In Conversation With Michael Pollan

Words by Andrew Tarlow

In the academia of Western nutrition, Michael Pollan is the unassuming king. His 2006 bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma initiated a national dialogue about the catastrophic state of American eating. Going beyond the aesthetic ramifications of obesity, Pollan examined an institutionalized scheme that strips not only the nutrition, but also the pleasure from our tables. His follow up, In Defense of Food presents a personal solution to this public problem. Confronting confounding modern health claims with signature simplicity, Pollan warns of nutritional additions, food pyramids and—of course—Twinkies, while ultimately encouraging us to heed his straightforward suggestion to: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Andrew Tarlow, co-owner of Diner, a local-food organic restaurant in Brooklyn, gets the chance here to discuss with Pollan the ramifications and merits of voting with your fork.

Andrew Tarlow: How did you become such an expert on food?

Michael Pollan: Well, I don’t have an academic background in it. My understanding of it really comes from the journalism I’ve been doing. I’ve spent a lot of the last five or six years—more than that I guess, about eight years—following the food chain and writing stories about where our food comes from. Whether it’s organic, or, you know, modern feedlot beef, or genetically modified potatoes. For each of these stories, most of which I did for The New York Times Magazine, I had to follow the food back to the farm. I learned an awful lot about agriculture that I didn’t know. So I think that any real understanding of food begins with an understanding of farming. I’ve been lucky to spend a lot of time on farms, both organic and industrial, in feedlots and confinement hog operations and big chicken houses, so I’ve had this kind of odyssey through both the best and the worst of the American food system. That’s been the big education I’ve had. And then I’ve had, you know, education at the hands of chefs feeding me and learning about food from good cooks.

AT: Do you think we can actually save the planet by eating correctly?

MP: Well first, the planet is not in trouble, we are—the planet’s going to be fine whatever happens. But to save ourselves by eating better—yeah. I don’t know about completely, but we can go a long distance. I mean, reforming our food system would go a long distance towards helping with climate change, which is the most serious environmental problem.

AT: Capturing carbon through grass-fed animals?

MP: Well, that would help, but also not releasing so much carbon by doing things the way we do. And, you know, it’s synthetic fertilizer, it’s global transportation, it’s feedlot meat, all these things make a tremendous contribution to climate change. And we can undo that by essentially re-solarizing the food system. You know, right now we have a system that’s based on fossil fuel, which we’re running out of. But the great thing about food is that by its very nature it’s a solar technology, because every calorie of food begins with photosynthesis. So how do we get back to that?

AT:Pray to the Egyptian gods?

MP: [Laughs] So, I think we can go a long way, and not to mention, you know, deal with our public health problems, because food is responsible for four out of ten of the big killers, the chronic diseases that kill people. There is an enormous potential to bring about change.

AT:Have you spoken to Congress about it? I mean, obviously your books have been hugely influential.

MP:Well, I don’t know about that. But I have spent a lot of time over the past year on the phone with Congressmen and staffers because I’m very interested in the battle of the Farm Bill. And basically, the more you study the American food system, you realize that it is to a large extent the product of the rules of the game, as written in the Farm Bill. So I’ve spent a lot of time trying to push people in Congress, and push readers to get in touch with people in Congress, to change those rules, because there’s a lot we can do as consumers and purchasers of food. And we can vote with our fork; voting with our fork is a very powerful way to act but, in the end, it’s going to take policy changes as well to change the food system. So yeah, I do talk to people in Congress. I haven’t testified or anything. I’ve been invited. I’m not sure journalists should be testifying before Congress. But I have gotten very involved in the policy questions, and I think I wrote five pieces on the Farm Bill last year.

AT:‍ ‍Because you are a journalist, do you think your voice distills these problems so that people can better understand them?

MP: Well I don’t know; I think I have a gift for simplifying things and seeing the connections between things. I mean, I don’t see myself as an original thinker, but I think I can find a way to make complex problems clearer to people without violating their complexity completely. I’m sure I oversimplify sometimes, all journalists do. You know, we’re born exaggerators. But making connections…you know, because I come at it from the background of being a gardener, I understand that in the end it is about nature. And we lose track of that, and that the key to understanding food and agriculture and public health is evolution — and understanding that we’re talking about plants and animals here, and people. We lose track, we think it’s about food and chemicals, but ecology is the big explanatory framework, and ecology is really the science of connecting the dots. So, ecology is how I understand things.

Originally published in Dossier Journal No. 2, 2008.