Michael Pollan in Pittsburgh

Transcript

HOST: Michael Pollan, perhaps the leading writer on sustainable food, farming, and sensible eating, was in Pittsburgh this week. He gained popularity in the local food movement several years ago with his book The Omnivore's Dilemma. Pollan's come out against factory farming, and his own brother labeled him a quote--"hard-core cornographer" for laying bare the prevalence of corn in the American diet and using high-fructose corn syrup as a litmus test for unhealthy processed foods. The Allegheny Front's Hal B. Klein spoke with Pollan at Robert Morris University.

KLEIN: As a young man, Michael Pollan became fascinated with the connection between people and nature when he planted a garden, as he says, with "a head full of Henry David Thoreau." But he wasn't very successful, thanks mostly to a pesky woodchuck. Pollan told the audience that he went to extremes to combat the pest, eventually resorting to a Caddyshack-style fire-bombing that didn't turn out as planned.

POLLAN: I used to have a lot of hair (crowd laughter) and that was kinda my epiphany that there had to be a better way to get along with nature.

KLEIN: Pollan's experience in the garden is one of the reasons he began writing about food and how we've become a society distant from our food supply. He says that by connecting with the natural world (even in the city) people might change the way they eat. But on a snowy day, it's hard to imagine picking anything fresh from the garden. Pollan says the weather shouldn't force us to eat processed food. He suggests looking to the past.

POLLAN: People ate vegetables all year round that they had, simply by the addition of salt, turned into delicious and sometimes even more nutritious food to eat during the winter. So pickling, preserving, all these things are going to be a way to do it. And you can buy that food when it's at the peak of its quality in September, and when it's as cheap as it's ever going to be.

KLEIN: And Pollan says, people who get back to the idea of canning tomatoes and eating preserved summer vegetables in the winter are on the right track.

For the Allegheny Front I'm Hal B. Klein