Grist Interview with Michael Pollan
Posted by Yankee on June 1, 2006 - 11:26am
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: agriculture, food, food production, michael pollan, organic, peak oil, sustainability [list all tags]
The first question that David Roberts asks is "What's the most worrisome aspect of the current U.S. food system?", and Pollan answers:
That's a tough one. But the thing that really struck me is just how much energy goes into the process. The most recent study I've seen, from the University of Michigan, says that 20 percent of our fossil-fuel consumption is going to feeding ourselves.
This happens at three different stages. One is on the farm, because we use synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which is made from natural gas and a great deal of electricity.Then we take commodity crops, such as corn and soybeans and wheat, and we process them intensively, adding another seven calories of fossil-fuel energy for every one calorie of food. It's a very intensive process to take the corn and turn it into the high-fructose corn syrup, or take the corn and turn it into the chicken, and the chicken into the Chicken McNugget. As we move further away from eating food to eating highly processed, complicated food products -- as we move from yogurt to Go-GURT -- it takes more energy, and more energy in the packaging. We're putting a lot of time into redesigning our whole food supply so we can eat in the car. Nineteen percent of meals [and snacks in the U.S.] are eaten in the car right now.
And then we drive [the food] around the country, if not fly it around the world. You can get your organic asparagus from Argentina, you can get your grass-fed beef from New Zealand.
So given that our most serious environmental problem is global warming, I'd have to say the most serious problem with the food system is its contribution to global warming.
While it has always been evident that modern agribusiness is a very energy-intensive industry, I still find it interesting that Pollan considers this the most worrisome aspect of the food production system. More worrisome than the powerful but wasteful subsidies? More worrisome than the obesity problem? It would be easy enough to convince me, but in fact our food production system has so many problems that it's hard to know where to start. Yet, Pollan may be understating the energy issue: not only is our food production system contributing to global warming, but his comments also underscore how vulnerable we will be once the access to cheap oil is restricted.
The interview also tackles topics such as why large-scale organic farming is moving ever further from the sustainable ideal, the lure of microwaveable "convenience foods", and the challenge of convincing people that understanding where their food comes from is a really important issue.
Also, Pollan-junkies might be interested in his blog at the New York Times.
I think this idea of ecological journalism is useful for Peak Oilers. As Michael Pollan says, everybody has got to eat, right? so FOOD can a backdoor issue to get people involved with the environment, or in our case - energy.
We need more backdoor issues.
This column does raise a touchy issue, and one that ultimately must be addressed if we want the US population to be eating better. It's like Pollan says: "We're not subsidizing the growing of carrots and broccoli." This point has merit, and I don't think we should dismiss it in favor of simply calling Americans fat and lazy.
I thank you. :)
How do you eat corn? I can hardly imagine living on sweet corn from the cob. Cornbread is great, but too much work for lazy me. Do you make a gruel-like bowl, like grits or something?
I've heard that corn needs to be treated with lye or some such to make the protein available. Isn't that what grits are about?
Anyway, I always like to extend my diet, so I would love to hear how you buy & prepare corn to make a part of your staple diet.
Approximately 35 percent corn meal, 25 percent masa harina (lime-treated corn used in tortillas) and 40 percent whole wheat flour. Add about 3-5 percent soy flour for additional protein, more complete balanced mix of amino acids in the total protein content, and additional fiber; add a little wheat bran and oat bran for their obvious properties.
No white sugar. Use a mix of honey and molasses to sweeten. Baking power, egg, and bake.
I throw in frozen veggies from the traditional grocery store. I usually use an equal mix of frozen corn, frozen green beans and frozen mixed veggies. Sometimes I use other, specialty mixes.
I then fry diced chicken breast, or the 98 percent lean grass-fed hamburger beef I find on sale, along with any garlic, onions, etc. I'm using. Then comes additional oil, water, teriyaki, tomato sauce, whatever, is going to be the basis of a broth/stock/sauce.
Then comes the HERBS/SPICES. This is how you eat vegan/vegetarian/quasi-vegetarian without getting bored.
I make Indian and Pakistani curries, starting with Central Market, which carries three or four different types. Or I'll make garam masala. Or something Thai with peanut sauce. Or pesto. Or alfredo. Etc., etc.
