"Don't Eat Anything That Doesn't Rot"

[ConcernedCanuk]

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Michael Pollan: Don't Eat Anything That Doesn't Rot

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted March 8, 2008.



Consumers are getting duped by the food industry, paying the price with their health.

Acclaimed author and journalist Michael Pollan argues that what most Americans are consuming today is not food but "edible foodlike substances." His previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, was named one of 2006's ten best books by the New York Times and the Washington Post. His latest book is called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.

/snip/

you can buy a pound of oats, organic oats, for 79 cents. There's no money in that, because it doesn't have any brand identification. It's a commodity, and the prices of commodity are constantly falling over time.

So you make money by processing it, adding value to it. So you take those oats, and you turn them into Cheerios, and then you can charge four bucks for that 79 cents -- and actually even less than that, a few pennies of oats.

/snip/
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Impatiently waiting for summer, so I can start growing my own REAL, unmodified veggies.

[Birthmark]

1. Now you tell me.

Anyone know where I can get a good price for most of a truck load of Twinkies?

[Captain Angry]

2. $20.00.

$25.00 delivered.

$50.00 if you bring a refrigerated milk tanker and a big straw.

[wtmusic]

3. No honey for me. nt

[Lasher]

5. Beat me to it. n/t

[Birthmark]

4. I can't grow things.

Seriously, I've killed plastic plants. They just fall over and die. I am the vegetable equivalent of the Grim Reaper.

[Warpy]

6. I could grow anything east of the Mississippi

and it looked like my grandmother's gift of putting a dry stick in the ground in the fall and having it bear fruit next spring.

Here in NM, I've developed a black thumb. I think it's because I just can't manage to get my watering schedule straight in this dry thin stuff we call air.

[Summer93]

7. Calories are to blame

Everything that can be bought in stores now has a rating for calories. M$M would have us believe that we are always looking for the lowest in calories in any food we purchase. In looking for the best tasting apricot preserve I found one that says on the label that it is a product of France. It has - gosh - cane sugar in it. No preservatives, no artificial sweeteners, no artificial color. Yes, it does have more calories but, the taste is far superior. I'll eat it too quickly for it to go bad. I don't worry about calories in fact, I would like to gain a few pounds.

When I look at those things we used to call tv dinners I read a lot of ingredients that I would not choose to eat. I'll make my own tv dinners for those days when I am feeling lazy.

[Quantess]

8. Hi. I haven't read it.

Don't eat anything that doesn't rot. At first glance I wondered if it was a swipe at irradiated fruits/vegetables.?

[GoneOffShore]

9. Good advice from Pollan

He's one of my top author's and commentators on food today - along with Tony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

[LynzM]

10. Good concept.

I'll admit, I haven't read his book or even gotten all the way through the article yet. But if a food has enough preservatives in it that it doesn't go bad? I don't want those chemicals in my body, thanks.