Civil Eats

Every five years, we have the chance to influence the way our food is produced, our land is conserved, and our health is protected. The legislation that addresses these issues is known as the Farm Bill, and in 2012, it’s up for renewal. “It isn’t really a bill just for farmers,” says food journalist Michael Pollan, in this video from Nourish Short Films. “It really should be called the food bill because it is the rules for the food system we all eat by.” Read More

Sometimes a spoonful of sugar does, indeed, make the medicine go down. Though you won’t find that catchphrase in the just-released hardcover edition of Food Rules, Michael Pollan‘s best-selling little eater’s manual.

Food Rules does sport the whimsical and witty illustrations of well-known artist Maira Kalman, however. And the new book also boasts 19 new rules—many gleaned from eaters around the country that Pollan wished he had thought of and included the first time around.

Take two is again full of commonsense kitchen wisdom such as If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re probably not hungry; and When you eat real food, you don’t need rules.

The takeaway message: food need not be complicated, and the act of eating is as much about pleasure and communion as it is about nutrition and health. In other words: lighten up a little and enjoy your dinner. Read More

People seem to have an insatiable appetite for food matters right now. Case in point: the public tickets for Edible Education 101 at UC Berkeley were snapped up in 12 minutes on Monday, according to a tweet from Alice Waters, who played a key role in bringing the curriculum to the university.

The 13-week course, co-taught by J-school professor and The Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan, and Nikki Henderson, the executive director of People’s Grocery, a food justice organization in West Oakland, will examine the rise and future of the food movement. Student enrollment for the one-semester course also filled within minutes after it was listed online, as Berkeleyside reported earlier this month.

Why such interest? The class offers undergrads, grad students, and regular folk a chance to critique current food systems and dissect food politics with Pollan, Henderson, and Waters, as well as a slew of other big names in the food movement, including Marion Nestle and Eric Schlosser. The course kicks off with a lecture by Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini on August 30th. The class also coincides with the 40th anniversary celebration of Chez Panisse restaurant. Read More

Last week, Wal-Mart–the largest grocer in the world with over 8,600 stores in 15 countries, two million employees and sales of $405 billion–made news when it launched sustainable agriculture goals for the U.S. and emerging markets focused on regional food systems. The move is part of decade-long trend of food businesses–from producers to purveyors–adapting, or at least claiming to adapt, to the consumer demand for sustainable food.

Wal-Mart’s decision–the details of which I will get to in a moment–comes on the heels of the success of chains like Whole Foods, which also touts local foods. But unlike Whole Foods, which is considered “niche”, Wal-Mart is mainstream. Some say that this announcement is going to shake the ground under agri-business, which has vehemently fought against anyone suggesting changes to the food system for years now. But agri-business companies are not going to take this shift in consumer demand lying down.

In fact, agri-business elites have been trying either covertly or otherwise to convince the consumer that sustainable food advocates have misled them into thinking the current food system is unsafe, unjust, and unhealthy. And the evidence shows that more of the same is coming down the pipeline. Read More

Today, the man who encourages us all to eat food, mostly plants, and not too much will bring his prescription for a healthier population and planet to a group that, surprisingly, he hasn’t spoken to before: Doctors and other healthcare professionals.

The man, of course, is Michael Pollan—who talks about the importance of eating and growing sustainable food to folks as diverse as urban ag advocates and Oprah fans. The best-selling food book author will address physicians, dieticians, hospital food service staff, and others at the Food for Health Forum in San Francisco sponsored by HMO giant Kaiser Permanente. Read More

The valet made me do it. We bared our souls and talked with each other about food. We did it in the middle of the tastefully decorated lobby of a reputable Cannery Row hotel in Monterey, CA. It began as a very unexpected moment, and has become one of my all-time favorite experiences talking about access to good food. Because it was a conversation not with a chef, foodie or expert. It was with a regular person who longs to connect to food and is somehow stuck, marooned on an island alone, full of latent desire.

The valet—let’s call him Paul—asked me the very question I yearn to hear, and with him I had the discussion that I never tire of. Paul had parked my car when I checked into the hotel, had smiled professionally at me and held the door three mornings in a row when I sashayed excitedly out into the sunlight. The cause of my excitement was a food issue conference hosted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Cooking for Solutions Sustainable Media Institute is an annual gathering of journalists and experts who cover food system issues ranging from sustainable seafood to GMOs. It is the highlight of my year, second only to the Ecological Farming Association annual meeting. Read More

TED is a non-profit devoted to broadcasting innovative ideas spoken by persuasive thinkers. Its website spreads information through “TED talks,” a video component that spans a wide range of topics. Here is a selection of TED videos focusing on issues from the political food world—child obesity, industrial meat production, school nutrition programs, ecologically safe fish farming, food access within an urban landscape, re-envisioned permaculture—presented by some of the top enthusiasts and specialists. Read More

Causing no end of difficulties in our national discourse is the steadfast belief held by both the right and the left that everything is either right or left: bad or good, strong or weak, despotic or patriotic.  You’re either with us or you’re against us.  President Obama addressed this very effectively before both House Republicans and Senate Democrats in recent days.  It is media driven to a large extent because the media need controversy to sell papers, or bytes or views or whatever it is they’re selling these days.

