In his 1996 book Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, the great food anthropologist Sidney Mintz concluded that the United States had no cuisine. Interestingly, Mintz's definition of cuisine came down to conversation. For Mintz, Americans just didn't engage in passionate talk about food. Unlike the southwest French and their cassoulet, most Americans don't obsess and quarrel about what comprises, say, an authentic veggie burger.
But if cuisine comes down to talk, things are looking up a decade after Mintz cast his judgment. Now, more and more people are buzzing about food: not only about what's good to eat, but also -- appropriately for the land that invented McDonald's and Cheetos -- about what's in our food, where it came from, how it was grown.
No writer has galvanized this new national conversation on food more than Michael Pollan, from his muckraking articles on the meat industry for The New York Times Magazine earlier this decade to the publication last year of The Omnivore's Dilemma. On a recent day when he was reviewing the galleys of his latest book, due out in January, I rang up Pollan at his Berkeley, Calif., home to talk ... about food.
So tell me a little bit about what you've been working on recently.
The new book is called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. It's a book that really grew out of questions I heard from readers after Omnivore's Dilemma, which was basically so how do you apply all this? Now that you've looked into the heart of the food system and been into the belly of the beast, how should I eat, and what should I buy, and if I'm concerned about health, what should I be eating? I decided I would see what kind of very practical answers I could give people.
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, by Michael Pollan.
I spent a lot of time looking at the science of nutrition, and learned pretty quickly there's less there than meets the eye, and that the scientists really haven't figured out that much about food. Letting them tell us how to eat is probably not a very good idea, and indeed the culture -- which is to say tradition and our ancestors -- has more to teach us about how to eat well than science does. That was kind of surprising to me.
It really comes down to seven words: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." What is food? How do you know whether you're getting food or a food-like product? The interesting thing that I learned was that if you're really concerned about your health, the best decisions for your health turn out to be the best decisions for the farmer and the best decisions for the environment -- and that there is no contradiction there.
The other thing that's interesting, along the same lines, is this idea in American culture that what is good for you tastes bad, and what tastes bad is good for you.
Yes, exactly right. There's no sacrifice in eating well, there is no sacrifice in pleasure. To the contrary, the best-grown food is actually the tastiest. Now, it wasn't always true. I mean, you know, in the first generation of organic farmers, they weren't that good at it. But the quality has dramatically improved and is superb right now.
Then there's this idea that food is something you can endlessly fragment: if you find something in a food that's beneficial, you can isolate it, and concentrate it, and put it in a pill.
It's the reductionist's logic of food science, basically. And the interesting thing is that whenever that has been tried, it has failed. Foods are much more than the sum of their nutrient parts, and you cannot expect to get the same effect. Now there are things like vitamins that have been isolated, and in their isolated form they can cure deficiency diseases. But when they've tried to take out the antioxidants, things like beta-carotene and vitamin E, they don't seem to work.
There's an analogy there with agriculture: the macronutrients in food and the macronutrients in soil. A, B, C, and D vs. N, P, and K. Turns out that soil needs more than just isolated N, P, and K to produce fully nutritious food.
There's a mystery at both ends of the food chain. There's the mystery about what makes a healthy soil, which you cannot yet fake or simulate, and there's the mystery of what makes a healthy food, which you cannot yet simulate or fake.
The advice to "eat food, not much, mostly plants" is deceptively simple -- how do you apply that in a society that's become addicted to convenience food?
I think that there's some brainwashing going on with this idea that we don't have time to cook anymore. We have made cooking seem much more complicated than it is, and part of that comes from watching cooking shows on television -- we've turned cooking into a spectator sport. We're terrified to play tackle football too when we watch how it's played on TV -- we'd get killed. But cooking's a whole lot easier than it appears on Iron Chef.
