I'm very hopeful that we'll see some change in our food system. I don't know how far we'll go, or how quickly we'll get there, but there is no question that a significant percentage of the American public is dissatisfied with the food system. Michael Pollan More Quotes by Michael Pollan More Quotes From Michael Pollan Corn is a greedy crop, as farmers will tell you. Michael Pollan greedy agriculture corn In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel - it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn. Michael Pollan erosion fuel food Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word "organic" is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic. Michael Pollan corn-syrup differences blow ...forgetting is vastly underrated as a mental operation. Michael Pollan underrated operations forget Johnny Appleseed was revered . . he was . . . an evangelist (of a doctrine veering perilously close to pantheism). Michael Pollan johnny-appleseed pantheism doctrine Half of all broccoli grown commercially in America today is a single variety- Marathon- notable for it's high yield. The overwhelming majority of the chickens raised for meat in America are the same hybrid, the Cornish cross; more than 99 percent of turkeys are the Broad-Breasted Whites. Michael Pollan turkeys yield america But carbon 13 [the carbon from corn] doesn't lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn.... Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar. So that's us: processed corn, walking. Michael Pollan hair animal lying So that's us: processed corn, walking. Michael Pollan corn walking Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Michael Pollan grandmother cooking food The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive. Michael Pollan passive verbs nature The environment is not just around you, it's passing through you. Michael Pollan passings passing environment The great virtue of a diversified food economy, like a diverse pasture or farm, is its ability to withstand any shock. The important thing is that there be multiple food chains, so that when any one of them fails-when the oil runs out, when mad cow or other food-borne diseases become epidemic, when the pesticides no longer work, when drought strikes and plagues come and soils blow away-we'll still have a way to feed ourselves. Michael Pollan epidemics blow running Without the potatoe, the balance of European power might never have tilted north Michael Pollan balance might In corn, I think I've found the key to the American food chain. If you look at a fast-food meal, a McDonald's meal, virtually all the carbon in it - and what we eat is mostly carbon - comes from corn. Michael Pollan mcdonalds keys thinking Corn is the hero of its own story, and though we humans played a crucial supporting role in its rise to world domination, it would be wrong to suggest we have been calling the shots, or acting always in our own best interests. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that corn has succeeded in domesticating us. Michael Pollan acting hero believe Are we, finally, speaking of nature or culture when we speak of a rose (nature), that has been bred (culture) so that its blossoms (nature) make men imagine (culture) the sex of women (nature)? It may be this sort of confusion that we need more of. Michael Pollan flower men sex Ecology also teaches that all life on earth can be viewed as a competition among species for the solar energy captured by green plants and stored in the form of complex carbon molecules. A food chain is a system for passing those calories on to species that lack the pant's unique ability to synthesize them from sunlight. Michael Pollan green-plants competition unique Farms produce a lot more than food; they also produce a kind of landscape and a kind of community. Michael Pollan landscape community kind Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature's ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast mono-cultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature's complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain. Michael Pollan diversity technology animal I'm not talking about having to consult Julia Child before you can take a pot off the rack. I think that's something we can all do more and do better. Michael Pollan talking children thinking
