In Defense Of Food: I'm Totally Absorbed in Michael Pollan's Books

I've been totally absorbed in Michael Pollan's books, Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. I'm not just reading his books. I read a little and ponder a lot. The books are very easy to follow, not to techy or too much science, just the facts about food, the way plants are grown and the way animals are "grown" before they become our "food." I recommend all Americans read these books.

Read this part of an interview Amy Goodman did with Michael Pollan about eating local.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the localvore movement?

MICHAEL POLLAN: The localvore movement is a real new emphasis on eating locally, eating food from what’s called your foodshed. It’s a metaphor based on a watershed. You know, a certain—draw a circle of a hundred miles around your community and try to eat everything from there. It’s an interesting movement, and I’m very supportive of local food. I think that it’s verging on the ridiculous right now—I mean, you know, because, frankly, there’s no wheat produced in a hundred miles of New York. You know, do you want to give up bread? I’m not willing to give up bread. So people get a little extremist about it.

But the basic idea of when products are available locally, eating them and eating food in season, is a very powerful and important idea. It supports a great many values. The fact is that food that’s produced locally is going to be fresher. It’s going to be more nutritious because it’s fresher.

You’re going to support the farmers in your community. You’re going to check sprawl. I mean, you’ll keep that farmland in business. You are going to keep basically, you know, some autonomy in our food system. I mean, make no mistake: the basic trend of food in this country is to globalize it, and there will come a day when America doesn’t produce its own food. In California, the Central Valley is losing, you know, hundreds of acres of farmland every day, and the projections there are that we will no longer produce produce in California by the end of the century. I don’t want to live in that world. I—you know, we lost control over our energy destiny, and we don’t want to lose control over our food destiny.

I support my local farmers, You?

Beyond Organic Healthy Food