Michael Pollan, who has transformed how many Americans think about food, has a new message, which he offers in his new volume, "Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation" (Penguin Press, $27.95). The professor of science journalism heads to the kitchen — and history — to make a case for cooking. In town last week for a talk at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park, he offered these thoughts on food in an advance interview.
Q: You mention in the book that cooking was the single most important thing that an average person could do to make a difference.
A: Yes, on many levels. You can make a difference in your own life. I think cooking has a powerful influence on your own health. I really do think that. My last two books were on nutrition, and I studied nutrition science closely. One of the big take-aways for me is that obsessing about nutrients is not going to get you anywhere. And counting calories isn't going to get you anywhere. There is something inherent in the process of cooking that will drive you toward using better ingredients — not using too much salt, fat and sugar.
But, also, you're not going to make those labor-intensive special-occasion foods, like the cream-filled cake or the French fry, very often. Those are things that industry does very, very well and very, very cheaply. That's how we're getting into trouble with food, with the easy access to those things that used to be special-occasion. How often do you really want to make French fries, because it's a lot of work and a big mess? So I think it has a bearing on that and a bearing on your family's well-being.
But it also has a bearing on the world. The reason we've moved to this highly industrialized monoculture of plant and animal factories is because we've industrialized the way we eat. It really is the fast-food industry. Eric Schlosser demonstrated this beautifully in "Fast Food Nation." When you've industrialized your eating, it follows that you will industrialize your agriculture.
And on the other side we have this remarkable renaissance of family farming, diversified agriculture, farmers market economy, CSAs [community-supported agriculture], and these really depend for their continued growth on people's willingness to cook. I don't think we can count on big corporations to support small farmers. They don't know how to do that. They don't want to do that. They want the cheapest possible commodities. Big buys from big. So if you really care about this renaissance in American agriculture, it behooves you to buy ingredients directly from farmers.
Q: How does it help the farmer?
A: The latest USDA numbers say that, of the average American food dollar, something like 92 cents goes to someone other than the farmer (the processor, the trucker, the packager, the advertising agency, the advertiser): everybody involved in taking that simple agricultural product and turning it into a very convenient, very highly processed food.