Michael Pollan’s Food for Thought

On Point with Tom Ashbrook (NPR), April 21, 2006

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 national eating disorder — thanks mostly to the destruction of its food culture at the hands of industrialized agriculture. Pesticides, fertilizers and misguided public policies have filled our supermarkets and dinner tables with food products at the expense of real food.

But as Pollan searches for the origins of what we eat, he also finds examples of sustainable agriculture, happy chickens and grass-fed beef to warm the heart and fill the belly of any hungry omnivore.

Hear a conversation with Michael Pollan on what’s for dinner.