evan smith is provided in part by hillco partners. texas government consultanty and hillco health. fn fn and also by the mattsson mchale foundation in support of public television. and by mfi foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. and also by the alice kleburg reynolds foundation and viewers like you. thank you. >> i'm evan smith, he's a professor of journalism at u.c. berkeley. i thinker and lecturer named by "time" as one of the most influential people in the word. a friend to healthy eating and sustainable diet. a foe to fast food and big beef. he's michael pol an. this is overheard. >> is this a vote you want

back. >> because you are a judge doesn't mean you are free. >> when they take your name in vain just ... >> for the larger mission in your mind is not about whether the death penalty is safe but whether it is admitted is safe. >> michael pollan, welcome. >> thank you evan. >> so nice to have you here. >> good to be here. >> can we talk about food safety first? >> uh sure, we can start there. >> so we just had a food safety bill passed by congress, the most meaningful change in food safety legislation, as i understand it, since 1938? >> yeah, at least, yeah. >> and you were involved in this to some degree as an advocate? >> yeah i did get involved. um you know we have a tremendous food safety problem. we've had and we had a great illustration last summer when a half a billion eggs had to be recalled >> right. >> because they had sickened a couple thousand people with salmonella. and we learned then that the uh the fda had never inspected these giant hen houses and that they were just filthy, vermin-infested and um you

know a really risky way to produce food and this is happening routinely in america today. >> right. >> and the fda had no power um they do not believe it or not have the power right now to recall contaminated food. >> they have to every recall of food is voluntary. you can encourage the company to do it but you can't make them whereas a toy or a car, they can recall it. >> right or a drug. >> or a drug, exactly. >> right. >> so they they so this was a bill uh to give power to the fda to do that, more inspections, uh more preventive measures basically. and also, very, very significantly um imported food right now is subject to um virtually no regulation, virtually no inspections. >> right. >> and now a tremendous proportion of our food i don't know how much it is, it's 20 or 30%, is coming from overseas, a lot of it from china where there's been enormous issues with contamination. so this would, this would subject uh imported food to the

same standards as our food. so it was a really important thing to get done and um >> as an illustration of how important it was, it was bipartisan! >> it was, yeah. >> they don't agree on anything >> the vote in the senate >> and they and they got more than 70 votes right? >> 75 to 23 in the senate >> right. >> uh which was really impressive um so you know i think it was a big deal. it was very controversial in the food movement um and in fact you had two wings of the food movement >> hm. >> in conflict about it. you have and the food movement's a big, baggy, messy movement. i mean to call it a movement i think i'm alone -- i'm actually the only person who actually calls it a movement [laughs] 'cause i think it is one. but you have these you know you have activists very concerned about food safety basically located in the consumer groups like consumers union and and uh groups like that and then you have sustainable farming advocates uh and then there's school lunch and then there's um uh you know organic farming i mean grass-based agriculture, there are all these different elements. >> right. >> local farmers would be exempt from the restrictions.

>> this amendment made it into the bill. this is an issue that affects every single person in every state, every congressional district. >> we all have a dog in this. an organic farmer himself, a rancher played an important role in this, i think he represents the food movement he craft the amendment and i think there are good protections for small farms that this will not i one of the ironies is one of the things driving the interest in local food is safety.

the animal protein movements have all been responses to food scares and food safety problems. this begins a lot of this and the various e. coli outbreaks in the '80s. so to have the alternative to industrial food crushed because we're trying to regulate industrial food would have been a horrible irony. >> terrible irony. i think we will be ok. there is still a lot of tea party wing of the food movement. [laughter]. >> they all wear three-cornered hats? what does that mean? >> fierce libertarians that don't want the government anywhere. >> anywhere. >> they're out fighting this and on the grounds that the bill will criminalize the backyard gardening, none of which is true. so there is a lot of -- >> kind of like the death panels of food.

