Animated short reveals ‘how cooking can change your life’

In a fun animated RSA short, food writer, activist and "liberal foodie intellectual" Michael Pollan offers one simple food rule that can set us up for better health:

"Eat anything you want, just cook it yourself."

Yes, you can finally have your cake and eat it, too. (Just make sure you bake that cake yourself.)

Pollan further elaborates on this idea in his latest book, Cooked, what food you eat doesn't matter as much as who makes the food you eat.

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Corporations don't cook like human beings, he argues — a home cook never uses as much salt, sugar or fat as a fast-food chain — nor do they cook the same types of foods.

He proposes that if we only eat the French fries that we make ourselves, for example, the high-maintenance nature of the snack will prevent us from eating them too often.

The animated short was excerpted from a longer talk Pollan gave in May.

Watch Pollan's full talk, in which he presents "a compelling case that cooking is one of the simplest and most important steps people can take to improve their family's health and well-being, build communities, help fix our broken food system, and break our growing dependence on corporations," below.

The "just cook it yourself" rule echoes Rule #17 in Pollan's 2009 Food Rules. In the bestseller, Pollan offers 64 simple "rules" or guidelines for eating wisely:

"Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans."

Other rules include:

"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."

"Eat only foods that will eventually rot."

"Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does."

And the easiest one of all:

"Break the rules once in a while."

Also see: Make your own Red Lobster-style cheesy biscuits

What rule does the Food Rules author break?

In 2010, Pollan confessed to breaking the "cook it yourself" rule on occasion:

"I don't have a big sweet tooth. I do have a fat tooth," he told the Toronto Star. "Cheeses are a bigger weakness for me than pastries, but cheese is real food. French fries – that's one rule that I break. I'm not cooking my own french fries."

Which food rules do you follow? Also: Did you make your own lunch today?