75 Quotes by Michael Pollan about Food

  • Author Michael Pollan
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    It's brutal out there. A bear will eat a lactating ewe alive, starting with her udders. as a rule, animals in the wild don't get good deaths surrounded by their loved ones.

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  • Author Michael Pollan
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    As long as one egg looks pretty much like another, all the chickens like chicken, and beef beef, the substitution of quantity for quality will go unnoticed by most consumers, but it is becoming increasingly apparent to anyone with an electron microscope or a mass spectrometer that, truly, this is not the same food.

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  • Author Michael Pollan
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    We show our surprise at this by speaking of something called the “French paradox,” for how could a people who eat such demonstrably toxic substances as foie gras and triple crème cheese actually be slimmer and healthier than we are? Yet I wonder if it doesn’t make more sense to speak in terms of an American paradox—that is, a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily.

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  • Author Michael Pollan
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    So much about life in a global economy feels as though it has passed beyond the individual's control--what happens to our jobs, to the prices at the gas station, to the vote in the legislature. But somehow food still feels a little different. We can still decide, every day, what we're going to put into our bodies, what sort of food chain we want to participate in. We can, in other words, reject the industrial omelet on offer and decide to eat another.

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  • Author Michael Pollan
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    Most recipes try to rush the process, promising to wrap things up & get the dish on the table in a couple of hours. These days recipes are steeped in the general sense of panic about time & so have tried to speed things up, the better to suit our busy lives.

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  • Author Michael Pollan
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    Is there any more feudal, soul eradiating experience than standing before the little window on a microwave oven watching the carousel slowly revolve your frozen block of dinner? Time spent this way might be easier than cooking but it is not enjoyable & surely not ennobling. It is to feel spiritually unemployed, useless to self & humanity.

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  • Author Michael Pollan
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    Don't you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?

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