The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Food, Inc. and More...

These are such important issues, which I hope you will consider sharing with others. Peace ~ Molly

Review of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals: http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php
"The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us."

Michael Pollan on Bill Moyers Journal: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11282008/profile.html
"In October 2008, Pollan wrote to the prospective presidents about just how far food policy reaches into our world — from national security to the rise of diabetes. In his "An Open Letter to the Farmer in Chief," Pollan gave the next occupant a 'heads up' about an issue that hadn't made any noise on the very noisy campaign trail:
[Y]ou will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation's food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention...[Y]ou will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them."

NY Times review "Deconstructing Dinner": http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/books/review/23kamp.html
"Nowhere is this anxiety more acute, Pollan says, than in the United States. Wealth, abundance and the lack of a steadying, centuries-old food culture have conspired to make us Americans dysfunctional eaters, obsessed with getting thin while becoming ever more fat, lurching from one specious bit of dietary wisdom (margarine is better for you than butter) to another (carbs kill). Pollan diagnoses a "national eating disorder," and he aims to shed light on both its causes and some potential solutions. To this end, he embarks on four separate eating adventures, each of which starts at the very beginning — in the soil from which the raw materials of his dinners will emerge — and ends with a cooked, finished meal."

Video "Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFpjskn3_Pc

Video "FOOD NEWS: Michael Pollan: In Defense Of Food": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWg0cCNAB-M&feature=fvw

Food Inc., the movie (playing in theaters in many places): http://www.foodincmovie.com/

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"Eating well, he (Pollan) finds, can be a pleasurable way to change the world.”
—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation

As "Time" magazine recently put: farm policy is "a welfare program for the megafarms that use the most fuel, water and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals; and depopulate rural America."

~ from Bill Moyers Journal

"We have a serious epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, diet-related cancers. All these chronic diseases which is now what kills us basically pretty reliably in America are adding more than $250 billion a year to healthcare costs. They are the reason that this generation just being born now is expected to have a shorter lifespan than their parents, that one in three Americans born in the year 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control, will have type 2 diabetes, which is a really serious sentence. It takes several years off your life. It gives you an 80 percent chance of heart disease. It means you are going to be spending $14,000 a year in added health costs. So this is about how we're eating."

~ Michael Pollan