This is Maureen Cavanaugh. 10 years ago journalist Michael Pollan set out to answer a question, where does our food come from. He tracked meals from McDonald's and Whole Foods and attempted to make a dinner from scratch. He hunted for wild boar, himself. Now he has reissued and updated "The Omnivore's Dilemna" . American food come to -- American food culture is one step away from forming. Many people think of "The Omnivore's Dilemna" is one of the works that started the sustainable food movement, why have you decided to reissue it? It's been 10 years and it seems like a good time to take stock. I was curious to read the book and see how much had changed. I was heartened to see there has been progress. The question at the heart of the book, where does our food come from, is now at the heart of the culture and lots of people are curious. The industry is feeling enormous pressure to respond. Becoming more transparent or reformulating product or changing the life of the animals in the food system, I thought it was a good time to see where we've come. Remind us, what the "The Omnivore's Dilemna" is , regarding the kinds of food choices we have. There are two kinds of creatures, omnivores who can eat many different things and then there are selected creatures like, cows or koala bears, who eat one or two foods. They have a simple life. They don't need a big bring. If you can eat as many different things as we can, what you actually eat becomes quite fraught, there are things that can kill you or make you sick. You have to devote a lot of cognitive equipment to navigating the food landscape. We do, as a creature, we always have. The modern omnivore is faced with dilemmas that are in this -- ancestors never had to deal with, such as genetically modified food, do you want to eat that are not? Food grown with chemicals, feedlot meat, there are ethical issues that come up, there are safety issues, health issues, we face a giant dilemma over what should be a simple matter, getting ourselves fed. That was the dilemma I was waiting into -- waiting into, hoping to find a path to the landscape, by examining the food system and helping people figure out what to eat. You include a couple of an notes, in this edition that weren't in the original, about the battle delays -- bad old days. About our preference for french fries and it led to widespread use of a highly toxic pesticide. This was one of the Omaha moments or epiphanies, I visited this gigantic potato farm in Idaho, where a lot of our french fries come from. The farmer was farming from a concrete bunker, it was highly computerized and each crops are -- circle had an irrigation pivot that put out the water and chemicals he was using one chemical, one reason he like to farm from his bunker, he was using it, co-called monitor, that was so toxic, after he sprayed he couldn't go into the field for several days. It was a neurotoxin, I said why do you such a chemical? He said it controls net necrosis, I asked what that was, he said it was a cosmetic defect and potatoes. You've seen potatoes with the Brown spot Lara Brown line that's caused by net necrosis. He said it was just a cosmetic defect. I asked why he used a toxic chemicals. He said McDonald's won't buy potatoes with net necrosis and they buy 70%. I asked if there was another way, he said sure just don't grow russet Burbank's. I asked why you only grow russet Burbank and he said that the only kind McDonald's takes. Why does McDonald only take them? This is a crazy Q&A. He said they like a really long french fries. We see how a minor consumer preference, that we like our french fries long, leads to this whole chain of crazy consequences including the spring of this terrible chemical and exposure of farmers to it. That's kind of when I realized, wow, we are growing food in ways we have no idea of four really reasons we are not aware of. Wouldn't it be great, to write some detective stories acquainting people with the process. I want to tell you, monitor is no longer being used, it's out of production, that's a very good thing. It's been replaced by other chemicals, I'm sure. We still grow potatoes using far more chemicals and we need to. One thing that we are learning, eating in a sustainable, local and seasonal way, that is big across the country, it's huge in San Diego. Eating that way, actually does limit your food choices. Americans are not always so happy with limitations. Is there a chance, do you think, that this is only a fad and that we will go back to embracing processed industrial food? I thought that that was a real possibility, after the crash in 2008. I remember, standing, I teach at the journalism school at Berkeley, I was standing on a street corner waiting to cross and one of my colleagues who seen it all and is a great speaker, we are standing there and he's -- the economy is just fallen apart. He says, that's it for all that local food crap. I thought, he could be right, food does cost more, it's not necessary to keeping you alive, in fact he was wrong. In that, the interest in local food and the interest in sustainable food and organic food has survived, quite well. The growth and organic slowed, but it continued and it grew faster than the conventional system. I think it's more than a food fad, I think people have taken a new interest in how their food is produced in the care about the welfare of animals and they care about the welfare of the workers. If you talk to people in the food industry, they feel the heat, they are working to reformulate their project -- products, improve the conditions of the animals and their food chain, a laminate antibiotics in animal productions, all these things. They don't think it's a fad. Only time will tell. The fact that it survived this crisis, is a good sign that it's a meaningful shift and not just a fad. I've been speaking with Michael Pollan author of "The Omnivore's Dilemna", which is just been released an updated. Michael, thank you so much. Thank you.
Ten years ago, journalist Michael Pollan set out to answer a deceptively simple question: where does our food come from?
He tracked meals from McDonald’s and Whole Foods, and attempted to make a meal from scratch—even hunting for wild boar. Now Pollan has updated his book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and says the question at the heart of his book is now at the heart of American culture.
He said the food industry has felt pressure to respond to the book by becoming “more transparent or reformulating their products or by changing the life of the animals in the food system.”
Pollan likened some of his reporting to food detective stories. He recalled a conversation he had with a potato farmer about using a pesticide so toxic the farmer stayed out his fields five days after spraying it. The pesticide controlled aphids, a bug that spreads a disease that can discolor potatoes. The disease only affects Russet Burbank potatoes, and McDonald’s, which buys 7 percent of the U.S. potato crop, only buys Russets, the farmer told Pollan. That’s because Russets have the longest spud and fast food consumers like long French fries, he said.
“A minor consumer preference—that we like our French fries long—leads to this whole chain of crazy consequences, including the spraying of this terrible chemical and the exposure of farmers to it,” Pollan said.
