Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth6 February 1955
CityLong Island, NY
CountryUnited States of America
weed roles earth
For though we may be the Earth's gardeners, we are also its weeds. And we won't get anywhere until we come to terms with this crucial ambiguity about our role - that we are at once the problem and the only possible solution to the problem.
writing self tools
There's an assumption that if someone writes in the first person it's self-indulgent and self-regarding. I just look at it as a tool to understand the world and my experience in it. It's not a tool to understand myself.
skills people meals
We used to eat economically. One of the things that happened is that we lost the cultural skills that used to allow people to eat well cheaply. For example making three or four meals from a chicken, rather than buying chicken breasts.
leader way agendas
The Congressional leaders set the agenda for journalism; it's not the other way around.
dirty alternatives dozen
There are certain products that it's worth buying organic just because the alternatives have so much pesticide. There's a list of the dirty dozen that you can get off the Web. Strawberries, potatoes. A handful of crops that have very high pesticide residues if you don't buy organic. If you eat that a lot, that's a good place to invest.
writing stakes
Yes, I very much like to have a personal stake in what I'm writing about.
land people social
Food consists not just in piles of chemicals; it also comprises a set of social and ecological relationships, reaching back to the land and outward to other people.
cooking important scratches
Cooking (from scratch) is the single most important thing we could do as a family to improve our health and general well-being.
greek
Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.
sugar grocery-stores fats
When you go to the grocery store, you find that the cheapest calories are the ones that are going to make you the fattest - the added sugars and fats in processed foods.
progress culture landscape
There's been progress toward seeing that nature and culture are not opposing terms, and that wilderness is not the only kind of landscape for environmentalists to concern themselves with.
demand sensitive consumers
Perhaps more than any other, the food industry is very sensitive to consumer demand.
pride evil sin
Of the seven deadly sins, surely it is pride that most commonly afflicts the gardener.
distance cities long
We have food deserts in our cities. We know that the distance you live from a supplier of fresh produce is one of the best predictors of your health. And in the inner city, people don't have grocery stores. They have to get on a bus and take a long ride to get to a source of fresh produce.