The most common form this takes is the old build’em-up-then-tear’em-down routine.  Perhaps the only thing many Americans enjoy more than the uplifting emotion of a success story is the schadenfreude of watching that success come tumbling down.  So when an idea comes to the fore, the critics ooze from the woodwork and their primary tactic is divide and conquer.  Label it, frame the debate, and the fight is won or lost before the story is even told.

For a long time in the circles I travel in this was not a problem because the ideas embodied in what some have come to call SOLE food (Sustainable, Organic, Local, & Ethical) were not perceived as a threat to the established paradigm.  Recent successes such as Michael Pollan’s work have, however, shined a very bright spotlight on advocates of real food.  As a result, people who have been toiling at these ideas for decades are becoming targets of powerful interests in the Big Food lobby.  Such is the case this week at WeeklyStandard.com, where Missouri Farm Bureau vice president Blake Hurst has found his most recent audience. Read More

On Wednesday, Michael Pollan appeared on Oprah to discuss the food system and the film Food, Inc. At the beginning of the program, entitled “Before You Grocery Shop Again: Food 101,” Oprah said that she saw Food, Inc., and it inspired her to host this discussion. “We all have to start paying more attention to what we’re putting in our bodies,” she said. “Do you know where you food really comes from? What’s been added, what’s been taken out? What goes down before they put a label on it?” Interspersed throughout the show were clips of the film, including the film’s introduction on the disconnect between our idea of food production and its reality; chicken production, featuring a farmer speaking out against the industry; and a family that can’t afford to eat real food and is forced to choose fast food. Read More

Literary editor Howard Junker may not like it but a sold-out crowd at the San Francisco Ferry Building ate up everything Michael Pollan had to say today about Eating Food. Mostly plants. Not too much.

In case you missed it: This week the ornery editor of Zyzzyva blogged that “foodieism is the most dangerous threat to lit” and bemoaned the fact that three nonfiction Pollan paperbacks are currently on the San Francisco Chronicle’s bestseller list (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, and, his latest, Food Rules).

Pollan spoke about, and signed, copies of Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual as part of a benefit for CUESA, the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, a nonprofit group that runs the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market. The event was hosted by Book Passage Bookstore and held upstairs in the Ferry Building, while hundreds more below dodged rain showers in search of organic winter greens. Read More

Will 2010 be the year that real food triumphs over “edible foodlike substances?” I don’t want to get overly optimistic, but real food certainly had a good first week, at least on cable TV. Read More

Late last week mass media woke up to a core challenge of civilization: providing sufficient nitrogen to feed plants without exacerbating climate change and water degradation in a world going from 6 to 9 billion souls.

Writer Michael Pollan was on NPR’s Talk of the Nation last week with two farmers, Blake Hurst and Troy Roush, when this problem came up in the conversation. Then on Friday the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial by Tim Groser, New Zealand’s minister of trade and associate minister for climate-change issues, calling for an international effort to seek solutions. In that op-ed he stated that “agricultural emissions are typically a waste of productive inputs. For example, nitrogen lost from fertilizer is no longer available to boost production, and carbon lost from the soil reduces the future production potential of the land.” Now nitrogen has become a topic of interest on Twitter, Facebook, and blogosphere. Read More

Author Michael Pollan is no stranger to controversy. He has broadened the discussion of what we eat, where and how it is grown, big vs. small, organic farming vs. conventional. When he speaks some in the audience will love him, some will not. Read More

As a political observer following the shift occurring in our understanding about agriculture, I can’t help but be reminded that change does not come peacefully. In fact, as Michael Pollan prepares to speak tonight to a concert arena filled with hungry minds in Wisconsin — after his book, In Defense of Food, was chosen as the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s “Go Big Read” common reading for the university — a group called In Defense of Farmers has urged farmers to protest him by wearing green. Read More

What do you get when you cross a grassroots movement with a food industry fearful of losing its influence? Bogus studies, campaigns of misinformation and opinion pieces filled with myth and vitriol.

You may have noticed an uptick this year in news reporting that organic food isn’t really better for you, opinion pieces by conventional farmers saying that they are tired of being demonized by “agri-intellectuals”, and guilt-inducing ads by Monsanto in highbrow publications like the New Yorker touting the company’s ability to feed the world through technology.

Though all of this could be disturbing to those of us committed to sustainable agriculture and food that is fair to eaters, animals, workers and farmers, I’m choosing to see this as a good sign. I think it means we might be winning. Read More

Today, Food, Inc. debuts, with more cities to follow in the coming weeks, and almost every major media outlet has weighed in: it is certainly not a film to miss, it offers a view into the food system you’ve never seen before, and you will leave the theater changed.

