Michael Pollan on Food

thank you very much hello William
well hello Michael have a seat so okay
so yes um Michael has written many good
books and the one we’re going to talk
about today is is this latest one which
is I have to say it’s really superb and
it’s about the history of cooking
starting off with with cooking with fire
which turned apes into human beings so
cooking was this brilliant thing and and
moving on to cooking with water which
was another huge advance and made us
healthier happier and more numerous and
then the invention of bread he goes on
with the discovery of how we can ferment
food to make it last longer and be
better for us and taste nicer but
somewhere along the line it all went
horribly wrong and in a way that’s what
Michael’s books about this this great
two million year period with this tiny
little hundred years on the end when we
went from good cooking to over cooking
over cooking yeah so with that is that
basically how you dice it right in glass
yeah I mean it’s a it’s a complicated
book and there’s a you know I mean I
like books that don’t have just one line
and one argument and and it has a couple
arguments that are layered and one of
them is trying to answer this question
most of the history as you suggest of
cooking has been taking the stuff of
nature plants and animals mostly and
processing them in some ways that they
actually
become much more nutritious much more
flavorful much easier to digest and it’s
this kind of glorious process obviously
discovered but through trial and error
and one of the questions I had is well
then what happened how is it now that
processed food is such a problem for
people and we’re making foods that we’ve
actually done this amazing thing if you
think about the history of civilizations
or species which is we figured out a way
to create a diet that reliably makes
people sick and this is quite an
achievement for a civilization and so I
was looking for that turning point and I
decided that you could pin it to the
moment where we learned how and this
happens in this country by the way to
make really white flour the invention of
the roller mills where you take the
grass seed which is what most most grain
is and for the first time we can
completely remove the germ and the bran
and extract the the endosperm which is
the pure starch so basically you’re
getting rid of everything that’s good
yeah in order to make something which is
sort of dead and therefore much easier
to transport to store you can put it in
a packet and it’s going to last for ages
yeah there were industrial reasons to do
it without question because that’s the
part of flour that doesn’t go bad its
shelf stable and you had an industry
where you needed a mill in every city in
every town because flour had to be fresh
because what had the germ has a lot of
the germ can go rancid precisely because
it’s so healthy it has omega-3 fatty
acids which go bad when they’re oxidized
and so you you couldn’t centralize this
industry but once you have white flour
one mill can take care of a whole
country and and indeed that led to an
enormous consolidation but make no
mistake we wanted white flour people
wanted it I mean we are we are sugar
obsessed and we always have been well I
guess we come from
I mean originally two million years ago
calories were incredibly hard to get and
so we we adapted and our whole whole
bodies adapted to these creatures that
were desperate to go out and get as as
calorie dense food as we as we could
which is sugar and fat which is sugar
and fat and of course now when there’s a
huge abundance of all this stuff we
still go out and and seek it out and eat
as much of it as possible and and and so
it was basically this point that you’re
saying when everything turned and a
couple other things out I mean we wanted
white flour because it was satisfying it
was sweeter it you know flour turns to
starch turns to glucose as soon as you
start put it on your tongue with a
little saliva it begins turning into
sugar and but also whole-grain bread had
certain problems before you had really
good milling it wore down people’s teeth
it was so hard and so you and it became
very prestigious as it was in Asia by
the way to have white rice the whiter
the food the purer it was so we we like
this also and the way you got white
flour before this amazing invention of
the roller mills was you sifted it you
you ground it whole on a stone and you
sifted it over and over again to get rid
of the biggest chunky as bits of bran
but that kind of white flour which only
the rich could afford for the most part
still had lots of good nutrients in it
because you’d smush the germ and around
and you couldn’t get rid of it but when
you could yeah when you could refine it
it was this amazing moment of it’s where
the industrial logic comes up against
the biological logic which is in a way
the story of Agriculture to where these
two things are constantly fighting and
the industrial logic loves refined white
flour because you can take the bran and
the germ and sell them to somebody else
and so this became very important you
basically sold people this nutritionally
almost worthless white flour
then you took the germ and you sold it
to the pharmaceutical industry where
they created vitamins to sell back to
the people who had deficiencies because
of white flour it’s a great business
model so we’ve got we’ve got this the
the terrible moment and I want to ask
Michael in a bit what happened after the
terrible moment because what we’re
seeing it now every day we’re seeing
that the results of the terrible moment
but I want to go back a little bit in
fact I want to go about 1.9 million
years to the moment that cooking first
happened because this in in Michael’s
book is is an incredible story and what
he explains is that 1.9 million years
ago we were Apes or we were things that
um we had hands on the end of our arms
and on the end of our feet lived in
trees were covered with fur and and so
were definitely more like chimps than
people and yet these these chimp like
creatures which were known as Homo
habilis domestic man I suppose somehow
learn to cook or learn to control fire
and that was the start of absolutely
everything yeah this was a this was a
really key moment in our evolution the
theory and it is a theory called the
cooking hypothesis was developed by put
forward by a Harvard primatologist an
anthropologist named Richard Wrangham
who wrote a wonderful book called
Catching Fire and he’s trying to answer
a riddle that has perplexed
anthropologists and archaeologists for a
very long time which is at a certain
moment we depart from the apes and our
brains get much bigger and more complex
and at around the same time our
digestive apparatus our gut get much
smaller and so what caused this because
this is a really momentous change and
you know some people thought it was
meat-eating you know once we started
hunting we learn
how to hunt we had this new supply of
calories but in fact if you’re eating
meat raw you don’t get that much
nutritional value from it and also your
jaw doesn’t usually you need it ah no
yes like chimp like jaw and so if you’re
not cooking Wrangham discovered you have
to chew about how much half yet the Apes
are sized spend half their waking hours
about 6 hours a day in the act of
chewing it’s no wonder they don’t get
much done you can’t there’s a lot you
can’t do if you’re spending your whole
life chewing including hunting and
chimps who actually like meat and know
how to hunt don’t have enough time to
make it an important part of their diet
they only have about 18 minutes a day to
hunt so when and if you’ve ever hunted
you know it takes more time than that so
but when we discovered how to use fire
to cook meat and other foods amazing
things happen because when you cook food
it’s much easier to digest you don’t
have to use as much metabolic energy to
break it down because basically you’re
taking some of the digestion and
externalizing it it’s happening outside
of your body the food is also detoxified
in various ways it’s sanitized by the
process and in many cases things you
can’t eat raw like certain tubers
cassava and potato suddenly we can eat
because you can cook them so we get this
incredible boon of calories that other
animals don’t have it gives us an
enormous competitive edge and this
according to ram’s theory is what allows
the human brain to grow and the gut to
shrink
although the gut now is going the other
way but for a long time and shrank and
and this step but it has other effects
too it has social effects so you’re
sitting around it you’re sitting around
a fire cooking and and of course what
becomes adaptive in an evolutionary
sense is a sociability and when it
becomes necessary because you know
certainly not around the fire
you know going to get you meal yes and
it takes cooperation of course to cook
