Posts under Interview Category
Michael Pollan on eating, journalism, and what’s next
As you travel around the country on book tours and speaking engagements, do you find that your advice on eating responsibly—particularly recognizing our relationship as human beings to the natural world—is being taken?
Every time I go speak anywhere, I meet people who are taking it to heart. People are always coming up to me and saying that my books have changed their lives. It usually means that they have changed their whole approach to food—they’ve planted a garden, they’ve started cooking for themselves, any number of things. It’s been one of the most satisfying things about doing this work.
What other means are you using to spread the word about nutrition and eating?
I do a certain amount of engaging with chefs, and they, in turn, are very interested in issues of sustainability (health a little less so). I gently lobby them on some of these issues, working with them on their sourcing. But there are a lot of chefs doing this already—butchering their own animals, or drilling down to the core questions of where their food comes from and not relying on distributors to solve all their problems. They’re doing a lot of things themselves.
I also do a lot of political work, talking to people in Washington about nutrition and the more environmental considerations of agriculture. There’s a whole lot of jawboning going on, but that’s because we’re in the middle of a movement. There’s this moment now when we who are involved in this movement need to take advantage of the public attention and drive it as much change as we can.
Is it a collaborative effort?
For sure. It’s a very cooperative movement; I don’t detect lots of conflict. The journalists in this area exchange sources, story ideas, help each other out. I have collaborated with Alice Waters, for example, doing benefits for The Edible Schoolyard or speaking in her restaurant, Chez Panisse. She’s incredibly alive to new possibilities. When someone calls her attention to something that needs to be changed, she listens and makes changes.
All of this is growing out of the conversation about where our food comes from and how it’s produced. Chefs have right in the center of this. It’s interesting that chefs should become forces of reform—that’s not really how people have thought about chefs historically. But they’re the ones who have elevated the prestige of farmers, and they’re educating the public with their menus. They’re performing a very valuable task. There’s at least one chef in every town who has taken the lead on sourcing locally and exploiting seasonal availability.
A key term in this movement is transparency. People care about that. They don’t just want to smell or taste their food anymore, they want to know the whole story behind it.
What are you doing in your own life to manifest this responsibility?
I try to be careful about the choices I make, but I don’t get it right every time. I’m very careful about things like meat-eating—I don’t eat meat at places that don’t source meat well if I can help it. At the same time, I’ve met people who obsess about it more than I do. We just need to shrink the role of meat in our diet—eating less of it when we do eat it.
Through all of this education and owning of new responsibility, it’s very important not to think about getting these choices right as an all-or-nothing proposition. Moving in the right direction is important, too. People think if it’s all or nothing, it’s unreasonable, and they’re not going to do anything. But if we do just one thing every day, that’s big.
You’ve also made a point that food is more than just nutrition—that it’s cultural.
And that’s just as important as the nutritional or environmental element. The meal, in the end, is the important thing. It’s the social occasion of our society, and an important institution of democracy.
Given cost and labor shortages, do you think a locavore diet will become more of an inevitability rather than remaining a choice?
It’s hard to say—we may get there. There are conflicting pressures on the diet. One is price; people don’t have as much money, and, for some, that means they can’t buy local ingredients anymore. There are other people who say that because times are tight, it’s a good time to plant a garden and cook more instead of going out. The same pressures can cut both ways, depending on your attitude.
In the long-term, outsourcing our food production and cooking (to the extent we have) will diminish because it isn’t sustainable. I believe I will live to see a time when people take more control of their diet and everything that goes into it. The process of taking back the diet is really an empowering thing.
As far as journalism is concerned, what has been the biggest ethical struggle for you since you started writing your first book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma?
Well, you know, I’m not a beat reporter, so I don’t really have to worry if Monsanto gets pissed off and doesn’t talk to me anymore. Sometimes you have to burn bridges to do good journalism, and I don’t mind that. But I’ve also burned bridges and rebuilt them. I had a terrible relationship with Whole Foods after The Omnivore’s Dilemma came out, but now we have a productive relationship. In the end, you can’t worry too much about what the industry or government thinks about you—your first obligation is to your reader.
It’s true that, as a journalist, there are some tensions around advocacy, but if you’re open and fair to those people you disagree with, I think you’re doing your job. I don’t think the goal is objectivity, which is an unrealistic goal in journalism. The objective is fairness and honesty. You can do that and still advocate for change. I try to explain to folks where my opinions come from, and that helps. But walking the line between advocacy and fairness is definitely the challenge.
So it’s not really a conversation.
Sometimes there’s a conversation—a negotiation—but usually, groups and businesses either decide they’re fine with what’s being written about them, or they don’t want to let you in at all. Other people honestly want to convince their critics, and let you in to talk about what you’re doing. Other people act like they have something to hide. It just depends—it’s always dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
What are some restaurants and who are some chefs we should look to as leaders in this movement of responsible eating and sourcing?
Well, besides Alice Waters in Berkeley, Calif., I think Dan Barber in New York is an outstanding figure, as well as Peter Hoffman, who had a restaurant in New York called Savoy. He was really the first farmers’ market chef in the ’80s—he built his menus out of what he found locally. Going around the country, I think Greg Higgins in Portland has done good work, especially with meat. Andrea Reusing at The Lantern in North Carolina is a standout. Scott Peacock who once helmed Watershed Restaurant in Atlanta does great work in a Southern idiom. Mario Batali in New York is doing great work, too, and is very careful about where he sources his meat and fish.
But there are so many others. I meet these people in different places all the time. I was just in Cleveland, and there was a wonderful chef there who was doing great work, supporting a wealth of local farms. You don’t think of Cleveland as the hotbed of culinary movements, but there it is. It’s not just a coastal phenomenon. A lot of people assume it’s just New York and California, but that’s not true.
What’s the next big challenge in this movement?
Oh gosh, there’s so much more to do. There are a couple big things, though. Fixing the school lunch is really important. It’s under-funded, for one. Then there’s the fact the industry just won the right to put french fires on our kids’ plates, despite the National Institute of Medicine saying that was a really bad idea. Next, there’s going to be a fight over “competitive foods”—the food in soda and snack machines outside of school cafeterias. That’s going to be a pitched battle between the USDA and the food industry.
In the culture at large, we need to get people to take cooking seriously. It’s really the single most important step to improving the health of families and eating right. That’s an uphill battle. Truth be told, home cooking is in trouble—the meal is in trouble. There was an amazing article in <i>USA Today<i> recently that said younger generations are giving up on the meal. They’re eating whatever they want, whenever they want. When the meal is in trouble, then society is in trouble, because it’s a foundation of our culture.
Is this shaping an upcoming book?
Yes. I’m doing a book on cooking now—the natural history of cooking. I’m trying to write something that will get people to see cooking as a worthwhile endeavor, as a powerful engagement with the natural world.
I’m assuming The Food Network—and the TV cooking show phenomenon—is part of the discussion.
I’ve written about that. My concern about The Food Network is that they turn cooking into a spectator sport. It becomes a surrogate for cooking. In prime time, the shows are not constructed such that you can learn anything. The techniques are so fast—and virtuosic—that it’s hard to learn anything from them. They’ve made people think cooking is cool, which mat translate into getting more people to cook. But day-to-day, like everything on TV, it’s all about pinning you to the couch. That’s how they make their money—they don’t make money if they get you to get up and do anything.
—Interview by Jeffrey Steen
