After explaining how certain plants have co-evolved through human cultivation (The Botany of Desire), after explaining why fakockteh factory frankenfoods are ruining our bodies and our planet (The Omnivores Dilemma), and after laying out an eaters manifesto for the age (In Defense of Food), now Michael Pollan is laying down the law about exactly what to eat (Food Rules).

This we need?

Taken as a whole, the books 64 prescriptions confirm something more: Michael Pollan is your grandmother. In pithy Talmudic aphorisms hes trying to nudge the world into keeping a new kosher.

Rule #8 Avoid food products that make health claims.

Rule #11 Avoid foods you see advertised on television.

Rule #13 Eat only foods that will eventually rot.

Rule #21 Its not food if its called by the same name in every language. (Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or Pringles.)

Oy, gevalt! Listen up. Americans are potchkeying around with their natural bounty, making a mishmash of their lives and everyone elses, too. Whats happening to them shouldnt happen to a dog. Enough already. Keep eating this meshuggener Western diet and youre going to plotz!

Better you should eat what grandma ate, says Michael. It cant hurt.

Why are Kathy and Bernard the ideal dinner guests? Because they bring their own dinner.

Saturday night Bernard braised a rack of pork in a marvelous dozen little artichokes, a few golden beets, garlic, chicken stock, white wine and some fresh chervil (also known as gourmets parsley). The sweetness of pork and beets nicely balanced the artichokes natural bitterness.

He cooked it in a huge cast-iron oval Dutch oven resembling the iron-clad USS Monitor. Manufactured by the venerable French ironmongers Cousances, now owned by Le Creuset, the pot seemed to lend its own unique flavors to the stew.

Infinitesimal remains from dinners of yore boil and bubble imparting dark magic to the cauldrons charmed ingredients.

Fillet of a fenny snake
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog

How can a pot contribute to flavor? Because it is never washed with soap.

While Kathy, good American girl, dutifully scrubs kitchen pots with soap and pad, Bernard the Frenchman gives his iron pot one hot rinse and calls it quits until tomorrow.

Mr. Henry is wary of gadgetry in the kitchen. He likes his old waiters corkscrew and his old hand-crank can-opener. If he needs to slice and dice, he takes a knife out of the drawer.

To this bastion of conservative family values one fine day Mrs. Henry, normally a woman to abjure gimcrackery, brings home a cone-shaped ceramic vessel with narrowed neck and announces the advent of the chicken sitter, an invention that would have delighted Vlad the Impaler.

Resembling the Mercury orbiter capsule, the chicken sitter (and try saying that three times fast) is more fun than Captain Billys Whiz Bang. It beats the old beer can technique all to hell. Stuff the chicken sitter with herbs, wine, garlic, lemon or what-have-you. Then impale your trussed bird on the cone.

Skin cooks crisply and evenly all around while liquid inside the cone bastes and steams the flesh. Indeed, the chicken sitter yields a perfect roast chicken with absolutely no fuss. Afterwards you can salvage the juice inside the cone to help make stock with the bones.

Death, divorce, and debt the glorious three ds of Sothebys and Christies currently bedevil the extended Henry family, though fortunately not the immediate household. Mrs. Henry believes in keeping up routines and does not countenance such prodigality.

Christmas holidays likewise bring forth a perpetual wellspring of objects seeking new ownership apple corers, nutcrackers, scented candles in matched sets, cherry red windbreakers and frightful neckties.

Holidays also bear gifts of depression, indigestion, intestinal cramp, bloat and a throbbing gall bladder. Each year Mr. Henry swears he will leave for the holidays because too many around him take leave of their senses, and because despite his renowned self-control at the table, during holidays he abandons all sense of moderation and proportion.

Christmas tradition revives bad food habits from the storied Middle Ages, blithe era of famine, contagion, and dogma. Eggnog (vanilla nutmeg ice cream in a glass!), triple cream cheeses, bon bons wrapped in sparkly foil, preserved fruit, mincemeat, liqueurs, layer cakes, assorted chocolates with cream filling, and nuts roasted in peanut oil, palm oil, or coconut oil. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, fat was a good thing.

Today these caloric gut-bombs serve as anti-depression medications self-prescribed to remedy seasonal affective disorder, better known as the blues and the blahs, horse latitudes of the soul.

What brings out the holiday nuts? After four scotches nutty Uncle Jack dressed in plaid jim-jams slips on the patio black ice and cracks his humerus. Ha! Not so funny now, Uncle Jacks funny bone.

Brother Clifford treats his seasonal disorders with sour green juice of fresh barley grass mixed with V-8. It puckers the gums mightily, but also promotes good digestion and cures bad breath.

Clifford subscribes to the philosophy of a ph-balanced diet, that is, eating foods that promote an alkaline environment in the blood. Contrary to expectations, preachers of the ph-balanced way do not necessarily extol foods that are themselves alkaline. Lemons and limes are recommended, for example. Wine and vinegar are forbidden, as is coffee. Leafy vegetables are encouraged. Meat is discouraged. Its hard to keep up. Youd better buy the ph bible.

Clifford claims it cured his incipient diabetes, chronic headache, chronic backache, and fatigue. If you add hoarseness, cottonmouth, snoring, dropsy, flatulence, hip pain and plantar fasciitis, youve got old age pretty much covered.

Vegetarianism doesnt seem to have penetrated snow country. Here in the mountain aerie of The Canyons at Park City, shining ersatz village on a hill, meat is whats for dinner, in particular exotic meats like elk and bison. Salads are topped with bacon bits, duck confit, and other meaty delicacies. Although they wont become local in Utah until global warming advances a bit farther, sea scallops, perhaps the richest food of the sea, routinely pop up on menus of fine restaurants.

If you want to live on vegetables in Utah ski country, youre stuck with chili or bean burritos.

Since this town is younger than Mr. Henrys Timberland boots, it might seem churlish to expect it to be steeped in authentic tradition. But why must every entre arrive with a glaze, reduction, or coulis invariably too sweet?

Mr. Henry blames Top Chef. The world has fallen under the svengali sway of Padma Lakshmi, televisions dark-eyed temptress and siren of oral pleasure. Today across the nation young men sharpen knives, grow a soul patch, and dream of seducing Padma with something on a plate. Young women, too, have joined the kitchen crusade.

The upshot of this competitive hedonism is that new chefs are using too many ingredients at once. Last night at The Westgate Grill, Mr. Henry ordered elk tenderloin (raised in New Zealand no wasting disease there). In itself the elk was delicious, but it could not win a valiant fight with a syrupy blueberry sauce. Passed out beside the elk lay drunken mushrooms over-marinated in red wine. Steamed and broiled Brussels sprouts, the evenings highlight, however, were perfectly prepared.

The question remains: why must chefs insist on overpowering the palate with contrasting and, too often, conflicting flavors? Why cant they let ingredients speak for themselves? Elk filet is sumptuously elegant and requires little in the way of adornment.

Typical of the Top Chef generation, the Westgate Grills salad chef got the look but not the taste. Spinach salad piled in a stack with blue cheese and walnuts looked beautiful and had the right combination of flavors, but it was drowning in dressing.

Padma, hear us! The nation cries to you for balance, for restraint for bridle, halter, crop and lump of sugaryes, yes, yes.