>> in a sense. >> there are people talking about this. >> i heard you interviewed -- it must have been that little window between obama's election and obama's inaugurati inauguration, two years ago. >> two years ago. this is when they were still talking about um agricultural secretary michael pollan. >>yeah what a crazy idea. >> there was there was a thought that maybe they would turn to someone like you. in fact, they turned to to now-secretary vilsack who was formally governor vilsack of iowa who i believe actually may have been a farmer or had some connection to the farming industry himself. >>uh he eats i think uh >> is that what it is? [laughter] >>[laughs] >> well in that respect we are all farmers is that right? >>[laughs] >> so you you uh in declining the overtures of some to go into the administration now uh have sat outside and watched how the last two years have gone. >>yeah. >> has this been a good administration for food and for food consumers? >>much better than the previous. uh i mean i think that there are some really important things that they've done. >> yeah. >>um i don't want to over-state them 'cause they're they're they're still not major; they don't constitute any kind of major reform. >> yeah. >>but um this food safety bill, very, very important progress

um and it needs we nee by the way, this doesn't even affect meat; this only affect um produce and eggs and things like that. uh meat we have to deal with the usda on. um one of the the the fallacies of the food safety system is it's it's it's 17 different agencies have a hand in it and that's still true. >> right. >>um child nutrition uh they they just passed and will be signing next week a a very good bill to raise the standards of school lunch nationally um to get junk food out of the schools. >> this has been a big issue for you as well right? >>yeah. it's and and that's a big victory >> right. >> um and both obamas worked very hard on that and and that is uh you know i think it's a big deal. um there's not enough money in it. i think it's got 5 or 10 billion dollars over so many years which comes to about a half an apple per kid per day i think um >> every little bit helps. >> yeah but every little bit helps and but the main thing is the standards, the new standards um that you won't be able to have vending machines full of junk food in schools and i think that's very important.

>> yeah. >>um and then on other areas, there's been a lot of uh support for the local food economy um more money for farm-to-school uh programs, more money for farmers markets um.. >> well in fact mrs. obama herself has planted a vegetable garden right? >>she's >> i mean she's the embodiment of this movement. >> and i was gonna say yeah she in a way she has done the most in terms of advancing the conversation about healthy eating. uh the garden i think was an enormously important symbol and it and it sparked a a a renaissance of home gardening. >> right. >>and she has kind of uh put a put a spotlight on this issue that i think has been really important. >> yeah. >>and uh first ladies have a way to you know have an ability to do that and i think she's trying to redefine our sen in the same way laura bush said that you know reading to your kids is a really important part of being a good parent um simple message but a powerful message coming from a you know uncontroversial person. um michelle obama is is is really making the point that being a good parent is not giving your kid the happy meal >> right. >> but it's cooking a meal at

home and and and healthy foods. so i think that's that's very important. you know, have they tackled the subsidy system? no. they haven't th they made a little bit of a hint, a faint in that direction and backed way off. maybe in the next budget they will >> well but he talked about it though during the campaign >>he did. >> and right away he said, "look you know if you're making two and a half million dollars a year as a farmer you probably don't need subsidies" but in fact they haven't made much progress because the lobby in favor of keeping those subsidies . >>yeah, powerful. >> a pretty pretty powerful lobby. >>yeah. it's you you're up against the whole food system because in fact the real lovers of subsidies are not farmers so much as uh big agribusiness processors >> agribusiness right. >> because they like cheap raw materials. >> right. >>i mean that's that's the, you know, that's the foundation of their their their business model. um but maybe we'll see some work on that. i mean as i see it vilsack and the usda are basically doing their best to placate everybody. so they're doing a certain amount of things very friendly to the food movement, making a lot of nice noises about local food and and actually helping um

that food economy. on the on the other hand if you look closely they're appointing you know people very close to monsanto to really important trade jobs and very important uh uh so they're taking care of industrial agriculture on the other side. >> yeah. >>so they're having it you know they're trying to have it both ways and politically i understand that. >> yeah. >>there's not i don't think obama has enough wind at his back yet politically to make radical changes in the food system. >> now now so many people think that when you talk about food you're just talking about literally food. but you've actually made a point over the years of of connecting the dots between food and climate change, food and national security >>yeah. >> food and education, you alluded to that through school nutrition. the the impact of the stuff that we're talking about, which may seem at first blush small, is actually enormous. >>yeah well food is you know look, food is the biggest industry um that we have, food is the our most important engagement with the natural world. >> mm-hm. >>we affect nature, the environment, more through our eating choices than anything else we do. i mean if you think about it, the landscape has been remade entirely, worldwide, by agriculture. um we the the the biggest contributor to climate change is the food system broadly considered when you include moving food around, processing food, growing food. um the uh and the composition of species on the planet, the species that have thrived, cattle, pigs, chickens um are the ones that we eat and the species that are languishing are the ones that, many of which, interfere with what we wanna