We cook every night here. My wife and I both work, and we can get a very nice dinner on the table in a half hour. It would not take any less time for us to drive to a fast-food outlet and order, sit down, and bus our table. [But] when you create this image of people as being hurried, and harried, and of course you need TV dinners, that kind of sinks in. They kind of flatter us by telling us we're too busy and that we have such rushed lives, but in the end we find time for what matters. In just the last 10 years we've found, what, two or three hours a day to deal with the internet? It's a matter of priority, it's not really about ability. Some people are very intimidated about cooking and I think that's a shame, and I think we have to help people get over that by teaching them how to cook, teaching kids how to cook in school.
How did you learn to cook?
I learned to some extent from my mother, who was a really good cook, just hanging out in the kitchen watching her do it. I [had] a classic suburban childhood on Long Island. My mom cooked dinner four or five nights a week, and always your classic -- there was some kind of protein, and two vegetables, and dessert, the whole bit. And it was a really important part of our family life. When I was living alone in my 20s, when I got my first apartment, I cooked partly because I couldn't afford to go out -- you know, it's kind of a myth that it's more expensive to cook. So I've always been kind of interested in it.
There are times where you fall out of the habit and you get seduced by alternatives and it seems harder than it really is. But you know, as I started shopping at farmers' markets and joined a CSA -- that pushes you back to the kitchen. That's one of the unintended consequences of buying food that way: you can't find anything microwaveable at the farmers' market, so you begin cooking again.
I've lived in places where I could walk five minutes to an incredible farmers' market. There are a lot of people who don't have that privilege in other parts of the country. But I think that is changing, and there's a lot of great programs going on.
I spent a lot of time on the road last year, and I was surprised at where the local food movement was taking root. It was a lot of places that you wouldn't expect it. And I know that there are still food deserts -- ironically they tend to be in the farm belt, a lot of them.
One of the things I always have to be aware of is I live in a place where it's very easy to eat off the supermarket grid, if you will. My farmers' market is open 50 weeks a year, and the CSA runs, I think, 48 weeks a year -- and that's only because they need a break. But I do think that to the extent there are alternatives and people support them, even if they're small now, they will very quickly get much bigger.
Omnivore's Dilemma clearly struck a nerve. Were you surprised by the reaction, and did it start the conversation you were hoping it would?
I was completely flabbergasted by the reaction. I had no idea it would start a conversation to the extent it has. You work on a book for years, and you don't know where the culture's going to be when you finish. And sometimes the message you're bringing happens to coincide with other things going on in the culture, and I think that that's what happened. There were several other very good food books out, and they all did quite well. So I think there was something in the air, and people were receptive to the message.
I was very struck by the energy I felt in audiences and still feel in audiences, which is very much a political energy. At a time when people feel really frustrated about electoral politics, very frustrated about the war, this administration in lots of ways, I think that that's part of what is creating this center of gravity around food. Because it's really fundamental politics, because -- and I think that you've heard me say this -- you have a power here that you don't have elsewhere. You've got three votes a day, and how you cast those votes, we have seen over the last few years, has a tremendous effect.
The most gratifying thing I hear is farmers, ranchers, who say they're having a great year this year and more people are coming in and asking for pastured livestock, more people are joining CSAs ... consumers are starting to reconceive what it means to be a consumer, and [see] that citizenship is part of consumption. ... People are getting something besides food when they go to the farmers' market, they're getting a sense of community.
When you really get into local food, it's suddenly about community, coming together -- at the farmers' market, meeting a farmer at the CSA, cooking with your friends and family. Seems like there's a hunger for these things in a post-modern society that's built on suburbia, and the car, and atomization.
You know, people have looked to food for all these values for thousands of years -- food was a way to come together, it was a way to express your identity, it was a way to engage with nature -- food has always had this power. And I think we've had a kind of temporary forgetting of that, and this idea that food is just fuel, food is about health or illness, these very simplistic, reductive ideas have kind of thinned out the whole experience. But there's a desire to thicken it again, and lo and behold food is providing all these satisfactions that people were missing.
