Disappointed in Paula Deen?

Me too.

In case you haven't heard, Paula Deen, Food Network star and Southern cook, has now confirmed reports that she was diagnosed with type-2 diabetes nearly three years ago. I have to admit that I know very little about Paula Deen apart from the fact that she has been criticized for promoting the type of high-fat and high-sugar diet that leads to weight gain and other 'western diseases' and that she chose to keep her diagnosis a secret for years. What I do know is that during her appearance on the Today Show yesterday, she announced her spokesman-ship deal with Victoza, a pharmaceutical company and dodged discussion about diet. Here's the footage:

Her announcement happened to correspond with Michael Pollan's talk last night at the Baltimore Speaker Series in which he addressed Paula Deen's decision to partner with the Victoza. He pointed out the larger "fork in the road" this exemplifies. We could go one direction towards a nation of acceptance and complacency regarding the epidemic of diet-related health problems (Deen's direction), or another - more active and change-effecting direction - towards reformation of the food system, our understanding of it, roles within, and conscious involvement in its evolution towards something healthier.

Can you imagine the positive impact Paula Deen could have on the American diet if she were to re-frame this?  As disappointed as I am, I'm not going to give up hope. Turn it around, Paula. Sacrifice a little pride for the greater good of your fans and followers.

Countdown to New 'Food Rules'

In addition to illustrations by Maira Kalman, Michael Pollan has added nineteen new rules to the illustrated edition of Food Rules. For the next week leading up to the November 1st release, he will be counting down his favorite new rules and posting them here. Fingers crossed that yours truly's new rule, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is," made the cut!

Pollan is also giving a lecture in nearby Bethesda, MD at 8:00pm tonight at the Strathmore Hall Foundation. Tickets and details here.

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

I recently submitted this mantra (post title) for the second edition of Michael Pollan's collection of Food Rules and share it with you today in light of the class action lawsuit against Taco Bell. For those of you who haven't heard about the controversial "meat filling," allow me to summarize.

An Alabama law firm is suing the chain for falsely advertising the substance formerly known as "taco meat filling" as "meat" because the filling is actually only 36% meat and according to USDA standards, "meat" has to be at least 40% meat to be called meat. Yes, only 40%. Eww.

The firm isn't asking for money, just a correction. Want to know what makes up the other 60-64%?

Water, isolated oat product, salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, oats (wheat), soy lecithin, sugar, spices, maltodextrin (a polysaccharide that is absorbed as glucose), soybean oil (anti-dusting agent), garlic powder, autolyzed yeast extract, citric acid, caramel color, cocoa powder, silicon dioxide (anti-caking agent), natural flavors, yeast, modified corn starch, natural smoke flavor, salt, sodium phosphate, less than 2% of beef broth, potassium phosphate, and potassium lactate.

Mouth-watering, huh? If you stopped reading that pile of ingredients at maltodextrin, consider visiting this great post on Buzzfeed for an entertaining visual interpretation instead.

Although I have taken issue with Taco Bell ever since they started encouraging the "fourth meal" to boost their own sales and their customers' cravings, I don't know which side of this argument I fall on. On one hand, the fast food chain isn't meeting already pathetic standards for labeling and who-knows-what-else but on the other hand, these tacos cost less than a dollar, right? So what can you really expect? A 99% choice beef taco, handed to you through your window after less than three minutes, still hot and (I hear) delicious for 99 cents? That's sort of unreasonable, don't you think?

Once again: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Sorry, chalupa fans. You get what you pay for.

***UPDATE***

Taco Bell responded to these allegations with the following press release. As usual, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle of the argument. Click here for larger view.

COFED: Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive

Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben, and Slow Food USA president Josh Viertel are part of the launch committee that will help the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, or CoFed, movement come to a college campus near you. So what exactly is COFED? Well, right now it is much bigger on the West Coast than East Coast - but don't let that stop you from making a donation and getting involved!

