Interviews & Profiles

Eat the Press

Michael Pollan has built a reputation as a sleuthing agro-journalist. In his writing for The New York Times Magazine and a quartet of books, he’s trailed a steer from birth to dinner plate, traced America’s obesity epidemic to corn subsidies, and narrowly, fumblingly outwitted a small-town cop who came uncomfortably close to his marijuana patch.

Third Degree Interview: Michael Pollan

“The omnivore’s dilemma,”? a phrase coined 30 years ago by research psychologist Paul Rozin, is the basic quandary we all face: As omnivores, what should humans eat when we could, hypothetically, eat anything? In Michael Pollan’s recently released book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, the author delves into America’s twisted nutritional

How Michael Pollan Ruined My Life: Thinking about where our food is coming from

It’s hard not to like Michael Pollan. A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a best-selling author whose new book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” was released last month, he is down-to-earth, friendly and easy to talk to. His course evaluations at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism — where he is a professor

Michael Pollan’s Food for Thought

By guest host Anthony Brooks: If we accept the old adage that you are what you eat, then Michael Pollan has some unsettling news: we are mostly processed corn that walks. That’s one of his conclusions in his new book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.” Another is that America has a

Acclaimed author takes an enlightening trip through our food chain

Rare is the day when yet another new book about food isn’t dropped onto my desk. Rarer still is the occasion when the latest reaches beyond the usual fare. After a while, food publishing be comes a blur of recipes punctuated by pretty pictures, or one more round of dietary diatribe. Michael Pollan is a

Michael Pollan, “Food Detective”

For renowned food writer Michael Pollan, a critical step toward understanding our food chains and making smarter eating choices is accepting that the “cult of convenience is a cult of ignorance.”? Ignorance leads to carelessness, Pollan says. While marketers have led us to believe convenience trumps all and food shopping and cooking is a chore,

Michael Pollan on The Omnivore’s Dilemma

In his new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, journalist and writer Michael Pollan argues that many Americans suffer from a national eating disorder based on super-sized, corn-fed diets. Listen to the interview here.

Michael Pollan: The Truthdig Interview

It became obvious to journalist Michael Pollan in the summer of 2002 that America had a national eating disorder. That July, The New York Times Magazine published an article titled “What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?”? which reported that a growing number of respected nutritional researchers were beginning to conclude that perhaps

Dinner: An Author Considers the Source

Journalist Michael Pollan’s new book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, follows industrial food, organic food, and food that consumers procure or hunt for themselves, from the source to the dinner plate. It also examines the importance of corn in all of our food products. Pollan is a professor of science and environmental journalism at University of California

A consuming interest: Pollan puts his mouth where his research is

UC Berkeley journalism professor and author Michael Pollan sat down with me, and a cup of tea, at the long dining table in the home his family rents in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood to talk about a few ideas from his latest book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.” Q: How does “The