The gardener cultivates wildness, but he does so carefully and respectfully, in full recognition of its mystery. Michael Pollan More Quotes by Michael Pollan More Quotes From Michael Pollan To wash down your chicken nuggets with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks Michael Pollan corn-syrup nuggets soft-drinks To put it bluntly, we now need to reverse course. We need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America - not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a matter of national security. For nations that lose the ability to substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food. Michael Pollan oil america past It's all very Italian (and decidedly un-American): to insist that doing the right thing is the most pleasurable thing, and that the act of consumption might be an act of addition rather than subtraction. Michael Pollan subtraction italian might A growing body of research suggests that many of the health problems associated with eating beef are really problems with corn-fed beef. Michael Pollan beef growing research When chopping onions, just chop onions. Michael Pollan chopping onions If you're cooking food, you don't have to count calories. Michael Pollan calories cooking ifs For at the same time many people seem eager to extend the circle of our moral consideration to animals, in our factory farms and laboratories we are inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history. Michael Pollan circles animal people A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which historically have served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market. This is another example of the cultural contradictions of capitalism - the tendency over time for the economic impulse to erode the moral underpinnings of society. Mercy toward the animals in our care is one such casualty. Michael Pollan cooking example animal Unlike any other form of thought, daydreaming is its own reward. Michael Pollan daydreaming rewards form One USDA scientist went so far as to claim that there has never been a documented case of food-borne illness from eating fermented vegetables. Michael Pollan illness vegetables eating Of the seven deadly sins, surely it is pride that most commonly afflicts the gardener. Michael Pollan affliction pride evil Do all your eating at a table. Michael Pollan eating tables The Times has much less power than you think. I believe we attribute power to the media generally that it simply doesn’t have. It’s very convenient to blame the media, the same way we blame television for everything that’s going wrong in society. Michael Pollan media believe thinking Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath. Michael Pollan garden vegetables sight Of course it's also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness. Michael Pollan lucky-charms puff cereal Nature abhors a garden. Michael Pollan gardening garden Corn is an efficient way to get energy calories off the land and soybeans are an efficient way of getting protein off the land, so we've designed a food system that produces a lot of cheap corn and soybeans resulting in a lot of cheap fast food. Michael Pollan soybeans land energy Anyway, in my writing I've always been interested in finding places to stand, and I've found it very useful to have a direct experience of what I'm writing about. Michael Pollan findings found writing People don't eat nutrients, they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently than the nutrients they contain. Michael Pollan nutrients behave people Those externalized costs have always included labor. It is only the decline over time of the minimum wage in real dollars that's made the fast food industry possible, along with feedlot agriculture, pharmaceuticals on the farm, pesticides and regulatory forbearance. All these things are part of the answer to the question: Why is that crap so cheap? Our food is dishonestly priced. One of the ways in which it's dishonestly priced is the fact that people are not paid a living wage to process it, to serve it, to grow it, to slaughter it. Michael Pollan agriculture real people