So I wonder about vegan food being inexpensive. How do you manage that?
The post you replied to is not correct. The fats you put on come from carbohydrates, and not necessarily from the fats you eat. If your blood sugar stays above a certain level, the body converts it to fat, and stores it as visceral fat -- hence the pot bellies seen in different kinds of pathological obesities.
Normally, complex carbohydrates are better than sugar, which is better than corn syrup. The reason is the time span over which the conversion to glucose and fructose occurs. Glucose and fructose is the form in which the body absorbs calories. Sucrose and complex carbohydrates cannot be absorbed by the body without being broken down into glucose and fructose.
The problem with corn syrup is that it is a glucose/fructose syrup, and has a very rapid absorption profile, and leads to very high peak blood sugar levels. High peak blood sugar levels lead to insulin resistence, and a poor metabolism of sugar. This leads to the excess sugar being converted by the body to stored fat.
So Pollan is right in saying that corn syrup is a major factor in early obesity, and in the currently occurring diabetes epidemic.
Yes traditional diets in "poor" rural China are extremely high in carbohydrate, AND these Chinese are thin, with little abdominal obesity. The same has been shown to be true in rural India. The same is not true of either urban India, or urban China. The diets are still almost the same, still carbohydrate rich. But the rate of diabetes is tripled, and it is six times in the Chinese and Indian population in UK and US.
So what is the difference. The answer lies in the antinutritional factors that are there in the diet. Rural diets have many more "antinutritional" factors than occur in urban diets. In particular, amylase inhibitors and sucrase inhibitors are a part of the diet. These "antinutritional" factors have been greatly reduced in the urban diet through "food processing"
Thus vegan diets that are uncooked or poorly cooked, and rich in WHOLE grains and WHOLE legumes, have amylase and sucrase inhibitors, that greatly reduce the conversion of these carbohydrates to glucose and fructose. These carbohydrates mostly pass through the intestinal tract unabsorbed after being only partially broken down.
The term "antinutritional," should be considered a misnomer, as the human body has evolved to live on these traditional diets, and is probably most happy when these factors are present.
* A diet based on refined foods (white flour etc) is more efficient in terms of calories absorbed. (but is likely to be lacking in all sorts of vital trace stuff)
This casts an interesting light on the sociology of whole vs refined grains. In Europe, and presumably in other bread-based cultures, and until recent decades, white bread was a status symbol, and ordinary folk ate mostly whole-grain bread (often rye or barley, where they were cheaper than wheat). In modern times, everyone migrated to white, wheat bread, because they COULD (this coincided with overconsumption of meat, for the same reason).
Now, the status has inverted somewhat, and eating whole-grain breads is pretty much confined to the "elite".
We are finally starting to correct a centuries old mistake - removing the most nutritious part the grain.
It is strange how people in most places have bought into this "white bread as a status symbol" thing, not only is it not nutritious, it´s pretty tasteless as well. Fortunately it seems wholemeal is making a comeback, although, as you point out, it appears to be a kind of elite choice now.
Either you're reading pseudoscience or not understanding actual science that you read. That's the only way I can understand your non-unerstanding, veganmaster.
If the family farms go under, what will the price of food be then?
So how can this happen then? We have too many people, yet we have all this food over here that farmers can't seem to sell to maintain a decent standard of living. I suppose you could argue that the geographic dispersion of people with higher concentrations of people in smaller countries that are farther away has something to do with it.
But how in this globalized world can people go starving, while we have an over abundance of food? Is the free market failing these people who need the food and the farmer who is willing to sell it? We do export a lot of food, but not enough to feed everyone?
This is a curious economic condition that shouldn't exist with the basic problem that people are starving and plenty of farmers want to sell their crops, but for what reason keeps the prices very low? Is there anyone with real operational knowledge of how a family farm works at the micro level? I wonder how all the micro decisions influence the macro environment that appears to be in a kind of paradox.
People starve in todays world because of politics. See Somalia Ethiopia etc....It is the lack of a free market. Warlords prevent trade and seize foreign food shipments.