over a fire the hunter-gatherer could
eat on his or her own wherever whenever
the mood struck but as soon as you’re
cooking it’s cooperative someone’s got
to keep the fire going which is a big
deal while someone else gathers the food
or prepares the food and then you have
to delay gratification you have to make
this bet that if I wait patiently with
these other people no one’s going to
steal the food because they’re really
hungry so suddenly you need rules and
rules surround meat-eating forever I
mean they become a very important part
cooperation in language probably and
yeah I mean all this follows
that’s right apparent apparently they
sang at first didn’t have words but sang
sort of about that about the food and
all sorts of things like that and of
course if you’re if you’re no longer
foraging for six hours and chewing for
six hours you have a bit of time to
think and what are you going to think
about you’re going to think about you
know those bison and and this how we can
get this spear and how we can head them
off at the pass
and all that sort of stuff so you become
calculating and your brain grows and you
have the calories to to fill it with the
glucose it needs to grow so so but for
this first moment of the meat falling on
the fire and somebody an ape tasting it
and that must have happened it must have
been an hour we don’t know exactly
well if you go to forest fires now
you’ll see animals scavenging and what
they go for are cooked cooked nuts and
you know half toasted rats and
experiments have shown that animals who
don’t cook like rats and things like
that prefer cooked tofu because it’s
it’s more calorific it’s easier to
digest and they don’t have to spend all
the time chewing it they can do rat like
cunning things
aside from aside from the constant
struggle because as Wrangham says it’s a
constant struggle as an ape as a chimp
to make a living as he puts it you know
in order to find enough and he actually
followed them around all day and tried
to eat what they were foraging for and
he said that it was kind of like little
goods and and the horrible done leathery
things and and and and that’s why they
have to chew them because the
low-hanging fruits all gone most of what
they have is it’s kind of like leaves
and bits of you know basically yucky
stuff what they don’t feel that they
well they after they spend ages chewing
it and it doesn’t you know now this
raises a question though if you if you
eat raw food right I mean we do have raw
foodists and Wrangham deals with that
too and the fact is that people who eat
all raw food diet have trouble getting
enough nutrition and half of the women
on a raw food diet stop menstruating
suggesting they’re not getting quite
enough energy and if you know people on
a raw food diet you’ll notice something
very important about them there’s one
appliance they cannot live without and
that’s the Vitamix or the blender
because otherwise they would be doing
all that chewing it’s the only way to
process so much vegetable matter so
cooking stops you chewing and that’s the
first thing it stops in are completely
luckily but if you look if you look at
our teeth I mean they’re not so good are
they compared with the teeth of I mean
if you look at an ape at the skull of an
ape it’s a magnificent thing with huge
strong teeth and they’re kind of really
prominent it’s like I missed a teeth
here whereas we are teeth are kind of
like you know that they’re they’re tiny
and shrunken and and and we can just
about nip off the end of a Twix or
something or a Mars bar
but you know trying to trying to chew so
in a way so that makes us look like we
are that made us look human and as you
say it well the fire also allowed us to
shed our fur oh there’s a very another
way
we could when we could stay warm we did
not need fur and that gave us a huge
advantage because then we could start
running for great amounts of time and
use animals with fur can only run for
short bursts because it’s hot when we
were talking about this before you think
well what about the cheetah you know
that’s got fur not bad at running but
the truth is the cheetah can only do it
for like two minutes and then it just
overheats and it has to it has to rest
and what we could do is when you don’t
have fur you have a choice right you can
be like closed if it’s cold or unclothed
you know you can and so therefore your
your stamina level can be you can vary
how much stamina you’ve got because you
don’t need to overheat anymore you can
just cover yourself up
and walk for miles in the cold when it
gets hot you can discard your clothes
and still carry on you know hunting
those beasts who have to stop every so
often if it’s hot so it gives us that
slight advantage let’s let’s jump
forward okay and we’re not gonna we’re
not on verse 18 we’re not getting to the
factories yet though because no no no
but while you’re talking about teeth
earlier and teeth were still very
important though until you begin cooking
in pots and boiling and this this
doesn’t happen till ten thousand years
ago so we’re jumping from one point nine
million to ten thousand nothing happens
in between and but before then you
needed teeth to still to to what you
were cooking and this was a real problem
for very old people or very young people
and once you have pots Earth’s or pots a
development that doesn’t come up till
around the time of the birth of
Agriculture and the two things are
closely related then you can boil water
or other liquids and soften grain which
you really need to be able to do if
you’re going to have agriculture and you
can mix flavors plants and meat together
you don’t lose all the nutrients that
you lose on a fire you know think about
what drips into the fire
now you’re collecting that and create
this wonderful new thing called sauce
and and you can keep old people alive
much longer so the human lifespan
actually attenuates after you have the
ability to boil and that’s that’s the
second big step and as you say boiling
food in earthenware pots is the
beginning of cuisine right because
thousands ago yeah because if you think
about it food cooked over fire you know
there’s wonderful traditions in this
country about the joint over the fire or
barbecue in America which I write a lot
about in the book or Argentine barbecue
and but they’re hard to tell apart with
your eyes closed I don’t know that you
could tell where you were in the world
its meat cooked over a fire slow fast
whatever but as soon as you’re cooking
in pots you you have these aromatic
vegetables that become the basis of your
cuisine and so if you’re in France you
might have onions and carrots and celery
and if you’re in Italy you might flop
one of those out for tomato or garlic in
Spain peppers and so suddenly there’s
the the cultural signature of the the
flavors that are available they are the
plants that grow there easily and you
have these flavor principles that become
the basis of cuisine and now you can
tell where you are around the world with
any dish and and so that’s it that’s a
big advance too and and the pot starts
off with porridge that’s the first thing
isn’t it because you’ve got grains and
as you say that you can’t really you can
put them on a fire but you know that
there’s a limit to hosting grain it’s
not great but but so you have to have
something to put them in and and that
that it is a huge thing because then
this makes the sowing of grains and the
reaping of grains and the storing of
stuff you know you’ve suddenly got a
store of stuff that lasts for a while
which is the very beginning of money I
guess
it’s um it’s it’s something that you can
you can swap for all you know everybody
wants grains
everybody wants porridge and when all
your food is perishable it’s very hard
to accumulate wealth and so grains last
a little bit you know they’re whole
grains they don’t last forever they last
years but they last years and so you can
you can swap them for almost anything
for Spears for instance so so the
cooking pot is is the is the start of
something huge isn’t it
it’s um and it’s very cool very closely
connected to agriculture we don’t know
what came first whether it was the cook
pot or farming but these two things
really depend on one another because
agriculture depends on growing grain
grain is not really edible without the
ability to grind it and soften it and
add water to it and also you point out
that as we’ve gone on through the years
we’ve wanted to in some way a face or
hide from the stuff were doing and the
pot encloses it and it’s it’s it’s
something you know who knows what’s in
the pot you know when you’ve got a pig
on a fire you don’t go who knows what’s
there you know because it’s a pig on a
fire and there’s something brutal about
that that you can’t get away from
whereas when it’s in a pot you know
we’ve got bits of pig and bits of this
