michael pollan quotes in defense of food

Omnivore's Dilemma, the first stop on this journey, focused on where the food comes from-the farms, and the earth end of the food chain. MP: Cooked completes the arc of my work since 2000 or so, when I first began following the American food chain. This book addresses what you do with it once it's in your kitchen. It gives us a whole other set of votes to cast, every time we eat, and especially when we cook.Įpi: In many of your books, you've traced how food gets to the kitchen. You can view this awareness as an ethical burden, or as a wonderful empowerment, which is how I've come to see it. So, the everyday choices you make in the kitchen ramify all the way back to the land help determine whether that land will be nurtured with care by good farming or abused by industrial agriculture.

My work is very much about connecting the dots between our everyday actions and the larger currents of nature and history.

Berry famously wrote that 'Eating is an agricultural act,' and in a way all my work on food has been an exploration of that powerful idea. He helped me see that nature is not just out there in the woods, but also in our gardens and on our plates. Michael Pollan: Wendell Berry has been an important influence on my work ever since my very first book, Second Nature, both as a writer-his prose is stunning-and as a thinker. Read on for the insights and Pork Shoulder Barbecue recipe the author shared with us during his book tour.Įpicurious: You dedicated Cooked to your wife and son, and also to the ecologist Wendell Berry-why? In Pollan's latest release, Cooked, he explores what it means to take those ingredients, and-using the four elements of fire, water, air, and earth-transform them into something meaningful and magical. Many of Pollan's past six books- Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma, The Botany of Desire, A Place of My Own, and Second Nature-have explored the path that food takes to our tables. Berkeley journalism professor like a modern-day Sinclair Lewis, he has taken on big agriculture and the food manufacturing industry in print, on camera, and in the classroom.

Deciphering, decoding, and deconstructing the entire food chain, from the earth and oceans to our kitchens, has been a passionate quest for this writer and U.C. I t's not an overstatement to say that Michael Pollan has changed the way many of us eat and think about food.

Michael pollan quotes in defense of food