets of any family willing to open the paperback.

Unlike many nutritional articles and books, Pollan’s Food Rules is written for the average person, not a scientist. The language is easy to understand, the reasoning makes sense, and the rules are realistic. The book is divided into three sections, each answering people’s most daunting dietary concerns: what to eat, what types of foods to eat, and how to eat. In each of these sections, Pollan provides practical policies to help people bypass the “edible foodlike substances” and eat real food. (continue reading…)

I know that the nine-year-old can be difficult and moody, but when mine wrote “2008—another year to live through” in his journal, it got me to thinking: those teenage years are going to be bad, bad, bad. Sure, there’s no way to guarantee your kid isn’t going to be miserable or get into trouble, but there’s got to be some way to help inoculate them against the troubles of life.

What I really wanted to know was how to tell whether my child is depressed, or just has a really bad attitude. If you’ve got a phlegmatic child who by nature complains a lot and will always comment that the glass is half-empty, what can you do to help that child survive his middle-school and teenage years, never mind the trials of adulthood? How would you even know when this kind of child is actually depressed as opposed to just constantly negative? (continue reading…)

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