Several-page interview with Michael Pollan, the author of Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, and Botany of Desire, some of the books on sustainable and sustaining eating I've read recently.
My sister received a copy of Omnivore's Dilemma this last holiday season, and was reading (and ranting) about it for a lot of our holiday trip (and, yes, that was already deeply surreal on its own merits). I've been really happy with Pollan's 'Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.' essays, but Dilemma is frustrating to me because he spends an awful lot of time axe-grinding about corporations - There's an awfully strong current running through the book that the problem with Monsanto making food is that they're a corporation, and that somehow that's more important than the fact that the food that they're making isn't very high quality.
Oh, and let me recommend Jane Jacobs' Systems of Survival for some really good discussion about how people get tangled up when they talk about Agriculture. Short form - Agriculture is a business, but many people get very twitchy whenever it acts like a business. She discusses a bunch of both sides of that twitchiness.
Comments 2
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment