Michael Pollan | |
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.jpg) Pollan in 2022 | |
| Born | Michael Kevin Pollan (1955-02-06)February 6, 1955 (age 70) Long Island, New York, U.S. |
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| Spouse | Judith Belzer |
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| Website | michaelpollan |
Michael Kevin Pollan (/ˈpɒlən/; born February 6, 1955)[1] is an American journalist who is a professor and the first Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer atHarvard University.[2] Concurrently, he is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at theUC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism where in 2020 he cofounded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, in which he leads the public-education program.[3][4][5] Pollan is best known for his books that explore thesocio-cultural impacts of food, such asThe Botany of Desire andThe Omnivore's Dilemma.
Pollan was born to aJewish family onLong Island, New York.[6][7] He is the son of author and financial consultant Stephen Pollan and columnist Corky Pollan.[8]
After studying atMansfield College, Oxford, through 1975,[9][10][11] Pollan received a B.A. in English fromBennington College in 1977 and an M.A. in English fromColumbia University in 1981.[12]
InThe Botany of Desire, Pollan explores the concept ofco-evolution, specifically of humankind's evolutionary relationship with four plants—apples,tulips,marijuana, andpotatoes—from the dual perspectives of humans and the plants. He uses case examples that fit thearchetype of four basic human desires, demonstrating how each of thesebotanical species are selectively grown, bred, andgenetically engineered. The apple reflects the desire for sweetness, the tulip for beauty, marijuana for intoxication, and the potato for control.
Throughout the book, Pollan explores the narrative of his own experience with each of the plants, which he then intertwines with a well-researched exploration into their social history. Each section presents a unique element of human domestication, or the "human bumblebee" as Pollan calls it. These range from the true story ofJohnny Appleseed to Pollan's first-hand research with sophisticated marijuanahybrids inAmsterdam, to the alarming andparadigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes. Pollan is critical of industrial monoculture claiming it leads to crops less able to defend themselves against predators and requiring large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers which upsets the natural ecosystem.[citation needed]
InThe Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan describes four basic ways that human societies have obtained food: the current industrial system, the big organic operation, the local self-sufficient farm, and thehunter-gatherer. Pollan follows each of these processes—from a group of plantsphotosynthesizing calories through a series of intermediate stages, ultimately into a meal. Along the way, he suggests that there is a fundamental tension between the logic of nature and the logic of human industry, that the way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world, and that industrial eating obscures crucially important ecological relationships and connections. On December 10, 2006,The New York Times namedThe Omnivore's Dilemma one of the five best nonfiction books of the year. On May 8, 2007, theJames Beard Foundation namedThe Omnivore's Dilemma its 2007 winner for the best food writing. It was the book of focus for theUniversity of Pennsylvania's Reading Project in 2007, and the book of choice forWashington State University's Common Reading Program in 2009–10.
Pollan's discussion of the industrial food chain is in large part a critique of modernagribusiness. According to the book, agribusiness has lost touch with the natural cycles of farming, wherein livestock and crops intertwine in mutually beneficial circles. Pollan's critique of modern agribusiness focuses on what he describes as the overuse of corn for purposes ranging from fatteningcattle to massive production ofcorn oil,high-fructose corn syrup, and other corn derivatives. He describes what he sees as the inefficiencies and other drawbacks offactory farming and gives his assessment oforganic food production and what it is like to hunt and gather food. He blames those who set the rules (e.g., politicians in Washington, D.C., bureaucrats at theUnited States Department of Agriculture,Wall Street capitalists, and agriculturalconglomerates likeArcher Daniels Midland) of what he calls a destructive and precarious agricultural system that has wrought havoc upon the diet, nutrition, and well-being of Americans. Pollan finds hope inJoel Salatin'sPolyface Farm in Virginia, which he sees as a model ofsustainability in commercial farming. Pollan appears in thedocumentary filmKing Corn (2007).
Pollan's bookIn Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, released on January 1, 2008, explores the relationship with what he termsnutritionism and the Western diet, with a focus on late 20th century food advice given by the science community. Pollan holds that consumption of fat and dietary cholesterol does not lead to a higher rate of coronary disease, and that the reductive analysis of food into nutrient components is a mistake.
Throughout the book, Pollan questions the view that the point of eating is to promote health, pointing out that this attitude is not universal and that cultures that perceive food as having purposes of pleasure, identity, and sociality may end up with better health. He explains this seeming paradox by vetting, and then validating, the notion that nutritionism and, therefore, the whole Western framework through which we intellectualize the value of food is more a religious and faddish devotion to the mythology of simple solutions than a convincing and reliable conclusion of incontrovertible scientific research.
Pollan spends the rest of his book explicating his first three phrases: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He contends that most of what Americans now buy in supermarkets, fast food stores, and restaurants is not in fact food, and that a practical tip is to eat only those things that people of his grandmother's generation would have recognized as food.
In 2009,Food Rules: An Eater's Manual was published. This short work is a condensed version of his previous efforts, intended to provide a simple framework for a healthy andsustainable diet. It is divided into three sections, further explicating Pollan's principles of "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." It includes his rules (i.e., "let others sample your food" and "the whiter the bread, the sooner you'll be dead").