and that and it all mushed up and it’s a
cuisine and you don’t have to know and
and that’s the very start of what we now
see in the supermarket when we have a
sort of plastic package with a little
window and just a color of something and
you would and you could easily forget
that it’s a piece of an animal a muscle
M&M yeah well you want to forget yeah
that’s right and and and and and this
wanting to forget which is also the
start of civilization is kind of tragic
you know it’s true though when when you
see an entire animal like with its head
and stuff and fish fish eyes you know
and all that stuff you slightly recoil
and because you’re so used to the idea
of having it packaged and here
Michael makes the point that across the
world the most successful living thing
which covers two-thirds of the the earth
services grass and and really extracting
calories from grass it’s what people do
low on the food chain and wouldn’t it be
great if we could do that ourselves
because this opens up an enormous store
of calories an enormous possibility and
and that’s what bread is yeah well you
know I mean ruminants can take
nourishment from grass grasses the great
solar collector right you have
grasslands that extend over a tremendous
amount of the Earth’s surface and
they’re collecting solar energy and life
in the end is a battle for energy for
the energy of the Sun but we can’t
digest grass we don’t have a rumen we
don’t have that wonderful apparatus a
cow has but we have big bigger brains
than account and so we kind of figured
out how to do it and that really was
bread which happens about 6,000 years
ago probably in Egypt probably again by
accident but if you when I really began
to understand this when a scientist
named Bruce German at UC Davis said to
me we were talking about bread and
cheese and things like that
and he said well you know you could not
survive on a sack of flour and water if
I gave you all the flour you wanted he
even whole-grain but you could survive
on the bread made from same-same
ingredients I thought that was kind of
amazing why is that and he explained
that that the sourdough culture
basically flour let’s let’s talk about
wheat for sac fly wheat flour is mushed
up grassy seeds are amazing things seeds
contain everything you need to create a
new life right a new planet okay fat
carbohydrate protein and all the
minerals you need it’s all there but
it’s locked up really tight in
these long chains or polymers because
the plant wants to protect it from
animals like us they want to the plant
wants to save it for the next generation
of plants but the sourdough culture that
you use to ferment your your bread all
those bacteria and fungi are putting out
enzymes that are breaking down those
long chains into shorter amino acids and
and sugar simpler sugars and they’re
also making the all the minerals much
more accessible and then when you bake
it something even more miraculous
happens whereas that porridge in the pot
can never get hotter than the boiling
point by definition right in inside a
loaf of bread a loaf of bread is a
pressure cooker and you have these
pockets of air and there they fill with
steam and steam can get much hotter than
boiling water three four hundred degrees
so it thoroughly cooks the starch and
makes that delicious and digestible and
much more nutritious so you see a bread
is is an ingenious technology for
rendering grass seeds nutritious
digestible and delicious and that’s why
bread could be essentially the staple of
the diet in in in Europe for a thousand
years I mean more than half the calories
in the diet of your ancestors was was
bread but and this is this is where I’ve
got to say but but bread was the
downfall and and it was making bread
better for the person who made the bread
that then it was for the person who ate
the bread that that was the that was the
big problem and it was getting away from
the big old stones that grind the seeds
to to the steel mills and you write that
this really interesting and sequence in
which you go to two types of bread
making and you go to you go to an
artisan baker who is this guy who makes
a small number of loaves
in the old style and then you go to a
Mills as on flour honest any Mills it he
did he does everything like like it was
done hundreds of years ago but you also
go to these enormous factories where
they which is what I go to the Wonder
Bread factory which you guys know have
Wonder Bread it’s um it’s actually well
I’ll tell you what happened to wonder
bird in a second but this is a bakery a
very high-tech bakery where they make a
hundred and fifty five thousand loaves a
day none ever touched by human hands and
it’s an amazing technology in giant
sacks of flour but also sacks of dough
conditioners of thirty ingredients in
this bread and I was there the day they
were making their version of whole grain
which is basically they’ll take fiber
from anything and throw it in bread
there’s wood you know there’s cellulose
there’s you know anything in Ulan roots
um chicory just loaded up and it’s
chemically intensive it has and it huge
amounts of yeast eleven this bread 10%
yeast by volume which is a shocking
amount of yeast and it just kind of runs
along a track and it’s leavened in in
just a couple hours they use so much
yeast they get this big coughs eo2 and
there you go and then it’s automatically
packaged and it goes out into the world
and so I spent a day there and then the
next day with this Baker Dave Miller and
they were I know it’s like perfect man
but the interesting thing is you would
guess that Dave Miller is the past
he makes four hundred loaves a week and
he sells them at the farmers market and
Wonder Bread is the future yet here we
are a year later two years later and
Wonder Bread is bankrupt and Dave Miller
is doing just fine and I think that
that’s really curious and that is
curious you are so optimistic and you’re
so jar and we
but but it read his book honestly he’s
very chirpy in person and then you read
all this stuff and the thing that got me
worried was that Michael was saying all
of these factories are designed to make
the unhealthy bread and they’re these
huge factories in there all over the
place and because there’s a sort of a
marketing reason to make to make
whole-grain bread they don’t sort of
really make it properly as you say they
just have to use that the the machines
that make the bad bread to sort of try
and pretend to make the good bread it
doesn’t quite work so it needs to be a
look at the health claims aren’t they
want to put on and then they chuck the
vitamins in that they’ve extruded from
the grain they’ve got rid of and blah
blah and they’ve got this loaf and as
you say it’s it’s got gritty bits in it
and it’s not real and and all of that
and they can just about pack it and
store it and market it and put it in
warehouses for a while but in order to
get the whole system back to what you’d
like it to be you’d have to knock down
all those factories wouldn’t you because
they’re just going to make the the bad
good bread and pretend it’s good yeah
those people those factories are
designed like the mills for white flour
we now have a white flour economy and
around the edges we’re trying to make
some brown bread and because we all
understand that whole-grain is very
important to our health in a lot of ways
people who eat lots of whole-grain have
much less chronic disease live longer
and for reasons we don’t entirely
understand and it isn’t just the
nutrients that we’ve recognized in
whole-grain there’s a lot of very
beneficial things about whole-grain but
I say at one point to really make a
great whole-grain bread today you you
you don’t just need a good sack of flour
you need a whole new civilization I mean
we heard we’re organized around white
flour
see and you’re saying you’re not
pessimistic but I mean what each of us
individually can make a great
whole-grain bread and one of one of my
quests in this book
I mean something that we haven’t been
talking about but in each of the
sections each of these historical steps
I’m actually cooking and learning how to
cook and learning how to make either
traditional or newer kinds of food and
and I worked very hard to make a good
loaf of white bread and then work much
much harder to make a delicious loaf of
whole grain bread and and you realize
it’s a culture that’s been lost we’ve
all had that experience of really nasty
whole-grain bread and you know these
virtuous bricks that we got good at in
60s but in fact there is a culture that
knows how to make them and and it’s
coming back there’s a wonderful revival
actually there’s some very good bread
outside when you leave here you should
try some did anyone get any of the food
before you came in really good food um
so continuing along this pessimistic
line we will I’m going to get back to
stuff that’s really wonderful but to