eat >> right. >> wolves and things like that. so so you know if you wanna talk about the environment you have >> let's explain briefly how it impacts those three things i mentioned, so education >>sure. >> national security and climate change. so education first, you again alluded to school nutrition, a a better and more nutritious set of meals at schools make students better students. >>yeah well and it's also a big part of of nutritional component of their day is the meal they get at school. >> right, right. >>it's our biggest food uh program for the poor is is school meals, breakfasts and lunches and >> you've argued that they maybe should take the school lunch program out of the usda >>yeah. >> and put it into the education department. >>right or the health department. >> right. >>because food is food is too important to leave to the usda whose whose main goal is to advance is is basically to get rid of the agricultural surplus [chuckles]. >> right. >>and they've and that's how they've looked at the school lunch program. oh we've got too

much cheese? we'll dump it on the kids. we've got too much you know ground beef? you know they they they buy up surpluses. or last year when pork prices collapsed they bought all this pork from the big pork producers and then they push it through the system. they're basically treating our our kids as a dispose-all for agricultural surplus and so nutritional standards are not front-and-center. >> right. >>so i think there's a huge conflict of interest between the usda's goal which is to get rid of food >> right. >> and their other goal which is to promote health. >> okay. how about national security? talk about that. >>well in a couple ways. um you know listen to secretary of defense gates. he can't find enough soldiers 'cause of the obesity problem. um you know thousands of uh of of soldiers were discharged last year because they're not um they're not fit; they're too fat or they have type 2 diabetes, there all these kind of chronic diseases that >> right. >> that people in their 20s now get that people used to get much later. that's one part of it. um the other part of it is that our food system is an oil-based

system. when you're eating from this industrial food chain, you're actually eating lots of oil. it takes oil to make that beef um because of uh the oil to make the fertilizer to grow the corn to feed the animals, the oil to process it, the oil to move it around the country and so you know to the extent we've become oil-dependent and that drives our national security more than just about any other issue, it's a food problem. >> yeah. >>um and the the irony is it's easier to fix in food than a lot of places. um i mean it is theoretically a solar technology right? >> yeah. >>it depends on photosynthesis which is the only free lunch in nature. [laughter] >> right that's true, still. >>and so we we've taken this system, it's kind of weird though i mean food you know growing something, if you go back before 1940, if you put a calorie of fossil fuel energy into a farm, and you know calories right are just measures of energy whether you're talking about food or oil, for every calorie of fossil fuel energy you put into growing food, in the form of diesel for your tractor or whatever, you got out 2.3 calories of food. that's the free lunch; that 1.3 calories is the bonus that's

coming down every day. >> yeah. >>well now when you in eat industrial processed food or or feedlot meat, it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to get 1 calorie so of food so that is a there's unsustainability, there's a very good definition. you can't keep doing that very long. so squeezing the oil out of the food system is... >> is a national security goal and an environmental goal. >> now i'm assuming climate change ties back to agribusiness. is that right? >>climate change is affected by agriculture in many different ways. >> yeah. >>one is the amount of fossil fuel that goes into it. um the other is uh deforestation um big problem. we're seeing this in uh south america now >> right. >> but all over the world. you know most of the greenhouse gas that's been introduced by humankind over the centuries is a result of deforestation. >> yeah. >>um there is also the uh the fertilizers uh nitrous um uh nitrogen fertilizer is a is a big greenhouse gas. >> right. >>methane from animal production, a very powerful greenhouse gas. >> right. >>um our feedlots are are just exhaling greenhouse gas >> so so so presumably many

of these problems would be also problems for smaller farms, for family farms, but the scale of agribusiness would make the problems greater. >>well yes and no. i mean it is a scale issue but there are ways to grow food that actually that we have today that actually sequester more carbon than they release, i mean organic farming for example builds up carbon in the soil. it's a it's a it's a wonderful sink uh for carbon. um pasture livestock production where you're .you're moving animals around and uh um you know every day and they're grazing a different section. you're stimulating lots of uh carbon sequestration. >> yeah. >>um so there are actually ways to reorganize agriculture that would have the opposite effect; they could actually contribute to the solution of climate change. um one estimate says that if if all the agriculture in the country were organic it would sequester something like 25% of anthropogenic um greenhouse gas. >> why are we not doing more of that? why is agribusiness not moving to these uh more

