Must-Read: How to Eat Properly

You’re driving down the street and you realize that your gas tank is just about empty. So, you make a quick little detour into the nearest gas station, and they have three options for you. First, there’s pure, unadulterated, perfectly-honed gasoline. Next up, is a whole bunch of oil. And third, is a ton of sludge. Which one are you going to put in your gas tank?

Of course, you’re going to put in the gas. You’re not an idiot. But the point of this whole terrible theoretical is that, a lot of people spend a lot of their time putting in the worst things they could possibly put inside of their bodies. Sugar, cigarettes, terribly processed foods, red meat by the pound. These are not ways to keep your most important machine — your machine — in tip-top shape. And so today we’re heading to Men’s Health, where they have a listing of new food rules that you’re going to want to follow. For example, among the rules they want you to follow:

3. Embrace the bitterness. Americans have a habit of skipping bitter foods?which means they’re missing major health benefits, says Robinson. A dandelion, for example, has twice the calcium and eight times more antioxidants than spinach, says Robinson. If that’s a bit too extreme for you, start small by adding pieces of bitter red lettuce or radicchio to regular salad.

4. Rip up lettuce before storing it. It?s easy to forget vegetables are still alive when they?re harvested, says Robinson. When ripped, lettuce will believe a predator is eating it, so it produces four times the amount of antioxidant-rich substances in order to protect itself. (Yes, you’re benefiting from scared lettuce.)

So head on over to the link above in order to check out the other food rules that you’re going to want to know before heading out to the grocery store from here on out.