Michael Pollan

According to a recent article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, “There’s a case for dirtying up your diet” in order to increase your exposure to bacteria. Really? More germs, not fewer? Yes! More germs, please, according to the article, “Some of My Best Friends Are Germs.” 

When Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, hit bookshelves in 2006, it immediately ascended to the top of the New York Times Best Seller List. Usually, a designation of this sort would prompt me to read the book as soon as possible, but something was different this time. I can’t exactly put a finger on the reason, but for some reason I wasn’t overly anxious to read the book; I think part of me feared the influence of Pollan’s perspective on food ethics as I continued to ponder my own food strategy and eating principles.

For our May book club, we are reading a book so well-known it almost needs no introduction. Still, even a contemporary classic like The Omnivore's Dilemma deserves to be revisited, especially in light of how much impact it has had in the few years since it was published. It's on the book club agenda, in fact, because Linden Hills received so many requests to read and discuss Pollan's seminal work. We will be meeting at the Linden Hills Co-op on Wednesday, May 29th from 6:30 p.m.

With all of our midwestern talk about sustainably raised land animals, thinking about the fishing industry can often draw a big fat blank. Perhaps the answer is to just eat fewer fish, don't eat those fish which are endangered, look for sustainably caught fish or possibly assume that the ocean is so vast that we could never really deplete it.

Take one look into Four Fish by Paul Greenberg and the issue becomes much more complicated and fascinating. It is one thing to think about trying to control how a herd of cows or a flock of chickens is managed. Consider the vast seas, international borders, politicians, scientists and of course, global demand. Its complicated.

It’s been a while since Food, Inc. and FRESH, and their cousins King Corn and Fast Food Nation, came on the scene – hailing from a family of films that have delved into the complexities of our modern food system, tackled the interconnected web that includes corn subsidies, industrial farming, obesity and environmental degradation, and lauded various solutions including agricultural policy reform, sustainable farming methods, community gardening, and eating, as Michael Pollan and many others have recommended, “real food.” If you’ve been jonesing for your food movie fix, you’re in luck.

With juice dripping down her arm, I heard my daughter tell her younger sister that they were eating “elf strawberries.” Indeed, it seems hardly more of a stretch to imagine that the farmers market berries were grown by elves than to think they are the same type of fruit as the gargantuan strawberries available at the supermarket in protective plastic shields. There have been times when I’ve watched my kid clutch a strawberry in her fist and eat it like one would eat an apple and I’ve shuddered. It just seems unnatural. But how are they supposed to know that a strawberry shouldn’t fill your entire palm or that a watermelon is supposed to have seeds or that all apples are not round?

The book CAFO - The Tragedy of Industrial Agricultural Factories, sits in my basement bookshelf, in a place where I'm confident my kids won't notice it. It's not that the book is gruesome; a book on the subject of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) could easily have been more bloody. And it's not that my kids don't know the difference between "happy meat" and Happy Meals. Maybe it's simply the fact that the terrific book CAFO -- all 300 gigantic, photo-filled pages of it -- shows a side of human nature that I'm still trying to protect my elementary schoolers from. A side that I, like many others, would prefer to keep in the basement -- just out of reach of children.

Author Wendell BerrySpring, glorious spring! As our farmers’ markets start to ramp up for the season, our Simple, Good, and Tasty book club pick reminds us to stay in tuned with the who, what, where, and how of our food.  Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food, by Wendell Berry, is a collection of essays about farms, farming, and eating throughout our modern history with food.

I’ve heard or read Michael Pollan’s words so many times by now, if we ever were to meet, it’d feel like catching up with a familiar acquaintance. Nevermind he has no idea who I am, and aside from his positions on food and agricultural systems I don’t really know much about the man; he has a conversational and folksy style that conveys what he says is just plain truth, and he’s saying it because he wants what’s best for us.

Although the Minnesota apple harvest begins in August, for a lot of folks apple season goes hand in hand with the changing and falling of leaves. Apples are a fantastic late summer treat, but there’s nothing like a crisp, freshly-harvested apple (or a hot apple crisp!) on a brisk autumn day.

Walk into a typical supermarket and you’ll see several shades of these sweet treats proudly taking up some serious real estate in the produce aisle. Yet this is a mere smattering of the 7,500 varieties grown around the world. According to Rebecca Wood, author of The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia, “Because every apple seed contains unique genetic material, you can plant ten seeds from a single apple and get ten different kinds of apple trees. However most of our commercial varieties lack genetic diversity.”