The national "training program and research institute is empowering students to create ethically-sourced, cooperatively-run sustainable food storefronts and cafés on college campuses." Treehugger reports:

CoFed grew out of a campaign that successfully blocked the first fast food chain restaurant from opening on the University of California's Berkeley campus. The Berkeley student food co-op opened instead on November 15th and in 2010 alone, six teams on the west coast began working on doing the same at their own schools, from Santa Barbara to Seattle.

Complete with experts ready to help students with everything from retail and dealing with legal issues and incorporation, CoFed "will train a new generation of leaders with experience creating good, clean, fair food businesses and a new generation of eaters who believe in the power of community," said Josh Viertel.

Bill McKibben, 350.org founder, made this enlightened statement: "Colleges around the country are figuring out that they educate their students three times a day about either good food or bad - about a world where local matters, or where food is just a plate full of calories to get you through class. CoFed has the potential to be a crucial part of that process."

Learn more about the program here.

Big News for Food Safety

Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser weighed in on the FDA Food Safety Modernization Bill, calling it the "best opportunity in a generation to improve the safety of the American food supply," in a New York Times Op-Ed published yesterday. "This legislation is by no means perfect. But it promises to achieve several important food safety objectives, greatly benefiting consumers without harming small farmers or local food producers."

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill tonight. Here are some basic objectives of the bill:

• The bill would, for the first time, give the F.D.A. (who oversee 80% of American food) the authority to test widely for dangerous pathogens and to recall contaminated food.
• The FDA would gain resources and authority to prevent food safety problems, rather than respond to them after people have become ill.
• The bill would also require large-scale, high-risk food-production plants get more frequent inspections.
• For the first time, imported foods would be subject to the same standards as those made in the United States.
• Small farms are exempt from the bill and may continue to be regulated under state and local laws. 
• Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma is annoying.

Michael Pollan to Compile Another 'Food Rules' Book

This time, with more rules and illustrations! Yay! Check out the open call (full text below) for new rules for the 2nd Edition of 'Food Rules' that Michael Pollan wrote for Grist.org (and possibly other publications/sites):

Last year I published Food Rules, a short book offering 64 rules for eating well. Food Rules struck a chord with many people, who found that it helped them navigate what has become a treacherous food environment, whether in the supermarket or restaurant. Many of the rules were submitted by readers, and since publication I have received a number of excellent new ones. So I've decided to publish an expanded edition, with additional rules and also illustrations, which the painter Maira Kalman has agreed to create. The premise of Food Rules is that culture has much to teach us about how to choose, prepare, and eat food and that this wisdom is worth collecting and preserving before it disappears.

In recent years, we've deferred to the voices of science and industry when it comes to eating, yet often their advice has served us poorly, or has merely confirmed the wisdom of our grandmothers after the fact. "Eat your colors," an Australian reader's grandmother used to tell her; now we hear the same advice from nutritionists, citing the value of including in the diet as many different phytochemicals as possible.I've also found that many ethnic traditions have their own memorable expressions for what amounts to the same recommendation.

Many cultures, for examples, have grappled with the problem of food abundance and come up with different ways of proposing we stop eating before we're completely full: the Japanese say "hara hachi bu" ("Eat until you are 4/5 full"); Germans advise eaters to "tie off the sack before it's full." And the prophet Mohammed recommended that a full belly should contain one-third food, one-third drink, and one-third air. My own Russian-Jewish grandfather used to say at the end of every meal, "I always like to leave the table a little bit hungry." Many rules reach across cultures and also time, but some of the ones readers have submitted are specifically about navigating the modern food landscape: "It's not food if it comes to you through the window of a car." "Don't eat at any restaurant of which there is more than just one." "A snack is not the same thing as treat." "If a bug won't eat it, why would you?" and so on.

Will you send me a food rule you have found memorable and useful? Perhaps one passed down by your parents or grandparents? Or something you've come up with to tell your children -- or your self.

Please send your suggestions to pollan.foodrules@gmail.com. Thanks in advance for your attention and help.

