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The Politics of Food: Changing the Way the World Eats -- with Michael Pollan

Event Date

  • 6/16/2009   6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
    Please arrive early for registration

Location

  • Marines' Memorial Theatre

Address

  • Marines' Memorial Club & Hotel
    609 Sutter Street
    San Francisco, California 94108
Speaker(s)
Michael Pollan, Author, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan is the author, most recently, of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. His previous book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post. It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James Beard Award for best food writing, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001); A Place of My Own (1997); and Second Nature (1991). A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, Pollan is the recipient of numerous journalistic awards, including the James Beard Award for best magazine series in 2003 and the Reuters-I.U.C.N. 2000 Global Award for Environmental Journalism. Pollan served for many years as executive editor of Harper’s Magazine and is now the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley. His articles have been anthologized in Best American Science Writing (2004); Best American Essays (1990 and 2003) and the Norton Book of Nature Writing.

Event Details

Michael Pollan believes that “real food”—the kind of food your great-grandmother would recognize as food—is being undermined across the globe by science on one side and the food industry on the other. As the modern Western or “American” diet has been linked to an epidemic of chronic diseases, from obesity and type 2 diabetes, what can governments and their citizens do to put the focus back on the health of the soil, plants, and animals that make up the food chain? Pollan joins the Council to explore what the industrialization of food and agriculture has meant for the world’s health and happiness, how it has shaped cultures, and looks at the growing movement to renovate the food system.

Watch or listen to the program recording or visit our online archive for other event recordings.