Michael Pollan Speaks to Kalamazoo Community

Michael Pollan, best-selling author and journalism professor at UC, Berkley, addressed a jam-packed Miller Auditorium last Thursday night. The Kalamazoo Community Foundation invited Pollan to talk with the Kalamazoo community about the importance of creating a healthy food system.

After the standard comments about the Glenn Miller song and Derek Jeter, Pollan presented his theme for the night: cooking.

Rather than vaguely covering the plethora of issues that plague our food system, Pollan focused on the one activity, the one essential skill that makes us distinct from other species. “Externalizing part of the digestion process,” or, more simply put, cooking.

The average American spends 27 minutes per day cooking. [If that sounds too high an estimation, which is scary in itself, consider that the market researchers’ definition of cooking is combining two or more ingredients. Making a peanut butter sandwich qualifies as cooking.]

According to Pollan, we’ve outsourced this innate and sensual process of preparing our nourishment.  He puts part of the blame on big food corporations who brought the daily activity of the home kitchen into the factory. As American citizens, particularly women, began to spend more time in the workplace a market opened up for convenience eating.

The commercial food industry seized the opportunity, and our food started to be ‘cooked’ in incomprehensible quantities, with the cheapest ingredients and most appealing packaging. But, as the consumers and demanders, we can’t blame the producers entirely. “We are all complicit in this system,” Pollan noted. 

He admitted that the ‘foodie’ movement annoys him as much as anybody at times, but he sees it as benign excitement. Excitement about remembering this innate practice that is so sustaining and life-giving. 

Carrie Pickett-Erway, President/CEO of the Kalamazoo Community Foundation,  selected several questions from the over 100 submitted. When asked how to make healthy food more accessible to low-income populations, Pollan said, “Well, we could start by paying them more!” Applause rippled from the audience.

It’s not about bringing local food costs down; “Your local farmer is not getting rich.” It’s about reexamining our government subsidies and restructuring our ‘living wage’.

Pollan thinks the next wave of the food movement will happen at the institutional level. It’s all about procurement; where are you buying the food you’re buying. “Corporations and institutions have incredible power to change the system.”

Pollan’s talk brought the systemic food crisis to a basic, personal level. What can we all do now to make a difference in the way we eat? Make a difference in the way we eat.