Sunday, September 20, 2009

A Micheal Pollan video from Portland, OR

I watched this Michael Pollan interview done in Portland, Oregon regarding his new book, In Defense of Food. I find him a captivating and "real" person to listen to. This is probably way he gets less backlash from corporations that others activists do. In the interview he is asked about this and he mentions that due to the rhetoric he uses, he usually does not experience too much backlash. He gets some from the corn industry when he talks about high fructose corn syrup. He does try not to name corporations too much. When he talked about Whole Foods though, he did experience a heavy "push-back".

He starts talking about some historical facts involing the Food and Drug Administration. In 1973 the FDA threw out the "imitation rule" that when a food changed its ingredient, like bread for example, it would have to say "imitation bread". This is why you can buy something that says "fat free sour cream" and it you look at the ingredients, it is not really sour cream at all.Pollan also mentions that in 1977, dietary goals were created to eat less animal fats because the government was concerned about the amount of saturated fats in the American diet. The beef industry among others were outraged and stopped this from happening. Instead the goals were rewritten to something like "choose less fatty meats". Since then, you will never see the government tell you to eat less of anything.

He goes on to discuss that in America, the focus on eating is on the science of nutrients and health instead of eating for pleasure, culture and community. The science of nutrients is very young, There is not enough information known for nutrients to have the value that eating good food has, regardless of what the bottle says. This knowledge coupled with what I have learned
from my reading Food Politics by Marion Nestle, about how vitamins and supplements are not regulated, has completely changed my mental model of food and supplements. I have probably spent thousands of dollars in my life buying all sorts of supplements. Now I know that a there is no evidence that any supplement does what it says it will. Furthermore, the level of herbs, purity etc. is questionable, a supplement may have a high lead content for example. Good food is the only sure way of staying healthy, and organic food is up to sixty percent higher inantioxidants and nutritional value. (Kingsolver, 2007)

As we have learned in this class, Pollan continues to discuss how the wisdom of food cultures is very important and relevant versus the science we are all used to looking at. There are many processed food products that are masquerading as food. He ends with humorous antidotes like "Don't eat anything your great grandma would not recognize as food" or "The whiter the bread the sooner you'll be dead".

Pollan reminds us that the consumer has a great deal of power with their food dollars and to "vote with your fork!" There are many that can't afford to do this so vote on the policy level too.

I am including a couple links to a local Seattle yard that is being turned into a garden. I wonder how many people a front yard can feed?

Here is a link to this A Micheal Pollan video from Portland, OR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GJuy_dowwU&NR=1

Creating a Food Garden in a NE Seattle Front Yard

Lawn Gone part one and two, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzsyaXPVNKs, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiBgC4Lstd4

1 comment:

  1. I forgot to add these:


    References

    Nestle, Marion. food Politics. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2002. Print.

    Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2007. Print.

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