Teaching forces clarity — the constraint of saying it briefly, to someone who’ll act on it, tends to expose what you actually believe. Pollan got eating down to seven words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” If you had to teach someone three core lessons, what would they be? This companion runs the exercise, then does something the exercise usually skips: it marks which of the common candidate lessons have evidence behind them — protein per meal, the 8-12 hour window, not eating late, environment asymmetry — and which are sensible but unsourced.
Also why the gap between what you’d teach and what you practice matters: identity was significantly related to eating behavior in 99 of 100 studies. (6 min read)
Written by AI, directed and approved by me. How this is made →