Pollan on Fresh Air.

Madison.

I stumbled across this through the Underground Catering website. It's Terry Gross, of Fresh Air, interviewing Michael Pollan about his new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Now, any Fresh Air interview is going to be fascinating. Terry Gross really has a knack for finding people with ideas worth discussing, then asking the right questions to make that discussion happen.

Perhaps the most interesting bit from this interview? Pollan, like me, is a strong proponent of eating local food.¹ It pleases me to hear him promote local food over organic. Not to dismiss organic, because eating organic food means you're making a conscious choice to benefit the environment. Organic and local is definitely worth pursuing. But he explains some anomalies that occur in the marketing of organics.

Consider organic versus grass-fed beef. Some farmers, like James and Rebecca Goodman of Northwood Farms, do both, and that's to be applauded. But it's a rarity. Organic may still mean that the animals are raised and slaughtered in feedlot conditions, but fed organic grain and given no antibiotics, hormones, etc. That's definitely inferior - in terms of ethics, of flavor - to grass-fed cattle. Even if they aren't entirely organic. Especially if they're local.

Pollan relates a story, where he'd seen a Whole Foods just about across the street from a New York City Greenmarket. The Whole Foods was selling organic, grass-fed beef... from New Zealand. Yet, a very short walk away, there were two farmers selling grass-fed beef from the Hudson Valley, a short drive out of the city. The New Zealand beef comes with extra, undesirable baggage, like the fossil fuel costs of flying it in from halfway around the world, and removing the customer further from the farmers in their community. But yet it's there, and the boutique food shoppers will buy it and think they're doing some good that way.

To add a little levity: Pollan says, on the rise of Whole Foods and the organic movement, "We're looking for a set of answers. We're looking for food to reconnect us to the natural world, which is of course what it always did, and still does. I mean, even the Twinkie, you know, starts out in that farm field somewhere. I don't know what it comes from, but it comes from some plant." After an alarming amount of processing, of course.

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¹I mentioned Pollan and his book in a previous entry, after having read an excerpt in the New York Times. That was more specifically about foraging for food, in particular his hunting trip to kill a wild boar. He does mention this in the interview, as well, and it's really fascinating.