As you all know, 'Food Rules' is very close to this blogger's heart because she contributed rule number 21 to the first edition. I hope that you all will join me in contributing ideas for the next edition. I will include the best ones in the next edition of Food Rules, which will be published next fall and will be pleased to acknowledge your contribution if you so wish.

Michael Pollan Talks About Salmonella Outbreak with Dr. Sanjay Gupta

Second Nature: On Composting

Having only recently discovered an early, critically acclaimed gardening book by none-other-than Michael Pollan, I feel compelled to share interesting and educational passages from it as I encounter them. The book is called Second Nature: A Gardener's Education and the following is MP's take on composting circa 1991:

"Some gardeners, and even some garden writers, talk about compost as if it were fertilizer, but that is only part of the story, and it is somewhat misleading. It is true that compost contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash (the principal ingredient of fertilizer), but not in terribly impressive quantities. The real benefits of compost lie in what humus - its main constituent - does to the soil. Consider:

1.) Compost improves the soil's "structure." Soil is made up of clay, sand, silt, and organic matter, in varying proportions. Too much clay or silt, and the soil tends to become compacted, making it difficult for air, water, and roots to penetrate. Too much sand, and the soil's ability to retain water and nutrients is compromised. An ideal, friable garden soil consists of airy crumbs in which particles of sand, clay and silt are held together by humic acid. Compost helps these particles form. 
2.) Compost increases the soil's water-holding capacity. One experiment I read about found that 100 pounds of sand will hold 25 pounds of water, 100 pounds of clay will hold 50 pounds, and 100 pounds of humus will hold 190 pounds. A soil rich in compost will need less watering, and the plants growing in it will better withstand drought.
3.) Because it is so dark in color, compost absorbs the sun's rays and warms the soil.
4.) Compost teems with microorganisms, which break down the organic matter in soil into the basic elements plants need.
5.) Because it is made up of decaying vegetable matter, compost contains nearly every chemical plants need to grow, including such trace elements as boron, manganese, iron, copper, and zinc, not often found in commercial fertilizer. Compost thus returns to the soil a high proportion of the things agriculture takes out of it."

The book is fantastic, folks. Everyone who has ever worked on, played on, owned, tilled, raked, fertilized (**cringe**), seeded, mowed, plowed and otherwise enjoyed or despised any piece of land will appreciate Pollan's insights and reflections.

The CAFO Reader

I know it's 4th of July weekend and everyone wants to have their barbecue and ignore its environmental cost too, but we've found a new book for the summer reading list and it's all about CAFOs. The who's who of the sustainable food movement got together and penned a fearless collection of essays on factory farming for The Cafo Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories. Favorite of ours, Anna Lappé, contributed a chapter on the link between livestock and the climate crisis. Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser contributed as well.

The University of California Press summarizes:

These essays analyze and vividly depict the devastating impacts and current conditions in and around factory farms. The collection also provides a compelling vision of  “putting the CAFO out to pasture,” in which food systems become more healthy, humane, and sustainable. The CAFO Reader will quickly become an invaluable educational resource in the battle to reform the tragic state of industrial livestock production. It will also inform and influence the growing public movement of activists, farmers, policy makers, and consumers who are aiming to make our food healthier for ourselves and the planet.

Word on the street is that a larger photographic volume fit for a coffee table will be out this fall.

Great interview with MP

No, JustSaying didn't get to interview Michael Pollan (yet) but Simon Schama did for Lunch with the FT and it is fantastic. Lots of factoids about Pollan's passions, lifestyle, belief system, and career in here (not to mention a review of sorts on London's Acorn House). From the article:

One part of Michael Pollan is in awe at what agribusiness has achieved: the delivery of low-cost food on an unprecedented scale. But the better part of him is appalled. “What’s happened is Walmartism: the reverse of Fordism,” he says. “Ford raised the pay of his assembly line workers so they would buy his cars. Walmart pays low wages, knowing workers can always get bad, cheap food.” The result is a burger and jumbo-sized cola addicted population. No one is better than Pollan at giving the devil its due, conjuring the unmistakable, almost narcotically addictive “fry-fragrance” to which junk food junkies helplessly gravitate. It is, he thinks a kind of ersatz “home”: some imagined smell of childish security in that oily-crunchy, burgery squishy provision – as if fast food momma was one gigantic American tit on which the infantilised masses of America placidly suck.

