Cooking For Democracy

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Michael Pollan on How Reclaiming Cooking Can Save Our Food System, Make Us Healthy & Grow Democracy



Full Transcript can be read here

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! spent an hour with Michael Pollan,  Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism.

Pollan has written several best-selling books about food, including “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” In his latest book, “Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation,” Pollan argues that taking back control of cooking may be the single most important step anyone can take to help make our food system healthier and more sustainable. “There is a deliberate effort to undermine food culture to sell us processed food,” Pollan says. “The family meal is a challenge if you’re General Mills or Kellogg or one of these companies, or McDonald’s, because the family meal is usually one thing shared.” Pollan also talks about the “slow food” movement. “Slow food is about food that is good, clean and fair. They’re concerned with social justice. They’re concerned with how the food is grown and how humane and chemical-free it is.” He adds, “Slow food is about recovering that space around the family and keeping the influence of the food manufacturers outside of the house. … The family meal is very important. It’s the nursery of democracy.”

2 comments

    • TMC on May 12, 2013 at 06:48
      Author
  1. as Exxon.



    Michael Pollan: Genetically Modified Foods Offer Consumers “Nothing”

    http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs

    Why then, Mr. Pollan should we ban Mother Nature’s own GMO’s from the table, most notably bananas and plaintain, that are Mother’s own GMO’s – sterile hybrids from very different species of plants with inedible fruits?

    I have to sneak a sip of grapefruit juice on the side when the wife isn’t watching because an orange accidentally crossed with a foul-tasting fruit only a Jamaican could like.  Grapruit juice makes medicines more potent or impotent, depending on their MOA [type of activity].  I guess there would be at least some smidgeon of logic to Mr. Pollan banning grapefruit forever.

    But more crucially what about the increase in greenhouse gases and and additional land taken from wildlife and increase in chemical use – yes, increase in chemical use in some instances.

    Dylan Ratigan, a most generous, public-spirited and intelligent critic of the rapacious corporate monsters, has thrown himself with vigor into true factory farming though Dylan would be horrified by use of that term for vertical farming and pushes the cult of organic farming that hinders the movement.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/video/d

    How I would love to discuss the ignorance of the organic cult with Mr. Ratigan.  I bet he would listen even if he were unalterably convinced by the anti-science propaganda.

    Not that I have a strong opinion one way or another you know. 🙂

    While Mr. Pollan is fixing to ban Mother Nature from his banquet, Mother Earth may be planning to do away with Mr. Pollan and all his kin so she can try again to evolve an intelligent species.  She has obviously failed.

    Best,  Terry

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