move a little bit more along this
pessimistic line you say that we are
cooking less and less as time goes on
and in 1960 I think you say 61 for some
reason 1961 Americans cooked an hour a
day was it
yeah the 65 rates of home cooking have
fallen in the United States and from
what I can learn it’s true here too
they’ve fallen by half since the mid 60s
we’re spending 27 minutes a day in
America cooking on average and four
minutes cleaning up now that makes you
wonder doesn’t it about the cooking if
you can clean it up in four minutes
you’re probably like crumpling a pizza
box and scraping some plates but I don’t
know that you’re actually getting in
there with a pot and though and this is
this is concerning
okay this I’ll be dark for a moment and
I think this is very concerning I think
that cooking as we’ve discussed is is
central to the to our identity as a
species central to our social lives and
to give this up is we should think long
and hard before we do it and and as you
said to me yesterday
something happened in the 60s which
enabled this process of dropping the
cooking to happen and that was the the
the tremendous as you say conversation
going on between men and women which was
who’s going to do the cooking now that
we’re both working and and as you say
that argument never quite happened
because corporations stepped in and said
well we’ll do it well it was never
concluded that’s right I mean industry
has been trying to insinuate itself into
our kitchens into our families for a
very long time and you go back and you
find a hundred years of like knocking on
the door with various processed foods
because that’s how you make money in the
food industry it’s very hard to make
money selling simple foods fruits
vegetables even flour you make much more
money selling things that have been
processed the more you process it the
more profitable it is so going back to
Betty Crocker you know almost a hundred
years she is selling various processed
she’s kind of this faux housewife she
doesn’t actually exist but she’s used to
sell all these products to ease the work
in the kitchen but there was a lot of
resistance to processed food until the
60s and 70s and that is when you have
this what william described this really
awkward conversation between men and
women it became necessary to renegotiate
the division of labor in the house
because women were working and it simply
wasn’t tenable for them also to be doing
all the housework but it wasn’t a happy
conversation there was an enormous
tension around it and and this was a
moment that the industry seized as an
opportunity and what they started doing
was selling their food as a solution to
this problem and in America Kentucky
Fried Chicken took out these billboards
all across the country in the 70s with
the giant bucket of fried chicken with
two words slogan overhead women’s
liberation and so they relieved men and
women of having to work this out
and and many people left at that
solution to the problem but as often
happens and it was a solution that it
did relieve women of having to cook and
Men of having to do anything around the
house and except grill and but there was
a cost and we’re learning it’s a very
high cost because the the decline in
home cooking very closely tracks the
rise in obesity and type 2 diabetes and
the two things are closely connected and
in fact I recently interviewed this this
french guy jean michel and he was
telling me you could actually look at
country-by-country that the French cook
more than we do and they’re slimmer and
healthier and we cook a little bit more
than you lot do and were slimmer and
healthier than you I mean it doesn’t
look like it it I can see there’s a but
but I now can’t yet you’re right culture
by culture you bet you cook a lot sir
and look how Phineas but this guy was
saying and what you have to do I went to
his accent you saying what you have to
do to lose weight is cook more cook more
um which which I thought was you know it
sounded odd but it’s so true so true and
I got back to England and switched on
the television and there was this I
can’t remember some kind of creature
maybe on an ad and the creature was
saying don’t cook just eat and and it
was then there was a number to call or
or something and somehow food would come
to your house and you’d pay you have a
paypal thing and they all you have to do
is just touch a button and food comes
and that that’s the idea and the thing
is once you’re used to that and I began
I was thinking you you say it’s down to
27 minutes in the States the cooking
per day well let’s say got to 15 they’ve
come a point when you wouldn’t want a
kitchen
they’d come a point when somebody would
you’d go and buy a flat or something and
there wouldn’t be a kitchen that here’s
the bathroom here’s the room where you
here’s the hatch where the fast-food guy
comes well you know houses used to have
sewing rooms right those are gone and we
could you know we could arrive so it
says it’s so there is a there is a
pathway towards not cooking at all and
and a lot of people maybe you I don’t
know people in cities there you know in
their flats they don’t often use some a
lot of people don’t often use you know
it they’ll they’ll nip out they’ll have
that experience that you see on those
those ads where they’re on the train or
on the on the bus and they’ve forgotten
breakfast and a man rushes up to them
and says don’t worry you can have these
sweets these breakfast biscuits which
it’s the same as cereal like like that’s
good you know it’s the same as cereal
they’re breakfast biscuits and they’ve
got everything in there including milk
powder I think to mimic the actual
Frosty’s you might have had if you’d had
if you’d only had the time to which
itself is of course mimicking the
oatmeal or right I mean cereal was the
first big processed food and that
replaced taking grain and boiling with
some water which was incredibly
Herculean labor apparently and but now
we got it down to just pouring a little
milk over it and then we’ve gone to the
next step and you’re right and we’ll
keep going if I’m still in the middle
stage Ready Brek right which is which is
what is that you pour the anyway they
just pour stuff on in it’s just yeah one
minute
but everything’s a new market I mean if
the food industry could figure out a way
to reach down your throat and digest
your food profitably
they would do it so that’s that’s one
that’s one future that we might see we
might foresee we’re sitting here and
thinking
can we foresee this yes we can this
terrible time when the healthy you know
my god I’ve had a bowl of Frosty’s out
congratulations son that’s you know
brilliant and that’s like the healthiest
thing you’d have I actually made it and
but there is another possible future
which which you which you and you say we
can fight back against this and there
are pockets of people all over the place
apparently doing this the people making
the proper bread the people
rediscovering how to cook rather than
watching it on telly and as you point
out again the less you cook the more you
watch it on telly with your microwave
meal and you and you’re watching people
cook because that somewhere deep within
you is the species memory of watching
people cook and how wonderful that is or
your personal memory from your own
childhood well your personal any
favourite you know watching these these
incredible Alchemy’s take place I
remember watching first time that my
mother showed me how to scramble an egg
and you take this kind of disgusting
yellow goop and mix it up and then you
put it in a pan and it just magically
turns into these delicious golden
nuggets and we all you know we all have
memories like that and and that’s why I
think we don’t want to let it go the
fact that we obsess about food we have
this we go to restaurants where you can
watch the food be cooked it’s no longer
hidden behind the door we we watch
cooking shows on television it just
tells me that there’s something we miss
about cooking there’s something deep and
important that that people will
reconnect with are beginning to
reconnect with that that’s why I’m
optimistic and one of the one of the
analogies I often think about is is
think what we did to modern birth and
the entire earring back in the 50s you
know I was born in a hospital and I was
bottle-fed and that was the progressive
thing that middle-class people did at
that point we had professionalized
childbirth
we had professionalized feeding I mean
you know drinking milk from a breast was
you know primitive and and we an
industry could do better and and the
industry had insinuated itself into that
process and as a culture we turned back
from that we realized that was a mistake
and we had the rise of you know the
return of breastfeeding we had the
return you know midwives and and we D
medicalised birth to a certain extent