Anyone who has read Pollan’s coda to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, called “A Perfect Meal”, knows he is not just a historian and prophet of food but a hell of a cook too. So I ask him about the paradox of our time in which the obsessions of food – celebrity chefs, food columns in every paper and magazine, the marketing of gourmet kitchens – has somehow coincided with people cooking less not more. Television cooking we both think has became a kind of manic gameshow, in which star turns of charismatic rage and an emphasis on feverish speed has made it harder, not easier, for family cooks to transfer what they see to their own kitchens.

The one exception to the bleak outlook is the rise and rise of local farmers’ markets, and what Pollan calls “Big Organic” stores such as Whole Foods Market where accurate source labelling is crucial to shopping decisions. From his perch in Berkeley he is under no illusion that somehow this salutary revolution is going to reach the mass of American people in recessionary times, but Pollan is tired of hearing from the better off that the reason the hired help defrosts yet another pizza, or lugs the kids off to a Happy Meal – while the gourmet trophy Viking stove goes begging – is shortage of time. The average amount of time spent on cooking, eating and cleaning up a meal, he says, is 31 minutes; the average daily non-professional time at a computer two hours, and in front of a television three hours.
Pollan sighs. “You know, we have been drilled to believe that only in the workplace do Americans produce something. But when we cook we are producers too. It’s sad that we are supposed to be just consumers.”

And... umm... How could I go this long without knowing about and reading Second Nature (Pollan's first book)!?!? O.M.G. Schama met Pollan for the first time soon after its publication in 1991 and summarizes it as, "An epic battle with a woodchuck that was treating Pollan’s garden as his personal canteen. The struggle for supremacy between resolute gardener and resourceful rodent builds to a titanic climax with the Man of the Soil emptying cans of gasoline down the varmint’s burrow and setting light to it like some deranged garden Nazi bent on a backyard Götterdämmerung."

Michael Pollan is a Twitterbug lately!

In case you guys don't follow MP's tweets, here is all the news fit for his stream of late:

Pepsi Teams up with White House to Whitewash Worthless Snacks and Sodas

Important petition drive on school lunch reform

A journalism student has done a very nice photo essay based on Omnivore's Dilemma

Good literature review on the question, "Can organic feed the world?" Answer appears to be: Yes.

A Baltimore blogger won my heart around this time last year

Okay okay... that last one was... well... imaginary. But the rest are important so definitely check 'em out.

"The Food Movement, Rising"

A new essay from Michael Pollan in The New York Review of Books takes a look at the food revolution taking place - whether it's completely recognized yet or not - here in America. Pollan discusses everything from Michelle Obama's efforts to food safety and industry and how books published in the past decade (by other faves like J.S. Foer, Eric Schlosser, Marion Nestle, Joel Salatin, etc) along with growing support from national environmental and health organizations most definitely suggests a culture ripe and ready to get "beyond the barcode." 

If you take the time to go beyond JustSaying's summary and read the whole article just one time, let this be it. Find The Food Movement, Rising here.

"Add to cart"

MP tweeted about the new tomato variety named after him last week and I've been meaning to link readers up to it ever since so... here you go! Pollan wasn't quite sure how to take the tomato title honor because of, well, the following description:

‘Michael Pollan’ is an odd shaped mutant! (The tomato that is.) Egg shaped fruits are yellow with green stripes & some have little “nubbins” on the ends. Related to ‘Green Zebra’ but with a milder taste & a good amount of sweetness. Very popular in taste tests. Plus the bloom on this variety is reported to be quite showy. Nice! Named after the amazing author & teacher - whose books we highly recommend. ‘Michael Pollan’ is possibly susceptible to Blossom End Rot so make sure & water him evenly to prevent this from occurring. The tomato that is!

