Her career as Cincinnati’s longtime food critic behind her, Polly Campbell re-imagines what good eating looks like—and encourages you to do the same.

Photography Michael Wilson

During the years I worked as a food journalist and restaurant critic, so many things happened in the world of food: The Food Network got big, chefs chased celebrity, and the local food movement took hold. Low-fat went out and low-carb came in. People started blogging, then sharing, then Instagramming everything they ate. Food became entrenched in popular culture, as well as taken seriously as high culinary art.

I tried to keep up with all of it—all the trends that came and went, the new diets that launched product lines, the restaurants that opened at a frenetic pace, the conversations on social media. A lot was exciting, some was just noise. (Anyone remember those meal prep places where you’d go and put ingredients in plastic bags to take home?)

I’ve had my own confusing food agendas, driven by societal trends and by my own need to feed a family, to try to stay healthy (choosing from 800 or so suggested ways to do that), and to manage my time and budget.

Now that I’m retired from daily journalism, once again a civilian cook and eater, I’ve gone back to basics. These days, I find myself happiest when I’m shopping at the farmers’ market, cooking old favorite recipes, taking food I know my mother likes to her, and concentrating obsessively on inventory control. I get more pleasure from using up everything I’ve got before the next shopping trip than from executing a fancy recipe.

Would it be grandiose of me to take what I’ve learned and observed over the years and present it as a manifesto?

Forgive me if it is, but I see people who don’t know how to cook, who turn to the easiest and unhealthiest options. It doesn’t have to be that way. Eating real food cooked at home is a basis for making a healthier nation and changing an industrial food system that isn’t good for health, equity, or the environment.

So here goes …

Don’t let big corporations decide what you eat. I love chili cheese Fritos as much as the next person, but when I think of all the technological manipulation, taxpayer-funded subsidies, and corporate profit behind something as nutritionally vacuous as snack foods, ultra-processed foods—really, a majority of the food in grocery stores—I lose my appetite.

Eating is a political act, and choosing what to eat is an opportunity to live your values. Much of what we eat is made of junky ingredients, subsidized by the government, designed so Big Ag and Big Food can make big profits.

I’ve got nothing against profits, and one could hardly get along without patronizing corporations. But what’s good for the food manufacturers is not good for you. The government subsidizes corn, which is made into cheap, highly processed food of simple carbohydrates and sugar with added fat and salt and flavored to make products that are almost physically addictive. Diabetes and heart disease and obesity-related illnesses are the inevitable results.

I don’t like feeling manipulated against my own interests like that. If you don’t, either, then stand up for yourself.

It’s better to eat food in its natural state, or as close to it as possible, most of the time. That’s why I get to the farmers’ market, even in the winter. I’m eating less meat, and more of what I do eat comes from local producers.

Eat and cook for the soul. Food is one of the great pleasures of life. A multi-layer chocolate cake is a delight I’d never want to give up. But a wonderful salad is just as pleasurable if you allow yourself to experience the beauty and healthiness of it, if you know how to dress it simply, if you eat it companionably with someone. Simple, healthy food feels alive to me.

People feed their souls in many ways. For some, the fun of what I think of as pop culture food—say, rolled Thai ice cream or the new flavor of Mountain Dew or the latest nonsense at Taco Bell—may give you the kind of pleasure that’s real to you. But …

Be kind to your body. There’s no way a steady diet of fast and ultra-processed food is good for your body. You’ll regret it when you’re older. In my own efforts toward eating well, I think of it as self-care, as giving my beloved body what it needs and truly wants instead of what it wants and . As a food writer, I was always in the position of being offered food, and I do love to say yes. Yes lets in life and pleasure. It is part of a joyful interaction over food. It’s not always the right answer, though, like when the yes is to a third helping of macaroni and cheese.

But I try to be forgiving to myself. I am uninterested in turning blame or guilt or shame on myself. That’s pretty baked in to our culture, especially for women. But life’s too short.

Nurture other people with your cooking. Food is hospitality, it is serving, it is giving. Eating has a higher purpose than fueling your body. It conveys culture, love, togetherness, family values.

So give genuinely. Accept that nurturing from others, too, and appreciate it. When someone offers food generously to you, eat it, comment on it, and thank them kindly.

Look to women as models. What percentage of meals in the course of human history have been made by women? Ninety percent? Ninety-nine?

And yet who are the famous cooks nowadays? Restaurant chefs, mostly men. When an activity is dominated by women, it doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Most excellent cooks in the world go unnamed and undervalued. But when men cook in restaurants for pay, well: They’re macho, a little crazy and dangerous, they keep women out of the club, and get James Beard awards.