earth-friendly, environment-friendly methods? >>well because there's no penalty for not doing it for them. >> and the co and the cost to them of doing it the old way is better than the cost of doing it the new way. >>yeah the system works very well for them. >> economics. >>although...although there are signs of that changing. i mean i think wal-mart kind of has woken up to the fact that we have to get oil out of the food system. >> right. well i wanted to ask you about that. you you've been i don't mean this in a negative way but you're very good at identifying villains and have identified villains over the years. tell me about some heroes. give give me one or two corporate interests who are actually headed in theeright direction, who we can feel good about? >>corporate interests? >> corporate. >>uh [laughs] [laughter] well i'm very encouraged >> take take a minute if you have to. [laughter] >>[laughs] no it's not that hard. >> yeah. >>um i think wal-mart is a very interesting example. um wal-mart is uh has made i think their commitment to sustainability, environmental sustainability has been sincere uh and they've done some very positive things. they've now decided to look at their food chain >> yeah. >> uh supply chain and see if they can't drive a lot of fossil fuel use out of that and what they've come up with is

basically a a redesign of their distribution network to be more regional and less national. um and they, like a lot of people, had a wake-up call in 2008 when we had that big spike in fuel prices. you know the price of getting a box of broccoli from the salinas valley to the hunts point market in new york went from $3 to $10. that was you know a big deal in the food >> sure. >> in the food industry. >> sure. >>in fact, some of the salinas growers started leasing land in new jersey to grow food there. um it didn't work out very well. >> right. >>um [laughter] >> but you understand why. the cost was just untenable. >>yeah, oh yeah. and and so and and wal-mart had this you know "come to jesus" moment then too and realized we have to figure out another way to do it. we don't want to be so dependent on >> right. >> so they are going to um you know for a big company it's a lot easier to buy all your carrots from one giant farm >> sure. >> one contract, you know one negotiation >> get a better deal probably right? >> you'd probably get a better deal so. >> yeah. >>but it's much more sustainable to buy them from 50 different farms and that's what they're gonna do, all along

the eastern seaboard you know they'll break it up into small farms. and you can grow great broccoli in new jersey; it's just the arrogant farmers in california didn't know how to do it. >> didn't think so. >>it's so ea it's so much easier to grow it there. [laughter] >> yeah. >>is this shown shown in california? >> [laughs] uh not after this, actually. >>[laughs] [laughter] >> all right. so let let let's say wal-mart is an example of a good a good corporation. >>so tha i think that's an example. i think whole foods has done a a lot of good work on on i've been very critical of whole foods in some of my writings but i think that they've done very good work on their meat supply chain uh in certain regions especially. >> they've revised some of that haven't they in the last couple of years? >>they have, yeah they've they've really upgraded it um and i think that they're you know i i hear different things from farmers about wal-mart. in certain regions of the country, they they worship wal-mart and they think they're a wonderful >> right. >> buyer, great partner. they lend them money >> yeah. >> to build slaughter houses, all this kind of stuff. um other regions are a little less thrilled but basically they're they're trying to do the right thing too. >> you you raise an interesting point. so we we really are a country of regions and states.

it's not monolithic in anything and certainly not in the outlook on this issue. >>yeah. >> so you live in a place, berkeley, where you have access to probably a lot of produce >>hm. >> you're within range of a lot of farms and farming interests and you can get good quality beef if you elect to have it and everything else but for a lot of america, carl's jr. is it. >>yeah. >> for a lot of america, they don't have access to the same things. isn't it not i'm not saying this of you but isn't arrogant to assume that, while these may be good principles in theory, it's very difficult for people in a lot of parts of this country to live the life that you're expecting people to do? >>well i'm not expecting people to do anything. i mean you know i i'm i'm putting out choices >> yeah. >> um and that there there are enormous disparities nationally about you know iowa, a great example, is a food desert. >> yeah, right. >>when i was out there doing reporting on corn and soybean agriculture, one of the things that really hit me is that all this is the best soil in the world, okay? you know they've got six feet of topsoil; it's beautiful stuff. they could grow anything they