Both of us have been active in the effort to demystify the farm bill and convince people to care about it. What are your hopes for the farm bill at this point?
I was just on the phone this morning with a congressman (and by the way, they're calling me, I'm not calling them at this point, and I think that's interesting). There's more politics around the farm bill -- more grassroots politics, more reform politics -- than there has been in a generation. At the same time, and as a result of that, there has been a defensive reaction that has been fierce. And there is a resentment that anyone from the outside -- which is to say outside of these commodity crops, outside of the memberships of these committees -- is trying to get in on the issue and get in on the debate. There was a very telling quote in the San Francisco Chronicle by [Rep.] Collin Peterson [D-Minn.] ... where he says, "These city people don't know what they're talking about, they should stay out of it."
I think they understand as soon as they start negotiating these large questions then everyone's going to pile in and we're going to get a very different kind of farm bill, and they just don't want this to happen. And when I say "they," I'm talking about the Midwestern congressmen and senators on both agriculture committees.
Now it may be that the reformers have not done a good enough job of framing proposals in a way that doesn't look threatening. I think the basic tack has been a very simple anti-subsidy tack: "Subsidies are welfare, farmers should fend for themselves when prices are good." So it looks like you're simply trying to take something away from farmers, and I think politically perhaps that has contributed to the powerful reaction we've seen ... I don't know how to craft those proposals, I'm not a policymaker, but I think we've made a mistake by equating reform with the destruction of farm support.
We'll have to see what happens, but it's not time to give up on this. I detect an enormous amount of anxiety about the politics on the part of the committees, and a sense that other people in Congress are looking now over the shoulder of the ag committee in a way they haven't before. So defensiveness -- you know, this is defensiveness, this isn't just power, and people should realize that.
I was wondering if you'd been back to Iowa since you did your research on Omnivore's Dilemma. When you were there corn was $1.50 a bushel, and now it's $4 a bushel.
I know, the good times are rolling right now. I have not. I'm going to go back this winter, though. The book tour is going to take me to Iowa City, which I'm really looking forward to. Not that that's exactly corn country, but it's close.
I've done a lot of radio in the Corn Belt, and it's clear that I've pissed off some people there. And I spoke at Iowa State and a group of people got up and walked out because I was taking the name of corn in vain.
Since Omnivore's Dilemma came out, John Mackey publicly criticized you, and at the same time he started rolling out these local foods measures, and now when you walk into a Whole Foods you see "Buy Local" signs everywhere. What is your take on Whole Foods' Buy Local effort so far?
The Berkeley face-off.
It was a very interesting exchange with him. It unfolded over the course of several months in these letters, and then he came to Berkeley to have an onstage conversation with me, which was surprising and somewhat courageous of him, given Berkeley's attitude toward Whole Foods. And in many ways it was a very productive exchange: I learned something about how that company works, and he made some very promising initiatives.
I have seen what you've seen when I go around the country visiting Whole Foods. There's a much greater emphasis on local food in the signage and on the shelf. But I haven't done the kind of systematic look -- and it needs to be done about now -- to see how far they have come. It's not for me to do; I would feel a little awkward doing it myself. But I'm hoping that other journalists will do it.
Well, I know you've got to wrap up. I've had a great time talking to you.
Yeah, me too. It's always great to talk about this stuff -- it's just great that you're out there doing this, and that you bring this perspective as a farmer is very powerful. I've really enjoyed your stuff, and it's been wonderful to see the publicity you've gotten this year. I saw that terrific piece in Gourmet.
Oh, speaking of that, that article in Gourmet exposed my predilection for chips. And my editor wanted me to ask you: What is your junk-food weakness?
Oh, god, let me think ... My favorite packaged junk food has always been Cracker Jacks. Which is, of course, a corn product of a kind. Of several kinds. It's popcorn coated in corn syrup.
I haven't had those in years, but I loved them as a kid.
Cracker Jacks are great. Although the prizes have gone way downhill.