Matt
I am saying that we have too much land in the US suitable for growing food easily for an open market to allow stable prices. A good year for corn means too much corn for market and its price goes so low that the farmers sell for less than it cost to produce. Enter Gov paying farmers not to grow corn or setting a minimum price. If I opened a factory for sparkplugs and churned out 1 billion a year would the government bail me out? So the subsidies provide promised profit and big business starts making lots of corn. R&D and PR people start coming up with real or contrived uses etc etc......
I never said we are overpoulated. I do believe we will be someday soon and when PO hits the downslope it is possible we are already. I think the 6+ Billin people will not be city dwellers in the future though.
matt
(From an Very long, very good interview with Pollan by UC Berkeley news service.
In the same interview Pollan points to the key role corn plays in industrial animal raising:
I eat beef maybe once or twice a week, and that beef comes from the local ranchers' beef co-op, where the cattle are guaranteed to be raised only on natural grasses.
We do grow a large organic garden, so I'm mostly a vegetarian. Probably more so than most suburbanites.
Our bodies are able to convert nearly anything into fat when we have excess calories. Sugar intake triggers insuling release from the pancreas. Insulin causes our liver and muscle to store sugar in the form of glycogen. Our bodies can store about 12 hours worth of carb energy in our liver and muscle. If we take in more than that then insulin triggers our adipose tissue (or fat cells) to take in the excess carbs and store the energy as fat. Furthermore, in a strange paradox of human biology, insulin seems to stimulate out appetite. This always confused me since insulin is realeased when we have normal or excess intake, so why does it stimulate us to eat even more. When diabetics are put on insulin, their blood sugar goes down, but their weight often goes up and the sugar which often escaped via the kidneys is instead converted to fat.
The human body evolved to take in meat (sorry to all the vegetarians out there) and grains/ vegetables. Simple sugars were actually relatively rare in the human diet (in most places) until sugar cane and corn syrup became commoditized. The low price of sugar and corn syrup (due to cheap energy inputs and subsidized) is at least partly responsible for our obesity. Other factors are responsible also (inactivity, car-based rather than pedestrian based travel, etc.) but the fact that sugar is in nearly everything we eat is a major public health problem.
Phineas Gage, MD
It definitely isn't easy to make the switch away from processed goods due to the costs involved, I almost needed an adult diaper after handing over the loot for my bags of dried apricots, peaches and nuts. There was a time I'd sniff derisively at the sight of fat on a chop, now I deliberately select those very same cuts of meat and look forward to the assimilation process. Alas, without the formerly requisite mashed spuds.
Pus in the milk, flouride and chlorine in the water, trans fats, high fructose corn syrup...we're not men, we're a chemical imbalance.
Except, for instance, read up on the Apache - they used to process plants to get the starch out and dry it in sheets. And wherever there were acorns and Indians you had Indians eating acorns.
And, humans weren't cooking their food starting 10,000 years ago, try somewhere around 2 million years ago! Pre Homo sapien types were cooking their food that far back, we've been the "fire ape" for a long time. The American Indians came over to this continent 50,000 odd years ago and they were sure cooking. Evidence in China goes way back, one piece of evidence shows ppl cooking their food 2 million years ago.
Indians gathered acorns, wild rice, wild grains, pollen, you name it. I'm all for the paleo diet, and in fact may take some "survival" courses this summer for fun, keep in mind the paleo diet involved a wide range of foodstuffs.
see my comment below (and linked article) about human digestive enzymes being designed specifically for cooked meat.
Also, according to archaeological forensic studies, farmers were far more susceptible to malnutrition/starvation than the Gatherer/Hunters (admittedly the data set for the G/H's is smaller) due to the fact that they had to rely on locally produced food even during droughts, insect infestations, crop destruction due to wars, etc. whereas the G/H's could move on if resources were depleted (but since their diets included a wide variety of foods this was less of a problem--if one resource became scarce they could utilize something else until it recovered). Also their smaller populations were less likely to over-use resources in one area.
Really, the only advantage to agriculture, IMO, is population growth and that is a dubious one. It works out well for that segment of the population that needs the extra labor to increase their wealth and status, though!
