Latest Michael Pollan Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• One of the problems is that the US government supports unhealthy food and does very little to support healthy food. I mean, we subsidize high fructose corn syrup. We subsidize hydrogenated corn oil. We do not subsidize organic food. We subsidize four crops that are the building blocks of fast food. And you also have to work on access. 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.

  Michael Pollan

  Block, Distance, Mean

• One surprise is how deeply the food system is implicated in climate change. I don't think that has really been on people's radar until very recently. 25 to 33 percent of climate change gases can be traced to the food system. I was also surprised that those diseases that we take for granted as what will kill us - heart disease, cancer, diabetes - were virtually unknown 150 years ago, before we began eating this way.

  Michael Pollan

  Cancer, Heart, Thinking

  "Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner". Interview With Clara Jeffery, www.motherjones.com. March/April 2009.

• We're spending, on average, 27 minutes a day cooking and about four minutes cleaning up, so basically about a half hour. Any one of TV shows takes twice as long to watch as that, which I think is very interesting because the main excuse people give for not cooking is they don't have time to cook, but somehow they're finding time to watch other people cook or eat on TV.

  Michael Pollan

  Thinking, Long, People

  "Michael Pollan On Cooking As A Spectator Sport". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, www.npr.org. August 3, 2009.

• Avoid food products that make health claims. at meals and eat them only at tables. And no, a desk is not a table.

  Michael Pollan

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

• Eat only until you're 4/5 full. An ancient Japanese injunction.

  Michael Pollan

  Ancient

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

• Pay more, eat less. Diversify your diet and eat wild foods when you can.

  Michael Pollan

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

• Eat slowly, with other people whenever possible, and always with pleasure.

  Michael Pollan

  People, Pleasure

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

• Avoid food products with more than five ingredients; with ingredients you can't pronounce.

  Michael Pollan

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

• You have to draw lines between being a journalist and an activist.

  Michael Pollan

  Lines, Activist, Journalist

• You want to say the thing that will drive everybody in the direction you want to go. But as a writer you have a pact with your readers that you'll be really straight with them at all times.

  Michael Pollan

  Want, Pact, All Time

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• In the end I'm still a writer. I'm still a journalist, and my first responsibility is to my readers. That's where I have to draw the line.

  Michael Pollan

  Responsibility, Lines, Firsts

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Not that I'm against meat eating. But I think we're eating too much.

  Michael Pollan

  Thinking, Meat Eating, Too Much

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• The other thing that soy contributes to, of course, is hydrogenated oil. This is the main oil. This is the fast-food oil.

  Michael Pollan

  Oil, Soy, Fast Food

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Oil companies have gas stations. There's this whole huge structure that is about finding a new liquid for the tank. And the idea that maybe there shouldn't be a liquid, that maybe the best is an electrical grid, a sustainably powered electrical grid that we all plug into, that doesn't sit well with oil companies.

  Michael Pollan

  Ideas, Oil, Tanks

• I think using waste oils as fuel makes sense. We do waste a huge amount of vegetable oil in this country and using that as a fuel source strikes me as fine.

  Michael Pollan

  Thinking, Vegetables, Oil

  "Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner (Extended Interview)". Interview with Clara Jeffery, www.motherjones.com. March 2009.

• The problem is that we let special-occasion food become everyday food. That goes for soda and french fries.

  Michael Pollan

  Everyday, Special, Soda

• It's estimated that about 30 percent of the increase in grain prices could be attributed to the decision to embrace biofuels, particularly corn-based ethanol. It has done nothing for climate change and the business is in real trouble now with the collapse of oil prices. It's completely dependent on a dollar subsidy and tariff from the government.

  Michael Pollan

  Real, Government, Oil

  "Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner (Extended Interview)". Interview with Clara Jeffery, www.motherjones.com. March 2009.

• The whole problem of industrial agriculture is putting all of your eggs in one basket. We need to diversify our food chains as well as our fields so that when some of them fail, we can still eat.

  Michael Pollan

  Eggs, Agriculture, Needs

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• There's a lot of research that suggests that organic yields are close or superior to conventional yields depending on factors like climate. In a drought year an organic field of corn will yield more - considerably more - than a conventional field; organic fields hold moisture better so they don't need as much water. It simply isn't true that organic yields are lower than conventional yields.

  Michael Pollan

  Yield, Years, Water

  "Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner (Extended Interview)". Interview with Clara Jeffery, www.motherjones.com. March/April 2009.

• All money for agricultural extension, land grant universities has been toward developing industrial food. Lots of money has been invested toward maximizing yield. If you took even a small amount of that money and put it toward organic research, I don't have any doubts you could match those yields.

  Michael Pollan

  Yield, Land, Doubt

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Every peasant cuisine has incredible ingenious tricks for getting a lot of nutrition out of a small amount of ingredients. There are people who don't have the money to invest in better food, but perhaps they have the time. There's a trade-off: The more time you're willing to put into food preparation, the less money you have to spend.

  Michael Pollan

  People, Preparation, Ingredients

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• 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.

  Michael Pollan

  Dirty, Alternatives, Dozen

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• 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.

  Michael Pollan

  Skills, People, Example

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• 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.

  Michael Pollan

  Distance, Cities, Long

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• The other way that you democratize the food movement is through the public school system. If you can pay enough for the school lunch system so that it can actually be cooked and not just microwaved, so that these schools can buy local food, fresh food, because right now it's all frozen and processed, you will improve the health of the students, you will improve the health of the local economy, and you will have better performing students.

  Michael Pollan

  School, Lunch, Frozen

  Source: www.motherjones.com