Michael Pollan on Science Friday

Michael Pollan has a new book out, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. I haven't read it yet, but I'm sure I'll like it, given my response to The Omnivore's Dilemma.

As Pollan said on Science Friday yesterday, the whole point of the book is summed up on the cover (in the yellow band surrounding the lettuce): Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. He joked that he could have published it as an index card instead of a book.

Here are a couple of things he said on the show that particularly caught my interest:

• In 1960, Americans spent 18 percent of their income on food, and 5 percent on health care. Now we spend under 10 percent on food, and 16 percent on health care. You can't help but conclude that inversion is somehow related.
  
• Conventional wisdom says that food needs to be convenient because no one has time to cook, yet everyone seems to have time to watch television and, more recently, do all sorts of things on the Interweb. As Pollan said, hours were not added to the day when television or the Web came along. So where did all that time come from? Eating home-cooked food that takes time to make has to have the same priority we assign without a second thought to other areas of our lives.

I've learned a lot lately about where food comes from, and particularly about pasture-raised meat and dairy. Did you know that pastured cows, such as the ones that supply the milk for Pastureland's organic butter, are followed in the fields by chickens, who in effect clean up after the cows, eating grass and bugs? Which results in their eggs being high in Omega-3s... and it's all natural and integrated into the way that chickens just are, without bioengineering or supplements or anything else high tech.

All this learning hasn't had much effect yet on how I eat, I have to admit. The allure of convenience is very strong. But I'm thinking about it.

Listen to Michael Pollan on Science Friday's website.