Pollan Attack!

Went and heard Michael Pollan speak at the City Arts & Lectures last night. What an amazing passionate and humorous speaker! He spoke primarily about his new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma in which he goes explores four different modes by which food is produced in this country, industrial factory farming, industrial organic, "grass" farming or pasture based agriculture, and hunting and gathering food, and then has four different meals from the food each of these systems produces. The first part of the lecture was pretty depressing with lots on the marriage between capitalism and corn (particularly for animal feed), and the only consolation I had was my participation in the worst parts of factory farming is pretty minimal just by virtue of being a vegetarian. Though even with that, it was a good wake-up call to my own complicity in my food choices. Michael Pollan a much more forceful speaker then I expected, and far more radically anti-capitalist. He mentioned that Omnivore’s Dilemma was recently referred to as the Das Kapital of food.

Can't wait to read the book. Maybe we can choose it for our next book club book. In closing he suggested two sites www.eatwell.com and www.eatwild.com for further information and steps.