Meanwhile, moms shop and cook and remember everyone’s favorite foods and allergies and make the birthday cakes and the potluck contributions and the healthy lunches. Think of the women you know who pull all that off, and seek to emulate them. Especially if you’re a man.

On the other hand, don’t be captive to the people you cook for. There used to be moms who never sat down during dinner, eating after everyone else had what they needed. Wives would cook casseroles and put them in a freezer before they went to the hospital to give birth. Forget that. Someone can be the main food preparer in a household without being chained to the role.

Everyone should be able to cook, at least enough to prep the salad or get the rice started or make themselves a tuna melt. Picky kids should know how to make (and clean up) a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if they don’t like what’s for dinner. Sometimes the primary cook just doesn’t feel like it, and a bowl of popcorn and an orange can be dinner, one that’s preferable to a frozen entrée.

Restaurants are great, but they are not good models for the home cook. I love restaurants. I enjoyed eating in them for all those years. I welcome having them back in the place they should occupy in my life: for certain occasions with friends, for a really wonderful, even if expensive, meal. For a lunch by myself when I need a treat. I’m only interested in going to locally owned restaurants that I know are really good.

And I’m almost never tempted to try to re-create a restaurant dish or to buy a chef’s cookbook. Restaurants can’t really do what a good home cook can do, and home cooks don’t need to try to be professional chefs. I certainly don’t. Restaurant meals are based on cooking á là minute, which is inappropriate at home. They often rely on very high heat and on lots of butter and salt, and on many cooks being involved in preparing the elements for one dish. They’re not realistic representations of real-world cooking.

Neither are TV shows. Cooking instruction shows can be informative and useful, though they do make things look too easy. (Everything’s pre-measured; nobody ever realizes halfway through the recipe that they don’t have any mustard and have to stop and send someone to the store.)

Competition TV shows can be fun, I guess, if you like the edited fakery of reality TV. But they make cooking look too hard. I can’t help but think those competitions must discourage people from cooking because they show kitchen work as stressful, dangerous, complicated, and judgmental. Nobody even eats the food! They just take a little taste while the cook is standing in a submissive posture. I’ve never seen the reasons I love food and cooking reflected in a competition show. (No, not even The Great British Bake Off.)

Cooking is not hard. Anyone can do it. Just don’t set high standards based on what you see on TV, or God forbid, on Instagram. You can just get a cookbook and follow the recipes. Or maybe find a food blog you like (but not one that makes you scroll endlessly to boost engagement and sell food products).

Never throw out any food. Never. Almost never. It is astonishing that we throw out 40% of food produced in this country. Some of it happens en route to us, but I consider it a secular sin to throw out food once I’m responsible for it.

People ask me if I’m enjoying cooking at home, and I say yes, but what I really love is inventory control. What scrap of food can I make into a good meal? How can I put together what I have? How can I avoid the grocery store for three more days?

I keep the pantry very well stocked, the freezer pretty well full (though a couple of storms that knocked out power for a week have made me a little cautious), and the refrigerator full until I’ve used everything in it down to the condiments and vermouth.

I have a skeptical attitude toward expiration dates and am scrupulous about using clean spoons for anything in a jar or carton. I try to go a little less crazy at the farmers’ market so we can eat everything I buy in a week. My favorite thing is going on vacation and leaving an empty fridge behind. I spend more time on achieving that than I do on packing. And then I like filling it all up again when we return.

Don’t judge. It’s hard to buy healthy food when you’re poor. You can’t stock up on food if you have to take the bus to the grocery store. The food industry is dedicated to steering you to unhealthy foods by making them cheap, and fast food is addictively delicious and ubiquitously available.

So don’t tsk-tsk and talk about the need for “education.” If you have the luxury of money and time, be a positive force for changing the status quo. Support reforming the system by shopping at farmers’ markets and donating to hunger, food rescue, and farming-reform organizations. Get political about it if you have that ability.

Find the joy. One final note: Cooking at home can be drudgery when it falls on one person. It can be intimidating if you’ve never learned some simple techniques. It can be burdensome at the end of a busy day when you’re not able to just throw something together quickly.

But I think the rewards are worth getting better at it. Cooking for yourself and the people you love offers something no restaurant meal, no takeout or frozen microwaveable dinner can.

Just focus on what’s important to you, tune out all the confusing agendas, and try to make it a source of joy, not angst.