Big Ag realizes that the tide is turning on the corporate control of our food system, and that their message is in jeopardy. This is why most of the corporations and corporately supported groups from Monsanto to the National Chicken Council (now tainted in light of the newly-released CDC report about chicken as contamination’s numero uno) have created special sections of their websites dedicated to the film, in an attempt to mislead the public on the facts Food, Inc. is bringing to light for the first time. Read More

Every year, Americans find a new diet or pill to help them lose weight. Popular examples abound. There’s the low-fat diet, the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, the list continues. Fast food and quick service restaurants rush around to change their menus to offer low-fat dishes, more bread, less bread, 24 oz. burgers loaded with bacon, piles of cheese. And after a few months or years, the “it” diet fades from people’s minds until another one comes long and sweeps the country. These fad diets rarely lead to reducing obesity or making Americans healthier. Rather most lead to the over consumption of factory-farmed meat, cheese and “low-fat” or “low sugar” processed foods filled with high fructose corn syrup, fake sweeteners and partially hydrogenated oils. Well, I think its time we try another kind of diet: the low carbon diet. Except rather than getting you into that teeny, tiny yellow polka dot bikini, this diet helps reduce carbon emissions, fatten the slim wallet of small farmers and cut inches from big agriculture.  Read More

I was amazed when I opened my New York Times yesterday, after a busy Sunday working at the café. The first face I saw when I pull the paper out of its blue plastic wrapper was that of Alice Waters, gracing the cover of the Sunday Business section. The superb accompanying article by Andrew Martin raises the question of whether the sustainable food movement is ready for the visibility it is getting these days. Read More

It seems you can’t turn around these days without hearing someone reiterate the same basic message about the standard American diet: Simply put, we need to eat fewer animals. Read More

Yesterday evening, while we were all polishing off the leftovers of our Thanksgiving feasts, Bill Moyers Journal featured Michael Pollan speaking about the changes he proposed for our food system in his article Farmer-in-Chief, from the New York Times Magazine.  The article has developed a life of its own, and a following of individuals who have proposed Pollan be selected as the next Secretary of Agriculture.  But Pollan states that he has “an understanding of [his] strengths and limitations,” and that being a part of a government system so beholden to corporate agribusiness would make it very hard for any independent-minded person to get things done.  What he proposes instead, is the appointment of a White House food policy czar (another job he would not like to be selected for), who would connect the dots between the health crisis, hurtles to energy independence, failing education and immigration policies, and global warming, which all have roots in the food system currently in place.  His argument for this position was that there is “a war going on between the public health goals of the government and the agricultural policies. And only someone in the White House can force that realignment of those goals.” Read More

Today on The Brian Lehrer Show, Michael Pollan spoke about the change in food policy he’d like to see under the next administration.  Although there has been a move to nominate him for Secretary of Agriculture, Pollan stated that while he is flattered, he thinks he wouldn’t make the vetting process (See The Botany of Desire, Chapter 3: Marijuana.  But then again, our new president has a past of his own).  He did however say that he felt that President-elect Obama is one of the most synthesis-oriented presidents we’ve had in a long time, and he feels that while he might not implement all of the ideas Mr. Pollan put forth in his recent letter in the New York Times Magazine, he feels confident that we will begin to see change in the right direction.  Perhaps an ode to Thomas Jefferson by adding an organic garden on the White House lawn? Read More

In an interview with Joe Klein of Time Magazine today, Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged the brilliant letter to the next president by Michael Pollan and said that agriculture is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, is a national security risk, and is built on cheap oil: Read More

Yesterday, Michael Pollan spoke on The Leonard Lopate Show on New York Public Radio about his New York Times Magazine article, Farmer in Chief: What the Next President Can and Should do to Remake the Way We Grow and Eat Our Food.  He argues that we should “re-solarize” the food system, an essential step to the energy independence both candidates are talking about because bringing food from farm to plate is responsible for 20% of our oil consumption.  His plan touches on the cultural elements of food: a re-valuation of farming, changing the federal definition of food, the future president’s role in re-engaging us about what we eat.  He also suggests a new view of policy, which currently has us mired in corporate welfare and poor land stewardship.  For this all to work, he says, we need more farmers, and those farmers need to have access to land, resources and education.  And we need a President who is willing to look at the long term effects our current practices are having (like factory farm operations, shown in the photo above, and the multiple waste lagoons we as taxpayers probably helped pay for), and be willing to make a definitive change.  Listen to the program here. Read More

Yesterday, Oprah spent her entire show discussing the treatment of the animals we raise for meat in this country. No wilting flower, Oprah did not shy away from discussing a subject that got her into a lot of hot water in the late 1990s, when she was sued by cattle ranchers for food disparagement when she admitted during the period of fear surrounding the early outbreaks of mad cow disease that she was “stopped cold from eating another burger.” Read More

On Friday August 8th, Michael Pollan gave a talk entitled “Taking the Plant’s Point of View” at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York. Taking a leaf from the subjects of his books The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he told stories to re-orient us in our place in the natural world. Specifically he spoke about the relationship between human beings and plants, which need other species to help spread their genes. One example he gave was the lawn, something that he has written widely about. Now, though, it was no longer a totalitarian landscape in his reckoning, no longer just a place where we’d forced our will on plants. Read More