Find the tomato and other great seeds at Annie's Annuals and Perennials.

Set your DVRs or TiVos!!

Wednesday April 21, 2010. 9:00PM - 10:30PM ET.

On the eve before Earth Day, PBS will be airing Food Inc. The film by Robert Kenner, Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan lifts the veil on the U.S. food industry, reveals surprising facts about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we may go from here. If this fiml doesn't make you do a double take about your dietary decisions, I don't know what will.

Fantastic summary of MP's message

Jane Brody wrote an excellent article about "Food Rules," why we all need to follow them, and the bullet points of MP's crusade thus far. I highly recommend reading it. Find the article here. It's short and sweet. It's everything I try to say in dinner conversations. And it highlights the S rule, which is pretty great.

Joel Salatin interviewed by The Guardian

Since being highlighted in Eric Schlosser's film Food, Inc, local food movement hero Joel Salatin is bringing much needed attention to horrors and human arrogance of industrial farming and then to the chemical-free farming methods Michael Pollan praised him for in The Omnivore's Dilemma.

The Guardian recently interviewed Salatin and oublished an incredible article. Find it here. Here are some highlights:

From The Guardian's Gaby Wood:

"...in the 1970s, the top five beef packers controlled 25% of the market; now the top four control more than 80% – meaning that if ever meat is tainted by bacteria or chemicals it has the potential to reach vast numbers of people; in 1972, 50,000 food safety inspections were conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration, and three decades later that number had gone down to 9,164; 70% of all processed foods have some genetically modified ingredient; in 2007, E coli from food affected 73,000 Americans – something the film correlates directly with the increase in consumption of processed foods and the scale and cleanliness of the country's huge industrial slaughterhouses."

And from Salatin:

[Quotes Joel Arthur Barker on paradigms] "...every paradigm, he says, exceeds its point of efficiency. Agriculture is always the last sector to join the new economy, because farmers are very conservative. So only now has the industrial paradigm in agriculture come to the end of its workability, Salatin explains. "What happens is all these things we're seeing – campylobacter, E coli, mad cow, listeria, salmonella, that weren't even in the lexicon 30 years ago – that is the industrial paradigm exceeding its efficiency. So these Latin squiggly words that we're learning to say – bovine spongiform encephalopathy – are nature's language screaming to us: ENOUGH! And the question then is: what will it take for us to listen? And my contention is that Wall Street is still wearing conquistador mentality and uniforms, and nobody is listening to the pleadings of nature saying: 'Enough.'"

And Salatin's five reasons why we should eat his meat:

1.) "...it's safer from a bio-security standpoint. If you eat our stuff, it's gonna be only sold real close right here. There's a short chain between field and fork, and the shorter that chain is – the fresher, the more transparent that system is – the less chance there is of anything from bio-terrorism to pathogenicity to spoilage. You wanna get diarrhoea? Eat industrial food." 2.) "Number two is what I would call your own personal immune system." The more antibiotics are given to the animals we eat, he explains, the less responsive we become to antibiotics when we need them for medical reasons. "You've been drugging yourself at dinner every day." 3.) "Thirdly, he goes on, they've had their meats checked, and they are unequalled in their nutritional density and power, however you want to measure it – "Omega 3, omega 6 ratios, riboflavin, polyunsaturated fats, vitamin A…" 4.) "It tastes better." 5.) "It's better for the environment. It's a very landscape-therapeutic production model."

(Thnx MP)

MP on Oprah today

Oprah is doing an entire show on food issues today. Michael Pollan will be on discussing "Food Rules" and Food, Inc. (If you're stuck at work and may miss, fear not - I will post the full episode on the blog as soon as it is up on hulu) (And yes, I have taken this opportunity to repost a pic of me and MP that has been posted at least twice before).