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Comments
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amc89 Posted 7:57 am
12 Oct 2007
"Then there's this idea that food is something you can endlessly fragment: if you find something in a food that's beneficial, you can isolate it, and concentrate it, and put it in a pill."
This is so true, I think it's because Americans are so afraid to eat fresh vegetables and too many companies are eager to take advantage of that and market miracle pills to the public. The only pill I take is vitamin B12 since I don't eat animal products. Pretty much everything else you can get from fresh produce, grains, legumes, nuts, and in the case of vitamin D, the sun.
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Farm Bill Girl Posted 9:06 am
12 Oct 2007
While I work with family farmers, it IS great to see such awareness about the Farm Bill by such a diverse bunch of interests, from religious, to enviro, to nutrition/public health.
Unfortunately, much of the reformers efforts, led by the "Left-Right" Coalition that includes Oxfam, Club for Growth, Environmental Working Group (with their highly misleading database), Bread for the World, have led to simply demonizing subsidies and suggesting we deregulate the price of commodities and shift subsidies to "good nutritious" crops. The right wing that hates welfare don't like subsidies either because they "distort" free trade and they are looking for more globalization/free trade and for the Doha Round, currently being held up because of our farm subsidies, to proceed.
People should know it's not farmers who really benefit from subsidies. It's the BUYERS and PROCESSORS who benefit, namely ADM/Cargill who make high fructose corn syrup and factory farms, who want cheap cheap feed to expand industrial CAFOs. Because we let the "free market" set the price, instead of putting a price floor under commodities (akin to a min wage for workers) and regulating the supply of corn, we let corn prices fall as low as it can go, which causes overproduction and the need for subsidies. Contrary to myth, subsidies do NOT cause overproduction. they are a REACTION to overproduction.
Abolish or reduce subsidies, and you will see prices collapse for corn, soybeans, etc. That means even CHEAPER high fructose corn syrup and more profits for ADM and low cost junk food. It also means the continuation of cheap feed for factory farms, thus why Smithfield and Tyson are so mad about higher corn prices right now. Those outcomes, presumably, would not be to the liking of nutrition folks nor environmentalists, but that is the type of "reform" proposals they are pushing! I think many of these well-meaning groups simply do not realize what will be the outcome of their proposals, and instead, focus on "Millionaire" farmers or farmers in NY receiving "subsidies" when the real devils in the system are multinationals like Cargill, ADM, Tyson, Monsanto. Not the idiot in NYC collecting a $200 conservation payment.
The other huge issue is Doha/WTO. Many of the reformers purport wanting to see more "local food" and "healthy food". But by reducing commodity subsidies to be more "WTO Trade compliant", they are basically helping to jumpstart the WTO talks and more "free trade", which is directly contrary to the goals of the local and healthy food movement! Free trade means supermarkets/food processors/restaurants will purchase the cheapest food/ingredients possible. Wal-mart would rather import apples and vegetables from Mexico/Chile/China than buy it from 10 miles away because of cost. Thanks to NAFTA and FTAs with Chile and the entry of China into the WTO, this is the situation we now have with many specialty crop farmers being put out of business because of the flood of cheap imports.
See the excellent "Crops in Crisis" series from Food and Water Watch.
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/food/foodandglobaltrade/ ...
So how "reformers" can claim to be for healthy and local food, while also espousing reform in the name of being more "WTO compliant" and the need for more free trade is beyond me, but this was what Ron Kind's agenda was when he introduced his "reformist" efforts backed by many well-intention groups.
For what good policy would look like (including price floors, supply management, breakup of corporate consolidatation of food supply), I would refer to the Institute on Agriculture and Trade Policy and their wonderful booklets on the Farm Bill:
http://iatp.org/
And thanks for the great interview.
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Farm Bill Girl Posted 9:13 am
12 Oct 2007
I will say that thanks to the awareness raised by the "reformers", we did get a better bill, with more funding for food stamps, specialty crops, minority farmers, farmers markets, etc. And i think they deserve credit for that.
