Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother would not recognise as food, says Michael Pollan in his new, cheap book called Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual. If you sell treats, top-up food items or everything, this book will help you plan your future.

“There are now thousands of foodish products in the supermarket that our ancestors simply wouldn’t recognise as food. The reasons to avoid eating such complicated food products are many…,” he writes in rule two on great-grandmothers.

However, in his introduction, Pollan offers his basic philosophy for healthy eating: Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.

Rule 64 is break the rules once in a while. Rule 60 is ‘Treat treats as treats.’ Rule 44 is ‘Pay more, eat less.’ Rule 36 is ‘Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the colour of the milk.’

What makes this book so enjoyable is it is very short, well written and provides you with plenty of food for thought about what is going on in your shoppers’ minds. Perhaps you might think that your shoppers are not the “foodies” and “Guardian-reading Londoners” that this book might be aimed at? Even so, there is bound to be something in it that you can profitably share with your shoppers.

As a local shopkeeper at the heart of your community, what is in the best interests of local people should matter to you deeply and this book offers you an insight into ideas that are shaping the way that food and “foodish products” will be sold in the future.

It is £4.99 and sold by Penguin and they did not send me a review copy!