We now eat at the end of a very long and opaque food chain. Food comes to us ready-made in packages that obscure as much information as they reveal. – Michael Pollan
Specialization makes it easy to forget about the filth of the coal-fired power plant that is lighting this pristine computer screen, or the backbreaking labor it took to pick the strawberries for my cereal, or the misery of the hog that lived and died so I could enjoy my bacon. – Michael Pollan
As a society, we devalued farming as an occupation and encouraged the best students to leave the farm for ‘better’ jobs in the city. We emptied America’s rural counties in order to supply workers to urban factories. – Michael Pollan
We have food deserts in our cities. We know that the distance you live from a supplier of fresh produce is one of the best predictors of your health. And in the inner city, people don’t have grocery stores. So we have to figure out a way of getting supermarkets and farmers markets into the inner cities. – Michael Pollan
I like the taste of grass-fed meat. It is chewier, I’ll own that… The Argentines make excellent beef that’s grass-fed. They’ve learned how to age it, and they’ve gotten good at it. – Michael Pollan
For many of us, eating has surprisingly little to do with hunger. We eat out of boredom, for entertainment, to comfort or reward ourselves. Try to be aware of why you’re eating, and ask yourself if you’re really hungry – before you eat and then again along the way. – Michael Pollan
McDonald’s is in a unique position. They can decide they don’t want meat with hormones in it, and that will be the end of hormones in meat. I actually think exerting pressure on McDonald’s is probably just as important as on the Department of Agriculture. – Michael Pollan
I have had the good fortune to see how my articles have directly benefited some farmers and helped build markets for their products in a way that preserves land from development. That makes me a hopeless optimist. – Michael Pollan
Looking at the world from other species’ points of view is a cure for the disease of human self-importance. You suddenly realize that consciousness – which we value and we consider the crowning achievement of nature, human consciousness – is really just another set of tools for getting along in the world. – Michael Pollan
Basically, farm chemicals are labor-saving devices, and farmers who don’t use them – weed killers especially – have to work harder or hire more help. – Michael Pollan
I probably spend more on food than a lot of people, and I feel good about the whole food chain I’m supporting when I’m doing it. But even I have to remind myself. I’m always complaining about the prices at the farmer’s market. – Michael Pollan
Europeans fought for shorter workdays, more vacation time, family leave, and all these kinds of things. Those haven’t been priorities in America: it’s been about money. You see, in the countries that fought for time, they cook more often; they have less obesity. There are real benefits to having time. – Michael Pollan
A growing and increasingly influential movement of philosophers, ethicists, law professors and activists are convinced that the great moral struggle of our time will be for the rights of animals. – Michael Pollan
The big journals and Nobel laureates are the equivalent of Congressional leaders in science journalism. – Michael Pollan
Perhaps more than any other, the food industry is very sensitive to consumer demand. – Michael Pollan
My work has also motivated me to put a lot of time into seeking out good food and to spend more money on it. – Michael Pollan
You can’t be elected president without passing though Iowa and bowing down before corn-based ethanol, before agricultural subsidies. I mean, even McCain was a critic of ethanol, but when he got to Iowa, he was singing a different tune. – Michael Pollan
I’m very picky about the meat I eat. I eat grass-fed beef, which is now becoming more common. Yes, it’s still more expensive, but it’s a very sustainable product. – Michael Pollan
When you go to the grocery store, you find that the cheapest calories are the ones that are going to make you the fattest – the added sugars and fats in processed foods. – Michael Pollan
It is no small thing for an American to be able to go into a fast-food restaurant and to buy a double cheeseburger, fries, and a large Coke for a price equal to less than an hour of labor at the minimum wage – indeed, in the long sweep of history, this represents a remarkable achievement. – Michael Pollan
If you’re eating grassland meat, your carbon footprint is light and possibly even negative. – Michael Pollan
The astounding variety of foods on offer in the modern supermarket obscures the fact that the actual number of species in the modern diet is shrinking. For reasons of economics, the food industry prefers to tease its myriad processed offerings from a tiny group of plant species, corn and soybeans chief among them. – Michael Pollan
In general, science journalism concerns itself with what has been published in a handful of peer-reviewed journals – Nature, Cell, The New England Journal of Medicine – which set the agenda. – Michael Pollan