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Farmers Union Posted 11:59 am
12 Oct 2007
Of course not, they like your farmer friends only see a microcosmic representation of the whole. There are many reasons all of the groups you reference (Oxfam, Club for Growth, Environmental Working Group etc) are aiming to kill agricultural subsides and it's not because they don't see something only you can understand. Your myopic allegiance to a few farmers you know has so tainted your views on this issue as to make your points somewhat irrelevant.
I know many farmers who would love to see these subsidies eliminated.
In the future would you please refrain from representing all the "family farmers" There are many progressive family farmers you don't speak for.
Farmers Union
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Farm Bill Girl Posted 4:51 pm
13 Oct 2007
for the record, most farmers I know would prefer not to receive subsidies and we agree, let's kill subsidies. All farmers will tell you they prefer to receive income from the marketplace vs. the government, regardless whether they are Farm Bureau types or more progressive farmer types. The difference is, Farm Bureau folks believe "free markets" work their magic, but still want a subsidy "safety net." Progressive farm activists have long said, get RID of subsidies, but reinstitute a price floor and supply management to stabilize the price. So in other words, both the Oxfam/anti-subsidy critics, along with progressive farm groups, endorse getting rid of subsidies. That was why the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy had a release endorsing this "third way" approach, so move the debate beyond "subsidies" or "no subsidies." The honest farmers don't want government money. they want ADM/Cargill to pay a fair price.
and it is true, take away the subsidies and don't institute a price floor, and you will get more factory farms and more cheap HFCS. those are issues the "reform" coalition has yet to address or understand. now should there be payment limits and getting rid of loopholes on subsidies? yeah sure. But it will only make a dent in the corporate control of our food system. to make a real dent, you need a supply management approach, as Tom had written about in a previous column, which you would be wise to read, so you know it's not just me who says such things, but other informed farmers.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/6/23/124311/512
I am glad that both Pollan and Tom Philpott understand how ending subsidies is not the simple answer to what needs to be done to fix our food systems.
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kmp Posted 5:16 am
14 Oct 2007
I've always enjoyed cooking, but have gone through vast stretches of my adult life not really cooking at all. I lived in Boston for many years, in many different apartments, but one had a ridiculously tiny galley kitchen, and the stove/oven had some sort of gas leak we could never get the landlord to fix, so I almost never cooked. When living in Manhattan it's almost too easy not to cook; there is a restaurant or cafe for every imaginable taste & cuisine, and living in Manhattan I was out most every night of the week. Now that I am living in the boonies and I've joined a CSA, I do a lot of cooking. Hands down, I would tell people that if you want to force yourself to get into the habit of cooking, join a CSA.
Friends often tell me what a wonderful cook I am - I always tell them it is the ingredients, not my skill as a cook. They lament that they simply have no time for cooking; I tell them to dedicate only one night a week to cooking something from scratch. At least once a week we make a fritatta, in our biggest skillet, with whatever CSA veggies need using up; this will net us 8 small meals that can be heated in the microwave in about 1 minute. The fritatta itself takes about an hour to make; one hour out of the week. One less television show (or, you can even cook with the TV on).
Sadly, so far, I have not converted many friends. One friend of mine, who used to be a member of a CSA, but abandoned it as too much work when she had a baby, has recently re-joined, following, she said, my example. Since I've had more time, of late, I've been "preserving the harvest;" doing a lot of canning & drying of harvest fruits & veggies. Since she has more money than time, she brings me extra organic fruit & veggies from her CSA, I transform them into applesauce, or plum preserves, or tomatillo salsa, can them, and give her back a share of the booty. It's been a wonderful way to stay connected, to teach her little girl, who is 3 and a half years old, about cooking, food, and local harvest seasons, and to enjoy the bounty that the Hudson River Valley has to offer.
