The Cheapest Calories Make You the Fattest

[Guest guest]

Interview: Michael Pollan

The Cheapest Calories Make You the Fattest

A " food-chain journalist " looks for stories in our meals.

interview by Helen Wagenvoord

Sierra Magazine September/October 2004

a publication of the Sierra Club (http://www.sierraclub.org)

 

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200409/interview.asp

 

 

Why are Americans so fat? According to Michael Pollan, it's not just

supersized portions and sedentary lifestyles that make obesity the

second-highest cause of preventable death in the United States. It's corn.

 

When exploring the causes of the obesity epidemic, Pollan, a contributing

editor to the New York Times Magazine and proponent of " food-chain

journalism, " focused on the subsidized overproduction of corn. One result

is a surfeit of high-fructose corn syrup, which accounts for 20 percent of

the daily calories of many children.

 

Our dependence on maize, he explains, is an environmental problem as much

as a public-health one: " Modern corn hybrids are the greediest of plants,

demanding more nitrogen fertilizers than any other crop. Runoff from these

chemicals finds its way into groundwater and into the Mississippi River and

the Gulf of Mexico, where it has already killed off marine life in a

12,000-square-mile area. "

 

Pollan's best-selling book, The Botany of Desire, was published in 2001. He

teaches writing at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School

of Journalism.

 

Sierra: How has your work influenced your eating habits?

 

Pollan: When you learn about the industrial food system, certain foods

become unappetizing. Now that I know how supermarket meat is made, I regard

eating it as a somewhat risky proposition. I know how those animals live

and what's on their hides when they go to slaughter, so I don't buy

industrial meat. I won't say I don't ever eat it because I don't reject

things people serve to me; I respect the host-guest relationship, to the

point that it can override my environmental ethic or sense of personal safety.

 

At home I serve the kind of food I know the story behind. My work has also

motivated me to put a lot of time into seeking out good food and to spend

more money on it. It's a worthwhile thing to do from a selfish point of

view--it's invariably fresher, better food--as well as from an altruistic

point of view.

 

Sierra: It doesn't seem to be making you fat.

 

Pollan: High-quality food is better for your health. When you go to the

grocery store, you find that the cheapest calories are the ones that are

going to make you the fattest--the added sugars and fats in processed

foods. The correlation between poverty and obesity can be traced to

agricultural policies and subsidies.

 

Corn is an efficient way to get energy calories off the land and soybeans

are an efficient way of getting protein off the land, so we've designed a

food system that produces a lot of cheap corn and soybeans resulting in a

lot of cheap fast food. The added sugar in our diet is coming from corn,

and the added fat is coming partly from corn but mostly from soybean oil.

Everything at McDonald's is, in some shape or form, a product of corn

and/or soybeans.

 

Sierra: Both of those crops are now widely grown in genetically modified

versions. Do they provide any benefits?

 

Pollan: Genetically modified organisms are a tool, and tools help you do

what you want to do. So what is it we want to do? We need to stop spraying

so much pesticide. Are GMOs the only way to do that? No. There are other

ways: We can plant a polyculture instead of a monoculture, for instance.

But Monsanto doesn't like that strategy because it wants to sell as much of

its product as possible. So far, GMOs have mainly been a way to sell more

Roundup herbicide.

 

The first generation of GMO products offered the consumer nothing. The food

was not cheaper, and it was still grown with pesticides--and in some cases

required even more pesticides. In the late 1990s, the companies told me

about this second generation of products that was going to provide superior

nutrition. Where are they?

 

We still have the same crops that were rolled out in 1996. It suggests that

either the capital to do research and development is drying up, or they've

found it's harder than they thought to make these more complex products

work. Either way, the industry is on the ropes. I don't think in ten years

we'll be talking about GMOs. I can easily see the industry withering away.

 

Sierra: Can corporate agriculture be reformed?

 

Pollan: There already has been reform. Perhaps more than any other, the

food industry is very sensitive to consumer demand. Every major food

company now has an organic division. There's more capital going into

organic agriculture than ever before. If consumers make good choices, the

industry will respond. Will it be everything we hope? Probably not.

 

They didn't come up with organic, after all. That came from small farmers

and consumers working together in relative obscurity. We need to sustain a

noncorporate food chain to serve as the antennae for culture and

agriculture. Whatever works will be picked up by the larger companies.

 

Sierra: You've expressed mixed feelings, though, about large food

corporations jumping on the organic bandwagon.

 

Pollan: It's a very mixed bag. If you have organic Coca-Cola you're still

feeding people junk and making them fat. Additionally, the high-fructose

corn syrup used in it would still probably come from a monoculture of corn.

When you go to monoculture you've got huge problems with pests, weeds, and

pathogens, so you'd become very dependent on organic pesticides and

fertilizers. On the other hand, if thousands of acres of corn in America

will no longer be sprayed with the notorious herbicide atrazine, that is a

good thing.

 

The answer to either/or questions is " both " : We need corporate organic and

we need true organic. When Wal-Mart and McDonald's start selling organic

food, it will drive down the price to farmers and risk growing a new

monoculture. On the other hand, the whole country will be educated about

the virtues of eating organic food. So the center will move, which is how

change always comes to this country.

 

When the choice comes down to industrial organic or local, I opt for the

local, because it supports much more than good agricultural practice. It

also tends to support polyculture, since local farms are usually

diversified, and it helps to stop suburban sprawl by keeping small farms in

business.

 

Sierra: That sounds like the " Slow Food " movement.

 

Pollan: People in Slow Food understand that food is an environmental issue.

They're interested in the biodiversity of crop plants and food animals, and

understand that the culture surrounding food is vitally important, just

getting people to sit down together for meals and eat as families. Why

don't we pay more attention to who our farmers are? We would never be as

careless choosing an auto mechanic or a babysitter as we are about who

grows our food. Slow Food is nurturing a culture that demands that

information.

 

There's been progress toward seeing that nature and culture are not

opposing terms, and that wilderness is not the only kind of landscape for

environmentalists to concern themselves with. That's very encouraging for

someone whose stock-in-trade is ideas. It's heartening to see that these

conversations, this sort of writing, can have an effect on how people look

at, and decide what to do with, a piece of land. I have had the good

fortune to see how my articles have directly benefited some farmers and

helped build markets for their products in a way that preserves land from

development. That makes me a hopeless optimist.

 

 

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Helen Wagenvoord is a writer in Oakland, California.