"Agribusiness propaganda" is one form of this insidious brainwashing that sweeps across the collective American psyche every second of every day from the newspaper ads that masquerade as news to the roadside billboards to television to movies. The problem is the conversation we are having is reserved for a tiny minority. (I hope it is a minority that has the wherewithal to change things.) The vast majority of Americans and world citizens are plugged into the "official" media, the spoon-fed, corporate government-sanctioned media that tells us that up is down and left is right and that everything is just fine. Until there is a mass media outlet for actual scientific fact presented in a dumb-American fashion, they will not change their consumption patterns. (Or until the system collapses under the one-two punch of peak oil and global warming at which time the stupid "average" American will get a Chuck Norris roundhouse to the face.)
I foresee a point when "Good Morning America" features a segment that starts with an intro from the talking head in the studio,
"Welcome back. As everyone knows, vegetables from California are a luxury item now, and even those grown locally can be pretty precious, but you can help your household budget stay within its limits by turning your front yard into a micro-version of Farmer Jack's real thing. Jennifer Crowley is in Chevy Chase, Maryland where she is visiting one neighborhood that has decided to say no to high veggie prices. Jennifer?"
Cut to Jennifer oddly dressed in a plaid shirt, overalls and a straw hat. A bit of grass stem pokes from her mouth. Around her stand a group of suburban people who, though dowdy, seem to have almost recaptured a past era of TV abundance and who wear cubicle-rat clothes, short-sleeved pastel cotton shirts, ugly brown ties that ride high, Dockers with dark stains on the knees, a woman wears a pantsuit that hangs loosely on her frame. They all smile as if they are having the time of their lives.
Jennifer: That's right, Charlie. The good people of Chevy Chase are not about to let Californians get their money, at least not without a fight. As you can see, all along this cul-de-sac, the once mandatory highly-manicured lawns are gone, replaced by row upon row of vegetables.
The camera pans and we see a long street with cracks sprouting weeds. Only one SUV is seen, and it is up on blocks, rusting in the morning light. A number of curious people watching the goings on are stopped in the street astride bicycles, one foot on the pedal the other on the ground. The houses are losing paint, there is noticable damage to trees, limbs cut, stumps all around. Near every house are stacks of firewood. Each front yard is completely covered in vegetable crops.
Jennifer: I have here John Stueben, a former software engineer. John, what made you decide to give up your lovely lawn?
Jennifer turns to the camera: And believe me, it was beautiful. I've seen the pictures.
Back to John. He is gaunt. His cheekbones seem sharp and his eyes are deep beneath his brow. His pink pastel shirt billows in the slight breeze, a shirt much too large for him.
John: Have you seen the price of vegetables, Jennifer?
As John smiles and tries to mimic the jaunty television manner of Jennifer, we can see that his teeth are rotten. He laughs coarsely.
John: We just thought we could put a stop to those price gougers in California by putting in our own little farms here. Now that I don't have to go to work no more and the bank gave up on foreclosure so I don't have to go homeless, I thought I'd give it a try. Well, seems that most the neighborhood here is in the same fix and after a few neighborhood meetings, we decided to organize the whole thing more efficiently. We examined every yard in the coalition for micro-climate and catalogued every nut and fruit tree, every berry bush and then started opening up some areas, that is cutting down trees, to let in the light. Everyone plants and tends to their own garden for the most part, but when it comes to big labor jobs, we all have a work party and help out. When we harvest, we share the food resources.
Jennifer frowns.
Jennifer: This sounds a lot like socialism.
John looks at her with distaste. Obviously, the bugaboo about socialism has long vanished from his mind.
John: You ever hear about a socialist named Jesus? You call it socialism, we call it survival.
The crowd is visibly angry, and all have moved a bit closer to Jennifer than she would like.
The cameraman backs up and we see the huge SUV the television crew arrived in with its satellite dish and cables running through the garden.
Jennifer: Oof. Seems I hit a nerve up here in Chevy Chase. Well, back to you, Charlie.
As a more general matter, you compare beliefs about food and nutrition with religious beliefs. But what makes your own beliefs about food any less religious than those of Weston Price?
(I should perhaps add that I myself am completely agnostic when it comes to food: I don't know whether you, or the Weston Price people, or the soybean aficionados, or conventional western medicine, or some other food sect "has the truth." But I am searching for "the truth" with diligence!)