Pollan Season

In my last guest post, I wrote about my growing awareness of local and organic food advocates such as Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. Joy knows I’m still mad at her for not pointing out Jamie Oliver when she saw him shopping at the Hollywood Farmers Market last year. She’s dazzled by rutabagas, not celebrity.

Michael Pollan is on a promotion tour for Food, Inc. (see post March 2010). We’ve heard him on Fresh Air and Democracy Now, both of which can be downloaded as podcasts. He was on Oprah this week, and writes on Huffington Post about Oprah’s battle with the cattle industry. Pollan feels that Oprah “waded back into food politics” in a courageous way by having him on her show.

Joy and I both admire Pollan’s remarkable ability to fight the big money of agri-business and the meat industry armed with only facts, common sense, and a calm and intelligent speaking style. He takes on outrageous crimes against Nature knowing that he would lose his platform if he could ever be painted as shrill or extremist. He is neither.

Pollan’s interview on Huffington Post is framed with an interesting array of old photos of food producers and meat packers. There are more pictures of slaughterhouses and butchers than I would like. I won’t even show the site to Joy -- she couldn’t take it. (The pictures were chosen by Huffington Post, not Pollan.)

But if you’re a meat eater like me, these pictures force you to acknowledge the reality of the all-American meat-eating diet. Pollan isn’t a vegetarian, but he does choose his meat carefully, and eats only grass-fed beef and free-range chicken.

I used to gloss over those terms, feeling they were trendy marketing ploys. But after reading Fast Food Nation and watching Food, Inc., I find myself paying more attention to the meat that I buy. And I find myself appreciating every opportunity to listen to Michael Pollan. He certainly gets my wife’s stamp of approval.