and so that sometimes we try these
experiments and one of the reasons we
turn back is formula-fed babies didn’t
do as well because we weren’t as good as
we thought we were at simulating this
miracle food we still don’t understand
breast milk actually and so that gives
me hope that sometimes as a society we
try something and we discover it doesn’t
work and we turn away from it and that’s
I think true of outsourcing our cooking
to the extent we are it’s making us sick
and fat and and so I’m hoping I’m that
that gives me some hope plus the fact
that you know people are finding
enormous pleasure in all sorts of DIY
pursuits well I was I was going to bring
up this thing because Michael writes
about the the this kind of again and
little pockets of artisans and so on and
it’s it’s not just baking but it’s also
fermentation love of food which is
something we’ve lost and fermented food
is full of bacteria and we’ve sort of
try to rid our food of bacteria and
rather than that being a terribly
healthy thing to do it’s um it’s making
a seal again because we need to have not
as you say not just the upper intestinal
tract fed but the the lower as well and
and that’s what that’s what’s beginning
to happen people are beginning to fight
back making all sorts of pickled this
and that and and kind of we thought raw
milk was
a horror and that’s because it was a
vector for tuberculosis and various
other things which were then were a
horror and so we we pasteurized milk and
and while that stopped us getting TB it
also got rid of all sorts of good things
in the milk and so you went to look at
people who were deeply into fermentation
didn’t you yeah this was for me one of
the most exciting parts of the the
reporting for this book was meeting this
this whole group of people I call for
Mentos these are people obsessed with
fermentation they’re Pickler’s their
cheese makers their Brewers and Mead
makers and and they were unlike anyone I
had met before in that their attitude
toward bacteria and precision was was so
different than mine I mean I grew up in
a household where we were all foot
soldiers in the war on bacteria and we
you know my mom if a can of vegetables
dropped on the floor and got a dent
she was sure it had botulism and she
throw it out and we couldn’t pork had
trichinosis here to cook until it was
you know the way the english cooking and
we so we you know we fought bacteria and
and here were these people all of a
sudden who were pacifists in the war on
bacteria they love bacteria they
considered bacteria their friends and
they were very relaxed about sanitation
and and we’re making this beautiful
bacterial ly laden food which it turns
out is very important to our health and
of all the problems with the so-called
Western diet one of them turns out to be
not just all the refined carbohydrates
is the fact that it’s so sanitary and
that we’re not getting bacteria in our
diet which we need and the other thing
about it as you alluded to is that in
refining the food to be so readily
absorbable all these sugars and fats
that we do absorb in our small intestine
we’re not feeding the fermentation that
goes in goes on within our body and our
large intestine
I don’t know if you realize it but
you’re only 10% human you are 90%
microbes if you’re counting cells and
some of you may be less than 10% you and
I don’t know but so we’ve figured out a
way to feed the 10% with processed food
and that’s what processed food does it
feeds the 10% but it robs the 90% of wet
so you like to eat it sounds like that
like kind of Occupy Wall Street things
processed food sanitation we have
damaged ourselves and the waiter this is
the way to fight back to not worry so
much about germs in a way yeah I mean
it’s a it’s a dangerous public health
recommendation to say you shouldn’t wash
your produce anymore because you know
there’s pesticide residue now and and
and a lot of us have weakened immune
systems we keep people alive who have
very weakened immune systems who are
vulnerable to raw milk and things like
that so have to be very careful on that
recommendation but if it’s coming out of
your own garden
yeah don’t wash it so much and and it
turns out it’s very important to expose
our children to bacteria in their play
and and it’s really good to have pets
and it’s really good for them to play in
the dirt and it’s actually very
important for pregnant women to be
somewhat exposed to animals and bacteria
people who grow up on farms you know
don’t have allergies or eczema or
autoimmune disease at nearly the same
rates we do because of this heavily it’s
called microbial pressure and we don’t
have enough microbial pressure in our
lot and this is the reason for things
like peanut allergies and so on it may
be it may be that basically bacteria in
the diet and in the environment train
your immune system at certain windows of
development and and the immune system
needs to learn who is friend and who is
foe and the modern industrialized
person’s immune system is very confused
on this point kind of racist isn’t it’s
like it’s like no immigration they’re
also their offer yeah but in fact a lot
of them are actually friends like
the proteins and peanuts suddenly the
body attacks it or possibly gluten and
this may explain some of the problems
people have with gluten and so that this
everyday engagement with lots of
bacteria in the body and around the body
is really what what may we may and I
have to say this is provisional this is
these are theories that haven’t been
completely proven but there’s a lot of
epidemiological evidence that that this
is an important key to health this
exposure to bacteria and there’s a great
moment when when you’re deep into bread
deep into the culture of bread and then
the kind of the kind of microbial
activity going on when you say you get a
kind of Eureka moment which is kind of
like well what we’ve got to work with
them
yeah not against them they’re not our
enemies we will control them that’s the
key you’re working with other living
species when you bake bread I’m talking
about using a sourdough culture not just
yeast and when you’re when you’re
pickling when you’re making cheese it
actually you have to learn a new
attitude toward nature and and the model
I had for it that was very useful is
gardening it’s a lot like gardening
because they are – you have these other
species that will not do everything you
want them to do I don’t talking about
the plants you’re trying to grow and I’m
talking about the pests who are trying
to eat the plants you’re trying to grow
and you have to figure out a very
flexible way the green thumb is not a
power-mad person the green thumb has a
somewhat relaxed attitude and
understands that about 10% of his or her
crop is going to go to the past probably
and that you guide these species rather
than govern them you can’t really govern
them and and so one of the amazing
things about cooking that excited me the
most about learning it is it engages you
with nature you have to learn how to get
along with nature because that’s what do
you cook you cook these other species
and very often you use still other
species to do it and that is it can be
incredibly frustrating at times but also
incredibly rewarding it’s like the
history of the British Empire it’s and
you start off with a cudgel and then you
end up with persuasion and and then
slinking away but I feel that that that
last bit
that covered a lot of history tonight
that last bits not quite right um so so
I guess right now before before we go to
questions suppose the one question I’ve
got to ask you is be honest I how
optimistic are you that we can turn this
around and and stop the the sort of the
juggernaut of bad food and unhealthy
food culture is it what’s that what’s
the chance we can do that well it’s it’s
going to be very challenging there is
enormous amount of pressure to keep
going down this path you know including
in our country thirty two billion
dollars a year of marketing money and
muscle spent to get people to eat this
way but I think that the price is
becoming more and more clear to more and
more people and more governments as well
one of the reasons that in New York
Mayor Bloomberg has become such a you
know fanatic on the subject of soda and
and trying to tax it and regulate the
size of the of the containers which he’s
gotten an awful amount of grief for is
that you know he came into office and
somebody told him that well New York
City has a big public hospital system
and it costs you four hundred
twenty-five thousand dollars for every
new case of type 2 diabetes and he said
well how do we reduce type 2 diabetes
and they said well reduce soda
consumption and that’s what he’s trying
to do so you see it’s becoming in the
interests of powerful people to attempt
to change these norms but it’s not easy
to do because the industry is very
