Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Michael Pollan at PAL 1.13.09:
More than A Guy Talking About Food
Michael Pollan arrived on the stage of the Schnitzer Auditorium with a medium sized brown paper bag just as though he had crossed the street from Safeway. It seemed like quite an appropriate entry for the American writer who has made significant contributions to get Americans to think, and act even, about the content of the food we eat and the way we consume it. The concert hall was filled to capacity all to, as Pollan put it "to hear the guy talk about food for an hour."
It proved to be a solid well-ordered presentation that gave the listeners in that hall something to consider and many issues to think about. He said his theme tonight was fitting in the season of the "new you," the time of the first of the year when folks take up new years resolutions with gym memberships and new diets. He described it as that time of year when Taco Bell is marketing the idea of having a fourth meal at the same time that Jenny Craig ads are clammering on the television.
Pollan's presentation was filled with big thought provoking statements like. "You can't have healthy people without healthy diet and you can't have healthy diet without healthy agriculture." America is a country filled with orthorexics, according to Pollan. An orthorexic is defined as a person with a unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. And this is the result of idealizing nutritionism.
Our cultural patterns of this unhealthy set of circumstances was broken down as a four part phenomena by Pollan. First the key to understanding food is nutrients. But, secondly, since nutrients are invisible and mysterious people want an experts to help them navigate through their relationship with food. Thirdly, eating is commonly seen as either health promoting or health ruining (never mind the factors of eating that relate to pleasure, spiritualism, culture, family and community) And, lastly, our times and culture are filled with the perception that there are good nutrients and evil nutrients and their roles of good and evil are changing and cycling at routine intervals.
For most of the next hour he used these four points as a backdrop for the history of nutritionism, beginning with the health crazes of the 1860s by future cereal kings Post and Kellogg, through the FDA regulations and definitions of the seventies, through attempts by our agribusiness to make food at least appear more healthy, such as in the example of the Cocoa Puffs he pulled out of his paper bag promoting their content of being filled with calcium, whole grains, and fiber.
America's obsession with nutritionism parallels the rise of obesity. He sees health as being much different than nutritionism, instead it is a set of relationships we have with exercise, our lifestyle, and also our food. Over the course of the evening, as he does in his writing, Pullan creates images and brings forward facts that are thoughtful and alarming such as the fact that 20% of Americans take their meals in their cars. And the fact that school lunch programs consist of the excess of American agri business and that they are based on a minimum calorie, but not maximum calorie content instead of what might be good for children to eat.
Pollan got much attention lately for his comments in the NY Times about how there could be a change in American Food could begin with the White House was devoting five acres to farming vegetables on the grounds. Pollan says by the end of WWII, 40% of American food came from victory gardens. He closed the evening by commenting that if we want to have change, especially when one considers the incredibly strong and powerful food lobby, we have to make our voices known; we can't expect Obama to read our minds and do it all.
I had read some NY Times pieces, but it was Pam's referral of The Botany of Desire that really introduced me to Pollan's writing, which like his lecture last night, has the ability to engage, instruct, and make one reflect on stories and issues you thought you truly were familiar with, but instead, you are left with new perspective.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:11 PM
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