My dear friend Nancy Pennebaker gave me an amazing book I would like to share with all of you. “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual” by Michael Pollan should be sitting where everyone in your family old enough to read can get their hands on it.

Listen, we all know what is good and what is not.

So, why do we keep drinking those awful Diet Cokes? Why do we pretend we are getting nutrition from a Big Mac?

Pollan, the Knight Professor of journalism at Berkeley, was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2010. Hey, now you can be in the flow knowing who one of the best and the brightest is.

His work is a great example of leadership connections. He makes us all think and rethink what is good and right, what really matters. He offers large ideas in a way that is totally digestible.

Some of Pollan’s important quotes will stay with you when you are really hungry, or think you are:

“It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car”

“It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language: think Cheetos”

“The whiter the bread the sooner you’ll be dead”

You get the point.

Begin to become conscious of what you eat from a new perspective, that food is as much about pleasure and communion as it is about nutrition and health.

Get a copy for yourself, for your loved ones, for little kids and teens, it is a treasure. And remember, if you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re probably not hungry.