influential and our desires are for
sweet things but stepping back a little
further I mean the way I see what’s
happening is that for several decades
going back really post-world War two
we’ve had this great cultural forgetting
of what food is about what food can do
for us about all it’s it’s almost
sacramental meaning in our social life
and our engagement with nature and there
is a remembering now going on I mean
what we think of as the food movement
and what may look very trivial as foodie
ISM and and you know the fetishization
of food that’s going on I see these as
kind of pretty harmless excesses in this
process of recalling ourselves to
everything food is everything food can
give us health community this wonderful
engagement with nature and so that gives
me hope I mean we have a food movement
in America that’s rising and getting
strong and and and the most the most
quickly growing sectors of the food
marketplace our local food organic food
and and I see it wherever I go I see it
here too and you in chefs are playing a
very important role in telling people a
story about their food and where it
comes from and why those stories matter
so you know we’re at the beginning of
something big I hope I hope I can’t I
can’t guarantee that optimism is a
matter of temperament as much as
evidence very often so sorry I’m losing
my thing so anyway I uh many things are
happening that fill me with hope but
it’s going to be a fight it’s really
going to be a fight
and we’re up against a powerful powerful
adversary um hello um really enjoyed it
thank you I’ve read all your books not
long ago I was having quite a heated
discussion with somebody who works for
the Bill Gates Foundation this is
another topic and he is adamant that GMO
is the only way to go in parts of Africa
to avoid starvation etc so while we’re
having this heated debate I said well
what do you think Michael Pollan things
and he said to me that apparently you
have seen what’s going on with the Bill
Gates Foundation and what they’re trying
to do but he wouldn’t come down one way
or the other and what you actually
thought about the whole GMO question as
you would expect from someone who comes
at things with a very strong bias toward
technological solutions to problems
Gates has been very sympathetic to GM
and you know there is there is a school
of thought that argues that this is how
we’re going to solve our problems we’ll
come up with seeds that will be so
productive and that they will allow us
to increase the yield of our agriculture
and feed the world I have a problem with
that on many different levels first I
don’t think GM is fundamentally an evil
technology and I don’t see yet lots of
evidence it’s dangerous for our health
but I nevertheless think it is a there’s
very little evidence to suggest it can
do what it has been promised to do
I’ve been following GM since 1998 or 99
shortly after it was introduced
I got a GM crop actually some GM
potatoes grew them in my garden to see
it was all about and so I’m a I’m a
grower and and started looking closely
at what this technology offered I think
a lot of people would be surprised to
learn that GM has not increased yields
in any significant way at all only in a
couple crops only under very specific
circumstances do you get any more food
with GM technology we have two GM
technologies one is Roundup Ready these
are these are crops where you can spray
endless amounts of herbicide roundup and
it doesn’t kill the crop so it makes
weed control easy and then we have BT
crops that these are crops engineered to
exude a pesticide in every part of the
plant a relatively benign pesticide and
based on a bacterial toxin what these
crops do so far is help the largest
industrial farmers get bigger still
there are convenience for farmers they
don’t increase you
but what they meet what it means is if
you were growing 500 acres of corn and
soybean right now in Iowa you can grow a
thousand even if your other field is 50
miles away because you’re not going to
have to be there and be alert to an
outbreak of European corn borer or or
weeds because it’s just convenient so
the technology has been developed to
make industrial farmers more efficient
it offers nothing to consumers and it
offers nothing to small holder farmers
such as you find in Africa could it
conceivably yeah possibly but that’s not
what they do that’s not what they’re
working on that’s not where the money is
to a large extent Monsanto uses Africa
as an example to make us eat our GM Peas
I mean basically they’re they’re telling
us that if we don’t get behind this
technology people are going to starve if
we saw a big public breeding program to
to adapt GM to solve real problems that
real people have I think and and then it
actually fed people who weren’t eating I
think we could I think we’d have to
morally get behind it if the cost were
not you know too high but there’s
nothing there’s no evidence that that’s
happening it’s all being sold on a
promise and you know you have to it’s a
pig in a poke as we say you you you know
show me show me what you’ve got that’s
actually going to relieve a problem we
hear a lot about drought tolerant for
crops
okay that’s a big focus of research that
I think Gates is supporting that sounds
really good we’re going to have a lot of
drought in the future with climate
change but if you look at it if you have
a drought-tolerant corn that plant does
very poorly in wet years you lose yield
in wet years
it’s a brittle technology designed for a
very specific set of circumstances that
you can’t count on because the the point
of climate change is going to be
variability not continual drought
whereas if you have a healthy soil with
lots of organic matter those plants
withstand drought even better and they
do well in a wet year organic
like cornfields outperform conventional
ones in drought years because the soil
holds so much water there is a very
resilient technology that doesn’t have
any intellectual property so nobody’s
interested in it so I’m very skeptical
of GM I don’t I think we make a mistake
putting all our eggs in that basket I
think that there are other more context
contests tonk context based solutions to
these problems but I’m not willing to
rule it out and I don’t think we should
rule it out I just think we should get
them to put up or shut up as we say and
instead of scaring us into giving them
carte blanche and so that’s kind of I
mean that’s a long answer to your
question but I’m an American living in
London for three years and I discovered
food Inc a couple years ago which is why
I became interested in this whole debate
such as normal consumer it’s passionate
about it and seeing all the the bills
and the things that are happening in
America makes me really really
frustrated this recent bill that and
basically GM companies can’t be held
liable for any health ramifications and
that sort of thing that that’s happening
and Monsanto executives being appointed
to FDA and important organizations and
it’s frustrating because I feel like I’m
helpless and in this fight so I know you
say you’re hopeful which is great and I
do see all of these things and I myself
and try to educate myself about what’s
going on what frustrates me is the
ignorance and they want to remain
ignorant by all of my friends because I
feel like there’s this feeling that if
they don’t ask the questions and they
don’t have to do anything and know that
there’s something going wrong so my
question to you is from from where you
set and knowing so much more about it
than the normal person what can i as a
normal person do to affect this change
and to help this move towards the
hopeful and the change towards the
better rather than feeding into what
industry wants and and what lines our
pockets
well I think there are two there are two
places where we can act I mean one is in
our personal lives
I don’t minimize the importance of
voting with your fork for kinds of food
you want to see in the kind of
agriculture you want to see and if you
look back over the
last ten or twenty years consumer is
voting with their Forks for organic
agriculture for local agriculture has
had a profound effect it has created a
market that did not exist without any
help from governments at all so the
consumer side of this movement is not
trivial and and it is noticed by the
government and it is noticed by the
industry and it is I think we have a
chance to build an alternative food
economy that will be a counterweight and
and and we all can contribute to that if
we want to but we all but it’s not
enough we have to vote with our votes
also I mean the fact is you have to be
fairly affluent to vote with your Forks
because very often these alternative
foods cost more and not everybody can
afford them so we do have to get
involved in things like Agricultural
Policy these are things that people who