**UPDATE**

Can't find the episode to post just yet but the great news is that Amazon (the dotcom, not the rain forest) is offering the Food, Inc DVD for just $9.99 from now until midnight on Friday. Get some!

MP Answers 10 Reader Questions

Michael Pollan answers reader questions in the February 1, 2010 issue of TIME magazine. If you can't wait, read it on their website here. Here's a good one:

How can consumers ensure a strong food system for future generations? -Brad Christian; MEMPHIS, TENN.

MP: We need to vote with our forks as consumers. We also need to make our agricultural policies support the kind of food system we want--support farmers who are growing organic food or local food, not just big corn and soy farmers.

Apples to Apples, Pizza to Pollan

Last night, JustSaying had a delicious homemade pizza party in honor of an MP food rule that we found particularly fun: "Eat all of the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself."

We made four fantastical pizzas (with a little help from Trader Joes dough). Four people. Four pizzas. Not kidding. Here's what we learned in the process:

- There is no such thing as too much olive oil or too much fresh buffalo mozzerella, but there is a chance it will get a little messy in the oven.
- If caramelized onions are involved, start that process right away because it takes at least 30 minutes (but it is totall worth it - particularly in combination with pears and gorgonzola).
- Don't put the fixins on the dough until the dough is on the pan or pizza stone.
- 99 cent dough from TJoes goes a long way.
- A little egg on the crust goes a long way.
- The "perfect pancake" maker tube makes a fine rolling pin in a pinch.
- You will burn some of those carbs and calories in the process: fanning smoke away from the detector, rolling dough, slicing, dicing, checking and double checking and triple checking the pizza you worked so hard on, clean up, etc.
- Apples to Apples = fun tiimes in a box.

Tara Parker-Pope catches up with Michael Pollan

I know JustSaying has plugged and praised MP's new book multiple times already (without even receiving it in the mail yet) but once again, I've got to point out this recent interview because.... he mentions the rule that YOURS TRULY submitted: “It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language.”

OMG OMG OMG!!! Yay!!! (Of course, there is a chance that this rule was submitted by more than one person but regardless, a girl can dream that her efforts have contributed to the success of a bigger movement, right?)

Anywho, some highlights from the interview:

"I came up with [Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.] when I was writing a piece for The New York Times Magazine called “Unhappy Meals,” which became my book. I was trying to simplify everything I learned as radically as possible. I thought that was a compromise. I really wanted to say just “Eat food,” but I realized that wasn’t enough. You had to sort of take a position on meat and vegetables, and you had to address the whole issue of quantity. I’ve learned that from Marion Nestle (the New York University nutrition professor and author), that in the end, so much of the discussion about nutrition is a way to avoid talking about how much people are eating. People would rather talk about anything else than quantity. Eat food was the main message, but I realized I needed to qualify it. I was hoping for two words. I compromised at seven... The adverb “mostly” has been the most controversial. It makes everybody unhappy. The meat people are really upset I’m taking a swipe at meat eating, and the vegetarians are saying, “What’s with the ‘mostly?’ Why not go all the way?” You can’t please everyone. In a way that little word is the most important. It’s not all or nothing. Mostly. It’s about degree. But in the whole food discussion, I’ve learned the most from that, that little “ly” and people’s reaction to it."

"Some of these rules require absolutely no explanation. “If it came from a plant, eat it. If it was made in a plant, don’t.” “It’s not food if it’s served through the window of your car.” “It’s not food if it’s called by the same name in every language.” Think Big Mac, Cheetos or Pringles. Another one I like, “The banquet is in the first bite.” Economists call this the law of diminishing marginal utility. When you realize the real pleasure in food comes in the first couple bites, and it diminishes thereafter, that’s a kind of reminder to focus on the experience, enjoy those first bites, and as you get into the 20th bite, you’re talking calories and not pleasure. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that."