InCooked: A Natural History of Transformation, published in 2013, Pollan explores the methods by which cooks mediate "between nature and culture." The book is organized into four sections corresponding to theclassical elements of Fire (cooking with heat), Water (braising and boiling with pots), Air (breadmaking), and Earth (fermenting). The book also featuresSamin Nosrat, who later became known for the bestselling cookbookSalt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and as "the chef who taught Michael Pollan how to cook."[13] A 2016Netflix documentary series created byAlex Gibney is based on the book, starring Michael Pollan and Isaac Pollan.[14]
In 2018, Pollan wroteHow to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, a book about the history and future of psychedelic drugs. The book became a No. 1New York Times best-seller. He argues thatpsilocybin andLSD are not drugs that make people crazy, which he calls the biggest misconception people have about psychedelics,[15] but rather drugs that can help a person become "more sane" by, for example, eliminating a fear of death. While promoting his book on TV, he explained that along with LSD and psilocybin, his research included ingestingayahuasca and5-MeO-DMT, and that he experienced adissolution of ego.[16][17] Based on his 2018 book Pollan leads the way in the Netflix docuseriesHow to Change Your Mind exploring the history and uses of psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin,MDMA and mescaline.[18]
His bookThis Is Your Mind on Plants was released on July 6, 2021, and explores in particularopium,caffeine, andmescaline.[19] Pollan is trying to start a postwar on drugs conversation that better takes into account how different one drug is from another and figures out cultural containers for each of them, to use them safely and productively.[20] The book ends with a ceremony around the use of San Pedro (Echinopsis Pachanoi), a relatively fast growingAndeancactus that contains mescaline.[21][22]
Pollan is a contributing writer for theNew York Times Magazine and a former executive editor forHarper's Magazine. His first book,Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, was published in 1991.
Pollan has contributed toGreater Good, a social psychology magazine published by theGreater Good Science Center at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. His article "Edible Ethics" discusses the intersection of ethical eating andsocial psychology.
In his 1998 bookA Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder, Pollan methodically traced the design and construction of the out-building where he writes. The 2008 re-release of this book was re-titledA Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams.
Pollan wrote and narrated an audiobook, Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World, forAudible.com
In 2014, Pollan wrote the foreword in the healthy eating cookbookThe Pollan Family Table. The book is co-authored by his mother, Corky Pollan, and sisters, Lori Pollan, Dana Pollan, andTracy Pollan.
Pollan also co-starred in the documentary,Food, Inc. (2008), for which he was also a consultant. In 2010 Pollan was interviewed for the filmQueen of the Sun: What are the bees telling us?, a feature-length documentary abouthoney bees andcolony collapse disorder.[23] He was also interviewed forVanishing of the Bees, a documentary also about colony collapse, directed byMaryam Henein and George Langworthy. In 2015, a documentary version of Pollan's bookIn Defense of Food premiered on PBS.[24] In 2016, Netflix released a four-part documentary series, which was based on Pollan's book,Cooked (2013), and was directed byAlex Gibney.
Starting November 2022, he teaches an online subscriptionMasterClass course on Intentional Eating.[25]
In 2015, Pollan received the Washburn Award from the Boston Museum of Science, awarded annually to "an individual who has made an outstanding contribution toward public understanding and appreciation of science and the vital role it plays in our lives"[26] and was named as a fellow at theRadcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.[27]
In 2016, Pollan received a honorary degree from theUniversity of Gastronomic Sciences[28]
He has also won the James Beard Leadership award,[29] theReuters World Conservation Union Global Awards in environmental journalism, theJames Beard Foundation Awards for best magazine series in 2003, and theGenesis Award from the Humane Society of the United States. His articles have been anthologized inBest American Science Writing (2004),Best American Essays (1990 and 2003),The Animals: Practicing Complexity (2006), and theNorton Book of Nature Writing (1990). In 2008, Pollan received theWashington University International Humanities Medal.[30]
In theAmerican Enterprise Institute's magazine, Blake Hurst argues that Pollan offers a shallow assessment of factory farming that does not take cost into account.[31] Daniel Engber criticized Pollan inSlate for arguing that food is too complex a subject to study scientifically and blamingreductionism for today's health ills, while using nutritional research to justify his own diet advice. Engber likened Pollan's "anti-scientific method" to the rhetoric used by health gurus who peddle diet scams.[32]
Pollan's work has also been discussed and criticized byJonathan Safran Foer in his non-fiction bookEating Animals.Foer criticizes Pollan's argument regarding table-fellowship. According to Foer, Pollan claims that a vegetarian dinner guest causes socially reprimandable inconvenience for the host. Foer responds that in the year 2010 it is easier for hosts to accommodate vegetarians than locavores as hosts will need to do extensive research to find (expensive) non factory-farmed meat.[33]
Pollan has been accused byJon Entine, who supports GMOs (genetically modified organisms), of using his influence to promote "anti-GMOjunk science". A number of scientists and journalists have similarly characterized Pollan's work as biased against GMOs. For example, after Pollan posted a tweet that was critical of aNew York Times article on GMOs, U.C. Berkeley biologistMichael Eisen posted a tweet calling Pollan's comment "a new low even in Pollan's 'anti-GMO crusade'".[34][35] In response to Pollan's statement that GMOs have been one "tremendous disappointment," food writer James Cooper criticized Pollan's tendency to cite poor or selected scientific sources.[36]
In 2014, Pollan co-hosted a discussion and informal debate on the topic of genetic modification atUC Berkeley featuring prominent plant geneticistPamela Ronald, professor atUC Davis, whose research-based position "strongly disagrees with Pollan’s view that G.M.O. crops, broadly, are failing."[37] ANew Yorker reporter observed that Pollan's largely anti-GMO student base at the discussion itself constituted, "a kind of monoculture," yet that Pollan sought "to introduce an invasive species" by engaging Ronald. The event, while predictably contentious, reportedly produced a rare instance of courteous, productive exchange between the two main sharply-opposed viewpoints on genetically-modified crops.[37]
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