lived in cities just have not paid
attention to for many many years with
the result that only big farmers or big
food processors get involved in the
debate over the farm bill which is our
our key piece of legislation every five
years that basically sets the rules for
the food game that everybody’s playing
yes Monsanto is working very hard to
inoculate itself against any kind of
government oversight and they’re
slipping bills into the farm bill right
now or trying to and it isn’t clear
whether it will get through or not but
they really want a free pass and they’ve
infiltrated the government in lots of
ways it’s a very powerful company and if
I have one you know essential problem
with Monsanto is it’s too much power in
too few hands and that to have one
company controlling the genetic
resources on which all of humanity is
dependent is dangerous I mean we should
it’s not even clear that we should be
able to patent seeds or patent life
forms of any kind I think we made an
enormous mistake when we went down that
path and one of the reasons we did that
was because the general counsel at
Monsanto named Clarence Tom
ended up on the Supreme Court and helped
write that decision so monopoly power is
definitely something we have to
challenge whenever we can
and people who live in cities need to
pay attention to agricultural policies
because they affect you are eaters and
eaters should have a should have a voice
at in those conversations and they
should insist on a voice and their
legislators should learn that actually
agricultural policy the vote on the farm
bill or whatever the the comparable law
here is not something you can trade away
for your interest in some urban issue
we’re all eaters we all care so there’s
a lot of politics rising around this and
as discouraging as that might be we’re
also fighting to get labeling and in
California we had a ballot initiative
last year that lost by only one or two
percentage points to label genetically
modified food and this is something this
country and 95 other countries already
have and we don’t but we’re very close
to getting it and and Monsanto and its
allies had to spend 44 million dollars
to stop it an immense amount of money
and and it will pass somewhere soon and
this will be a real this will Rock their
influence I think in very important ways
so get involved I mean you know even
from here get on the listservs of
various groups that are doing it if you
go to my website there’s lots of
resources and different different groups
who can keep you apprised when there’s a
really important vote in Congress and a
call to the legislature would be useful
hi my name is Madden from Seattle and so
you’re about to have this vote you know
very soon yeah yeah well first off thank
you very much for your writing I very
much appreciate your you know your
contribution to my changing my view on
food I’ve struggled with that you know
my relationship to food my whole life
but in terms of doing something
effective to change what’s going on it
seems interesting that you know the
grow-your-own movement is really you
know taking off in Seattle there’s
there’s something called pee patches so
they’re here they called allotments I
believe and you know you have to get on
a waiting list for two years so the
demand is there for people to grow their
own
and people where where space is precious
it’s really hard to do that and you know
I’ve found through Hugh Fernley wedding
stalls got a movement online where you
can sign up to be a grower or somebody
with land to share and you know I’ve
tried to get involved in that and it’s
really really hard the demand is very
high so I’m just kind of curious about
your opinion you know on that if you see
that growing if you see that as an
effective piece of you know people
really reestablishing they’re the right
relationship with food or is it more
just about really supporting the you
know the farmers because you know is it
just not practical no I I think I think
gardening is a really important part of
this movement actually I think that you
can grow a significant amount of fresh
produce in home gardens and and we did
during World War Two in America I think
we grew 40 percent of the fresh produce
was grown in home gardens during the
Victory Garden movement and I’ll bet the
numbers were similar here and you know
gardening has my first book was about
gardening second nature and and I got
into all this work through the garden
it’s in the garden that I learned about
food it’s in the garden that I began to
learn about my relationship to other
species in the natural world gardening
teaches us a lot and if you garden and
if you grow food you will cook because
what else is going to happen to that
zucchini and it creates this wonderful
surplus and you will cook and you will
give things away and you will trade with
your neighbors and you will appreciate
the work of good farmers you won’t
begrudge them their price because you
know how hard it is to do well and and
theirs what food is more you know fresh
and seasonal than what you can grow in
your garden so I think it’s very
important I think as a matter as a
didactic matter as a teaching matter and
actually it’s a source of calories and
we talk about you know good fresh
organic produce being beyond the reach
of many people well this puts it in
reach for many people we need more
allotments obviously we need to
in America we’ve got lawns that we need
to rip up
I mean lawns need to turn into Gardens
we have 25 million acres of lawn I mean
that land is available people are still
afraid to grow food in their front yard
that their neighbors will be upset we
have to get over that that’s a cultural
norm we have to change but I work for
compassionate well farming and were a
group of trying to get rid of factory
farming mainly because of the cruel way
that animals are treated but also I’d be
really interested if you could say a
little bit about what you think about
the huge amount of world’s grain I think
well over 1/3 the goes to animal feed as
opposed to raising animals on pasture
etc so I’d love to hear for you yeah
thank you for asking that that’s a
really good question you know when we
talk about this question of feeding the
world and how our you know the gates
question and we’re and how we’re gonna
have enough calories to feed the world
it’s important to understand that we we
do have enough calories now we are
growing to feed a population of 9 or 12
billion we’re growing 6,000 calories per
person per day you only need 2,000
calories so where is it all going well a
lot of it is going to feed meat animals
I think about 40% of the grain goes to
feed animals and that if we reduced our
meat consumption there would be plenty
of food for everybody so there are other
ways to solve this problem than
increasing yield and then you add to
that what’s the waste figure I mean it’s
30% of you know 30% of the food we grow
at least is wasted so the question of
meat is very very important and has been
since Francis Moore Lappe a road diet
for a small planet back in 1971 she was
pointing out that people are starving
while we’re gorging on meat that has
grown with grain that that the world’s
poor could be surviving on but not all
meat is grown that way and there is
there are other meat food chains and one
the ones that I think is very
encouraging is putting cattle getting
cattle off of corn another grain which
doesn’t you know they can’t digest
anyway but
makes them fat quickly and get marbles
there me putting them back on grass let
the animals eat something that we can’t
eat and and they can convert solar
energy into protein without competing
with human beings for that protein so I
think we need to completely rethink our
animal agriculture I don’t think the
goal should be to eliminate it I think
animals have a very important place in
in sustainable agriculture as nutrient
cyclers and and I would hate to see them
disappear I mean these are creatures
that we have more or less brought into
into existence domesticated animals and
they only live to the extent that we eat
them and so it’s an argument I mean
there are two sides to this argument
obviously there are arguments for
eliminating animals for from our diet
but certainly without question the
amount of meat in our diet which is in
America and 9 ounces per person per day
and it’s an obscene amount of me needs
to be reduced for most of human history
meat eating going back to our
conversation about the about the those
early fires was very special
it was rare it was wonderful and as a
result it was full with filled with
rules and ceremonies and rituals and
it’s only in our own time that meat has
been so common and so cheap that we can
eat it without a thought and I think
that will that will be a little bubble
in history because it just it simply
can’t go on if if the Chinese for
