Michael Pollan: Americans' Unhealthy Relationship with Food

[marmar]

from Grist Mag., via AlterNet:



Michael Pollan: Americans' Unhealthy Relationship with Food

By Tom Philpott, Grist Magazine. Posted October 19, 2007.


An interview with food writer Michael Pollan about food, food politics and his latest book.



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.

Tom Philpott: So tell me a little bit about what you've been working on recently.

Michael Pollen: 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.

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.

TP: 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.

MP: 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. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/65379/

[Felinity]

1. Kick & Rec n/t

[CTyankee]

2. Is it too much to hope that your post will not become a knock down drag out

fight here at DU? I sincerely hope not because I like Michael Pollan and think he has lots to say that is good. I loved his book "The Botany of Desire."

I have been through the nutrition mill, so to speak, over the past 6 months. I had been eating like Pollan says and then had abdominal surgery, complications and was hospitalized for 2 months with only IV nourishment. Once home my diet had to change radically, as I didn't have enough small intestine to deal with all the roughage I had been eating prior to the surgeries. I had to shift to a low residue, low fiber diet and only now can start reintroducing more fibrous food in my daily diet.

I'm now 30 lbs lighter and trying to learn more about nutrition. It is difficult on a day to day situation to know what to do...