Another good way to convince friends to dust off their rusty whisks is to throw a dinner party and ask each friend to bring a dish that is homemade (and/or local, or organic, or seasonal, or whatever your particular food "thing" is). I had a small dinner party a couple of weeks ago that turned out to be one of those fabulous nights; the food, the wine, the weather, the fire on the deck, and most expeically the company was wonderful. One friend brought a chocoalte-caramel torte that was an "experiment" but turned out to be divine. When another friend asked me what she should bring, I said "use up whatever you have from the CSA this week." She brought a huge platter of roasted root veggies that were a big hit. I did much the same, transforming spinach & sorrel into spinach-sorrel risotto cakes, roasting a delicata squash with parsley & red pepper, grilling bush beans alongside organic chicken (marinated in peach salsa that I put up about a month ago) and making an apple pie.
Food is so much more than fuel - the more we remember that, the better off we will be.
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johnpdeever Posted 12:49 am
16 Oct 2007
great interview
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David Snieckus Posted 10:39 am
17 Oct 2007
At Home Breast Cancer Cure Finally Made Public
The number one reason for breast cancer spreading around the world is the way we select, prepare (cook) and eat our food.
Newton, MA (PRWEB) October 17, 2007 -- Since October has been named Breast Cancer month, let's declare, 'Peace with Breast Cancer.' David Snieckus of Newton, MA., Macrobiotic Counselor and Chef for over 30 years says, "Instead of bombarding the tumors with radiation or chemotherapy or invading woman's bodies with a knife, let's begin a more gentle and peaceful way. Let's start by being grateful for our cancer as a messenger for us to address its cause and change our lifestyles!"
We can prevent and actually reverse cancer without doctors and their drugs by strengthening our immune systems! This begins right in our own kitchens with a change in our diets!" NOTE: TIME magazine, Oct. 15th 2007 by Kathleen Kingsbury said that the American diet is one reason breast cancer is spreading around the world.
Cooking or preparing natural whole plant-based foods in our own kitchens is the one simple thing each individual can do every day to prevent and even reverse breast cancer and optimize health and well-being. As we become proficient at selecting, balancing, and preparing such foods, we become our own doctors, our own healers, and our own "health care providers". Furthermore, learning about the best and healthiest foods to eat is the best healthcare reform. As we optimize our health through the food we eat, we become part of the solution in reducing healthcare costs.
David Snieckus, through one-on-one consultations and teachings about ancient principles and the proper selection, cooking and eating of natural whole plant-based foods, can help you launch your path to optimum health.
Mr. Snieckus' vision is every kitchen a wellness center and one peaceful and healthy world. He invites and welcomes everyone and anyone to be a part of that vision.
For more information, call for the no-obligation program outline and references at 617-964-2951, or visit: http://www.davidsnieckus.com.
David Snieckus, a graduate of the world renowned Kushi Institute, is the primary sponsor of House Bill 2841 which calls for the removal of the tax exemption of processed food.
David Snieckus
99 Crescent Street
Newton, MA 02466
617-964-2951
info @ davidsnieckus.com
http://www.davidsnieckus.com
# # #
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PermieWriter Posted 10:56 am
17 Oct 2007
I'm so excited about about how Pollan has catalyzed a food revolution in America. It's gotten so much easier to talk to folks about these issues. "Here, read this," is so much simpler than giving them the manifesto verbally. Great stuff.
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CyberBrook Posted 9:38 am
18 Oct 2007
Michael Pollan's advice:
"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants...
the best decisions for your health turn out to be the best decisions for the farmer and the best decisions for the environment"
That's essentially eco-eating (http://www.brook.com/veg)!
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srschnur Posted 10:07 pm
19 Oct 2007
By the way, Does anyone know whether the drive to a farmer's market wipes out (in energy use) the virtue of buying vegies grown close to home? I estimate going to a farmer's market does not eliminate the need to go to a Supermarket, so it is an extra automobile trip.
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