May 12, 2024 3 min read

MT. LEBANON – Michael Pollan says that while we may often feel like we don’t have a lot of individual power, we wield tremendous power at mealtimes.

“In food, we have the ability to choose,” according to Pollan. “And this is important.”

And when it comes to food and how we consume it, Pollan has become one of the most high-profile advocates for eating locally-sourced, organic food, and one of the most persistent critics of a food system that he says is at the root of the United States’ health problems.

“I think that it’s been very damaging to Americans,” Pollan explained Wednesday in the auditorium of Mt. Lebanon Middle School.

The 69-year-old professor of science and environmental journalism at the University of California, Berkeley was a guest in the Mt. Lebanon Public Library Speaker Series, which has the library bringing a big-name, bestselling author to the community every year. Pollan has won a wide national following over the last 20 years or so thanks to such books as “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “Food Rules.”

His advocacy for so-called “slow food,” consisting mostly of food purchased at farmers markets or grown in gardens and cooked at home, has won him many fans and some detractors, too. Pollan’s critics say he and other slow-food advocates don’t really appreciate the demands on Americans’ time and pocketbooks, and that subsisting entirely on organic, locally-sourced food is not really practical for the majority of Americans.

Nevertheless, Pollan suggested that meals in schools should have locally-sourced food, and that consumers can boycott restaurants and brands that engage in exploitative practices.

“These are very powerful companies that are no longer afraid of the government, but they are afraid of the consumer,” Pollan said.

He also said the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the “fragility” of the food system, as grocery store shelves became empty at its start and meat packers were forced to return to work through the Defense Production Act.

“It’s highly concentrated and very efficient if there are no glitches,” Pollan said. “Our food system has gotten too concentrated and anything like that shouldn’t be able to wield so much power.”

Pollan also believes that the cooking programs that have proliferated on cable networks and streaming services have actually done more harm than good.

“I think these shows destroyed cooking because they make it look really hard,” Pollan said. “It makes it look more daunting than it needs to be.”

Though he is most widely known as a food guru, Pollan has more recently turned his attention to psychedelic drugs. In his 2019 book, “How to Change Your Mind,” Pollan argues that drugs that have long been feared and derided, such as LSD, mescaline and psilocybin, can have beneficial effects in treating depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and other conditions, and that efforts to crack down on drugs that started in the 1970s with the administration of President Richard Nixon have hindered research.

Pollan recounted listening to a recording of cellist Yo-Yo Ma after taking LSD and called it “the most profound experience listening to music I’ve ever had.”

He added that his next book is going to be on consciousness.

“I worry it’s going to be one of those books where you know less at the end,” Pollan said.