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Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan Quotes

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Famous Michael Pollan Quotes

“The great edifice of variety and choice that is an American supermarket turns out to rest on a remarkably narrow biological foundation comprised of a tiny group of plants that is dominated by a single species: Zea mays, a giant tropical grass most Americans know as corn... Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and, provided you know the chemical name it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and xanthan gum, read: corn... There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn. This goes for the nonfood items as well... And us?”

CornZea Mays
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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“One would expect to find a comparatively high proportion of carbon 13 [the carbon from corn] in the flesh of people whose staple food of choice is corn - Mexicans, most famously. Americans eat much more wheat than corn - 114 pounds of wheat flour per person per year, compared to 11 pounds of corn flour. The Europeans who colonized America regarded themselves as wheat people, in contrast to the native corn people they encountered; wheat in the West has always been considered the most refined, or civilized, grain. If asked to choose, most of us would probably still consider ourselves wheat people, though by now the whole idea of identifying with a plant at all strikes us as a little old-fashioned. Beef people sounds more like it, though nowadays chicken people, which sounds not nearly so good, is probably closer to the truth of the matter. But carbon 13 doesn't lie, and researchers who compared the carbon isotopes in the flesh or hair of Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn. 'When you look at the isotope ratios,' Todd Dawson, a Berkeley biologist who's done this sort of research, told me, 'we North Americans look like corn chips with legs.' Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar. So that's us: processed corn, walking.”

Corn
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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“Corn is what feeds the steer that becomes the steak. Corn feeds the chicken and the pig, the turkey, and the lamb, the catfish and the tilapia and, increasingly, even the salmon, a carnivore by nature that the fish farmers are reengineering to tolerate corn. The eggs are made of corn. The milk and cheese and yogurt, which once came from dairy cows that grazed on grass, now typically comes from Holsteins that spend their working lives indoors tethered to machines, eating corn. Head over to the processed foods and you find ever more intricate manifestations of corn. A chicken nugget, for example, piles up corn upon corn: what chicken it contains consists of corn, of course, but so do most of a nugget's other constituents, including the modified corn starch that glues the things together, the corn flour in the batter that coats it, and the corn oil in which it gets fried. Much less obviously, the leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di-, and triglycerides, the attractive gold coloring, and even the citric acid that keeps the nugget "fresh" can all be derived from corn. To wash down your chicken nuggets with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket have been sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) -- after water, corn sweetener is their principal ingredient. Grab a beer for you beverage instead and you'd still be drinking corn, in the form of alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn. Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and, provided you know the chemical names it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and xanthan gum, read: corn. Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise and mustard, the hot dogs and the bologna, the margarine and shortening, the salad dressings and the relishes and even the vitamins. (Yes, it's in the Twinkie, too.) There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn. This goes for the nonfood items as well: Everything from the toothpaste and cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash bags, cleansers, charcoal briquettes, matches, and batteries, right down to the shine on the cover of the magazine that catches your eye by the checkout: corn. Even in Produce on a day when there's ostensibly no corn for sale, you'll nevertheless find plenty of corn: in the vegetable wax that gives the cucumbers their sheen, in the pesticide responsible for the produce's perfection, even in the coating on the cardboard it was shipped in. Indeed, the supermarket itself -- the wallboard and joint compound, the linoleum and fiberglass and adhesives out of which the building itself has been built -- is in no small measure a manifestation of corn.”

CornAmerican CultureObesityFast FoodBig BusinessAmericansAgribusinessObesity EpidemicYou Are What You EatHfcsGeorge McgovernNixon AdministrationCorn Corn CornIt S All About The CornSolyent Green Is Corn
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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“Corn is the hero of its own story, and though we humans played a crucial supporting role in its rise to world domination, it would be wrong to suggest we have been calling the shots, or acting always in our own best interests. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that corn has succeeded in domesticating us.”

WorldBelieveHumansHas BeensReasonStoriesWould BeInterestActingRolesHeroCallingShotsPlantCrucialDominationCornWorld DominationSupporting RolesCalling The Shots
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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“There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn. This goes for the nonfood items as well: Everything from the toothpaste and cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash bags, cleansers, charcoal briquettes, matches, and batteries, right down to the shine on the cover of the magazine that catches your eye by the checkout: corn.”

WellsEyeFiveThousandShiningAverageMagazinesBagsFortyQuartersItemsTrashCornCosmeticsBatteriesSupermarketsDiapersDisposableShine OnToothpasteCharcoalCheckouts
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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“To wash down your chicken nuggets with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket have been sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.”

Has BeensDrinkFruitChickensCornSupermarketsSodaSyrupNuggetsSoft DrinksChicken NuggetsCorn Syrup
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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“There's a lot of research that suggests that organic yields are close or superior to conventional yields depending on factors like climate. In a drought year an organic field of corn will yield more - considerably more - than a conventional field; organic fields hold moisture better so they don't need as much water. It simply isn't true that organic yields are lower than conventional yields.”

NeedsYearsWaterFieldsResearchClimateSuperiorsFactorsYieldConventionalCornDroughtMoisture
Author:Michael Pollan
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“It's estimated that about 30 percent of the increase in grain prices could be attributed to the decision to embrace biofuels, particularly corn-based ethanol. It has done nothing for climate change and the business is in real trouble now with the collapse of oil prices. It's completely dependent on a dollar subsidy and tariff from the government.”

RealDoneGovernmentDecisionTroublePercentIncreaseEmbraceDollarsClimateClimate ChangeOilDependentCollapseGrainCornSubsidiesTariffsEthanolOil PriceBiofuels
Author:Michael Pollan
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“But carbon 13 [the carbon from corn] doesn't lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn.... Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar. So that's us: processed corn, walking.”

PeopleStillsTodayLyingAnimalHairWalkingFleshGrassDietsReportsSugarCarbonFeedingCornResearchersProteinTissuesBeveragesLivestockSacrilegeTrue PeopleIsotopes
Author:Michael Pollan
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“You may not think you eat a lot of corn and soybeans, but you do: 75 percent of the vegetable oils in your diet come from soy (representing 20 percent of your daily calories) and more than half of the sweeteners you consume come from corn (representing around 10 perecent of daily calories).”

ThinkingMayHalfPercentOilDietsVegetablesCornRepresentingCaloriesSoySoybeansSweeteners
Book:In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
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“Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest.”

InspirationalCountryMotivationalPresidentFoodHealthHealthyRiversBillsFarmsCornAlarmsSurgeonsObesityEpidemicsSigningCaloriesSupermarketsCarrotsHealthy EatingHealthy DietSyrupCorn Syrup
Book:The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World
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“Organic Oreos are not a health food. When Coca-Cola begins selling organic Coke, as it surely will, the company will have struck a blow for the environment perhaps, but not for our health. Most consumers automatically assume that the word "organic" is synomymous with health, but it makes no difference to your insulin metabolism if the high-fructose corn syrup in your soda is organic.”

IfsDifferencesCompanyEnvironmentAssumingBlowSellingConsumersCornCokeSodaMetabolismCoca ColaHealth FoodSyrupInsulinOreosCorn Syrup
Book:In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
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“American farmers produced 600 more calories per person per day in 2000 than they did in 1980. But some calories got cheaper than others: Since 1980, the price of sweeteners and added fats (most of them derived, respectively, from subsidized corn and subsidized soybeans), dropped 20 percent, while the price of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent.”

PersonsPercentFruitFatsFarmersVegetablesCornCheaperCaloriesFruits And VegetablesSoybeansSweeteners
Book:In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
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