Michael Pollan to speak on food, public policy
By Sasha Benderly-Kraft
Environmental and nutritional activist Michael Pollan will give a talk specially designed for Earlham tomorrow evening. Though Pollan is currently on a speaking circuit to discuss his latest book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, tomorrow he will present a talk entitled “Connecting the Dots: Nutritionism, Health and Agricultural Policy.”
Pollan, who teaches journalism at University of California, Berkeley, is best known for his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, published in 2006. In that book, Pollan analyzed the sources from which we get our food.
Tomorrow’s talk will be deeply linked to this premise: Pollan’s main conceptual framework is that the way modern American society produces food is directly linked with public health, and thus that changing the way we look at food production is crucial to improving how we live our lives.
Pollan stands opposed to the practice of choosing food for scientifically calculated nutritional values. In his second most recent book, In Defense of Food (2008), Pollan argued that nutritionism-the valuation of food by specific nutrient contents complicates and detracts from eating habits, coming to a simple, catchy conclusion: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Due to his influence on the food-oriented side of the environmental movement, Pollan has been a highly demanded speaker in recent years. Lynn Knight, Earlham’s Events Coordinator, says that Pollan was booked for this talk last year, and that it correlates with the college’s current interest in sustainability and environmental policy, such as the recent creation of an Environmental Studies major.
In addition to his talk, Pollan will lead a session of Assistant Professor of Education Jay Roberts’ Environmental Colloquium, which, for this semester, is focused on generating an assessment of Earlham’s sustainability.
Knight says this classroom element is crucial to Pollan being more than a speaker-having him available to students is seen as a crucial way of examining the ideas he puts forward.
Roberts is likewise highly enthusiastic about Pollan’s presence in his classroom.
“We are working from Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest,” Roberts said, “which is about the environmental movement as one of the key social movements of this moment. Hopefully Michael Pollan can provide some perspective as to what’s really going on in that movement.”
When asked about Pollan’s specific appeal, Roberts pointed to the universality of the question
of food.
“Food touches everybody, across boundaries, so it’s a strong point on which to build coalitions,” he said.
Roberts characterizes the food movement championed by Pollan as an “unlikely alliance” of many social groups that defies traditional stereotypes of environmentalists.
“These days, it’s not just the stereotypical ‘elitist hippies’ that care about food-it’s coming to the forefront of our collective consciousness,” he said. “The big idea is that since everyone eats, food can transcend self-interest.”
This increased consciousness is showing its face in many aspects of our day-to-day life-not least of which is the fact that every one of the tickets to Pollan’s talk has been sold out for a week.
For instance, Sodexho is in the process of creating a sustainability inquiry to improve their food policy. Roberts sees this as evidence of the thought currently put into questions of food, but wonders how deep it truly runs.
“Is this really a paradigm shift, or just a trend?” Roberts asked. Pollan’s talk might shed some light on this question, or at least provide an idea of how to look at the food movement for the future.
“Connecting the Dots: Nutritionism, Health and Agricultural Policy” is tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. in Goddard Auditorium. Tickets are sold out.
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