My interview with Michael Pollan -- Pollan: Nutrition 'Science' Has Hijacked Our Meals -- and Our Health -- is the most emailed article at AlterNet.org since March 21st. Originally published April 3rd, it has been forwarded 1031 times, and was the most read article the week of its publication as well. We discussed his New York Times #1 bestselling book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. The interview is also available as a podcast.
Among Michael Pollan’s comments:
“It’s very hard to make money selling normal unprocessed foods. The more you process food, the more profitable it is. If I go to the supermarket, I can buy a pound of organic oats for 79c. Now that’s a lot of oats, and nobody’s making much money.
But if you turn it into Cheerios, suddenly you have a brand. You’ve got your little doughnut shape, you’ve got an ad campaign, and suddenly you’re charging four bucks for a few ounces of oats. Then you come up with a Honey Nut Cheerio Cereal Bar with a layer of artificial milk in the middle. Now you’ve got a convenience food that’s very much your own, because you’ve got this special formula to make your fake milk. And kids can eat them in the car or on the way to school. Now you’re charging $10 or $20 for a few penny’s worth of oats.
That’s the economic imperative of the food industry. Problem is -- the more you process food, the less nutritious it is. There’s nothing better for you for breakfast than plain oats.
“The food issue and the healthcare issue are seen as separate. Of course, they’re not. When I was a boy in 1960 we spent 18% of our national income on food -- twice as much as we do today -- and only 5% on healthcare. Today it’s flipped. We spend 16 or 17% of our income on healthcare and only 9% on food. The less money we’ve been willing to spend for food -- the more we’ve settled for processed, highly refined, cheap, fast food -- the more our healthcare problems have escalated.”
“We’ve learned to increase yields, to make energy and calories cheaper. We’re using the original solar technology, photosynthesis, making food from sunlight, but we’ve mistakenly focused on fossil fuel. We’re taking ten calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
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I was a panelist at the 60th Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Colorado April 6th-11th. This was my eighth appearance at CWA and I spoke on a number of topics – from pollution and youth activism to the failed war on drugs. My presentations will be available soon as podcasts.
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I hosted the third hour of The Rachel Maddow Show on Air America Radio Monday April 14th. The hour focused on the enormous economic costs of the Defense budget and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guests included Phil Donahue regarding his documentary, Body of War, Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films about their new video, Three Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree, and Gordon Adams former national security budget expert in the Clinton administration. Listen to the podcast.