example start eating meat at the rates
we do well we’re just screwed I mean we
just I mean it just aren’t the resources
to do it
but getting cattle off of grain very
very important step I’m a sustainable
seafood consultant so I work a lot with
fish and I just very surprised that
there’s been no mention of fish either
in early men conversations I am Canadian
but I live in London to live in the UK
and we’re surrounded by water and
there’s a lot of stuff with fish fishers
farmers of fish and so I’ve been
following your track in London and your
advice to the sustainable Restaurant
Association
to the chefs which didn’t have any
mention of fish and then your
conversation tonight that didn’t have
any mention of fish so I just um my
whole world is fashion so I was just I
just now that I have you here I’d love
to get your opinion on some of the
fishing as well as fish farming and I
also wanted to say one of the things
that we are fighting with you is I
project manage catch Fox which is the
UK’s first Community Supported fishery
so it’s like a veg box but with fish and
it’s right out of Brighton it’s really
cool Hugh friendly wit install supports
it and it’s really about getting people
to connect to fish cook to fish cook
their fish really pay attention to it
and and and it’s really successful we’re
midway through our first season and it’s
a brilliant success I wanted to share
that with you well I’m really glad I’m
really glad I didn’t talk about fish
because there’s someone in the room and
knows much more about it than I do
you’re right I haven’t addressed fish
very much in my work and and it’s
because I don’t know a lot about it and
I think it’s incredibly difficult
fraught area it isn’t really clear that
there are any sustainable fisheries and
as much as we hope that there are and we
wish that there would be but if you dig
down in each one you find actually it’s
not as simple as you thought in these
cards with the check offs you know
sometimes it’s not good enough and we’ve
had cases where I’m a great example
Walmart decided they wanted to sell
sustain they’re the biggest food
retailer in America they wanted to sell
sustainable fish they went to the Marine
Stewardship Council what can we sell we
need a white flesh kind of bland fish
and they said Alaskan Pollock and they
and they dutifully went and started
selling Alaskan Pollock and they crashed
the population of Alaskan Pollock
because they sold so much of it so it’s
it’s really a problem and one of the
great challenges we face I think as a
civilization is developing a truly
sustainable aquaculture right now
aquaculture by and large is and tell me
if I’m wrong is has all sorts of
problems because you have to feed the
fish
thing and usually feed them other fish
or fish meal so your your basically you
know scooping up the bottom of the fish
food chain to make food for this you
know for your fish and that’s creating
huge problems in the wild not to mention
the waste problems and the antibiotics
that are used to feed the fish when
they’re in confinement it’s a lot like
feed lots but it seems to me that that
we haven’t been trying to farm fish on a
large scale for very long and that it
seems to me a problem we might be able
to solve and it’s really well worth
working on and I’ve seen interesting
examples of aquaponics which is a way of
growing fish in rotation with plants so
that you grow fish in a big tank you
could do this with tilapia or golden
perch and the dirty water from the fish
is pumped up and passed through a bed of
gravel in which you’re growing plants
food plants and those plants absorb the
nitrogen and the other nutrients and the
minerals from the fish and clean the
water and by the end that water can come
back to the fish and that’s kind of a
beautiful idea you see this goes back to
your point about animals why you need
animals and plants in a relationship to
have a really sustainable agriculture
now you still the issue of what do you
feed them but some people are working on
raising insects to feed fish they
apparently like a lot of them like bugs
and and we’re not competing with them
for bugs and so soldier fly larvae and
things like that but if we put a little
bit of ingenuity and a little bit of
investment into solving this problem of
fish which are so important to our
health
I mean omega-3 fatty acids are you know
a very important nutrient there’s a
reason that civilizations grow up where
there are fish they to and contribute to
to a big and healthy brain it seems to
me that that is one of the highest
projects that faces us is how to solve
this problem so that’s the full extent
of my knowledge on the subject and if
you want to know more at the end of the
talk go back there
thank you thanks for your question
we can say that actually
just food models when purchasing
and that perhaps growing news dealing
might use fewer pesticides per acre and
apple grown down grow
so not during organic which is what do
you think about well you know when
you’re talking about local food there’s
an argument used to discredit local food
that involves finding some examples
where the carbon footprint of the stuff
it’s always from new zealand for some
reason is is is lower than the local
stuff and the i don’t know the apple
example the one i always hear is lamb
that lamb from new zealand ends up
actually having a lower carbon footprint
than lamb from great britain and then
you look more closely and you realize
they’re comparing grass-fed lamb and new
zealand with feedlot fed lamb which i
didn’t realize you have but feed lots of
lamb here and so yes of course because
the boat ride is not a giant part I mean
actually transporting food by ship is
pretty efficient so you can find
examples like that and and and we should
scrutinize all these things in fact
someday we should have a label with the
carbon you know the amount of carbon it
takes to get every piece of food to our
table would be very very interesting and
full of interesting anomalies like that
but I also would point out that the
reasons to buy local food are not simply
about energy or carbon that there are
many other reasons to do it and I don’t
always do it I mean you know there times
when I don’t do it but the the argument
for local food has as much to do with
economics and keeping keeping money
circulating in your community keeping
farmers in business in your community
keeping the agricultural landscape as an
agricultural landscape there are many
values attached to local food and to
reduce it to that single metric is to
character sure what the movement is
about I think and then there’s the
freshness of the food and the fact that
food that doesn’t travel as far as
generally more nutritious but you can
always find exceptions and and they’re
people now being paid to generate those
exceptions because it’s become a threat
to industrial agriculture that more
people are choosing local so there are
cases where that New Zealand lamb or
maybe that New Zealand
is a good choice but in the end it
depends what values do you want to
support are you going to make all your
food decisions based on food miles or
carbon or do you care more about say the
agricultural landscape and preserving it
or do you care about freshness and
seasonality we there’s no one way to one
right way to vote with our food dollars
there are many different there you can
express your values in many different
ways across the spectrum the key is not
to find the right answer for everything
the key is to be conscious in your
decisions to to to to basically realize
you now have these wonderful
opportunities we didn’t have a few years
ago to embody your values whether its
environmental whether it’s health
pesticide economics with your food
choices and so in a way that’s more of a
burden because you’ve got to sort
through all this information but I see
it as a great opportunity to you for let
me perfectly into my question which
which is I’ve really intrigued as to
well I’m an omnivore and you know I kind
of eat would you’d expect me to eat not
that much meat although I do eat meat
I’m very picky about the meat I eat I I
only eat sustainable meat I’ve spent too
much time on feedlots too you know that
the other stuff doesn’t taste very good
to me I don’t eat at McDonald’s oh god
what I mean I you know I I love to eat I
mean I get enormous pleasure from food
and from cooking it and from enjoying it
and I love being at the table I never
miss a meal that this is a very
important thing to know about me I’ll
never skip a meal I just it’s just there
are only so many left in my life and and
I’m not going to miss one and even when
I’m alone at home and my wife is
traveling and my son’s not home I will
cook a meal and I will pour a glass of
wine and I will set the table because I
just I like meals thank you very much
thank you all for your great class thank you