want. they're growing corn and soy, shipping it out of town and bringing t back in the form of processed food. >> right. >>they they only grow 10% of their food off the best soil in the world. it's it's amazing. >> yeah. >>and um so yeah carl's jr. is a very important option. but i have to say that even there, the kinds of things you see in downtown austin with the farmers market is rising. there are farmers markets now everywhere and you find farmers who were corn and bean farmers now putting in a couple rows 'cause they want to grow for this new >> so in fact these places that we assume have been sort of vast wastelands of nutrition and sustainability are getting better? >>there are better they're getting better. uh there was just an article in the washington post by jane black about she moved to huntington, west virginia where >> yeah. >> jamie oliver did his uh his his show, um supposedly a terrible place for eating where the highest obesity rates in the country and she's found she can eat locally there... >> right. >> and that there are really great options. and so so what i'm saying is that you know people are not always aware of the options that are in their communities, the options are are developing. >> yeah. >>but there's a weather issue

too. i mean i can go to the farmers market 50 weeks of the year. you guys may be able to do that here in austin too; i don't know >> right. >> but um and there are a lot of places where the farmers market is only five or six months if that. >> well in fact in some places like minneapolis or chicago where there's bad weather or you know anyplace else it's gonna be harder to sustain >>yeah it is, there's no question and local >> this type of environment. >> but local is not an all-or-nothing proposition. >> right. >>i mean there's a caricature of the locavore as someone who only eats local. i haven't actually met this person or you know [laughter] usually they're writing a book or you know it's some kind of stunt. >> it's like flag-pole sitting right? you know. yeah, i get it. >>so you know it's about it's about emphasis. >> yeah. >>it's about doing what you can when you can. i mean i >> right. >> you know it's not about getting this choice right three times a day. it's like when you can, those votes >> yeah. >> are very important and they accumulate. now the bigger challenge i think though is uh is affordability. i mean healthier food right now >> can be more expensive. >> costs more. yeah it usually is. >> it's it's not for nothing that they used to refer to it as not whole foods but whole paycheck right? >>yeah that's right. yeah. >> i mean the fact is people talked about how expensive it

was to embrace this lifestyle. we have to acknowledge that it is expensive. >>yeah and we have to we have to adjust uh policy. we have to make this food more accessible. there is enormous um uh you know i me the deck is stacked against healthy food because we subsidize unhealthy food. i mean it's you know we get the food system that policy gives us and um... burger and fries and a soda at a fast food restaurant for less than the minimum wage >>yeah exactly. >> the impetus is to go in that direction for a lot of people if they don't have the resources right? >>we've made it we've made it rational to eat badly. >> too easy to. >>and and you know if you're buying calories, if you don't have a lot of money, the rational choice will take you to the burger king window and um uh you know but part of the reason true is that we allow uh big meat companies for example to uh externalize the real costs of their meat in terms of uh pollution, they don't have to clean up their wastes, you know they're they're more or less exempt from the clean air and clean water act. >> and therefore they can afford to sell us the by the by-product of their of their labors >>yeah exactly.

>>we allow them to squander you know critical human antibiotics on on feedlots. >> yeah. >>um that's a giant cost to public health um that they don't bear that's not reflected in the cost of the food. so it's not that that that's not honestly priced food/ that is heavily subsidized um you know we're paying somebody did a calculation and the real cost of a fast food hamburger, if you really look at all the environmental, social, uh health implications, it should be $200. [laughs] >> really? >>yeah. [laughs] now i i haven't seen these numbers or how it was calculated but the point is, it's not really $2 or $1 or whatever it is. >> yeah. they're burying the cost. >>yeah. so you know i think we have to so you have to attack it from two directions. we should be paying the real cost of food. now the issue is can everybody afford it and um no, people right now could not afford the real cost of food. >> and especially in a bad economy it's hard to to message >>that's right. >> spending more money on this. >>that's right. >> we have two minutes left so

i'm now going to ask you the question that every interviewer in history has asked you with two minutes left: what's in your refrigerator? >>[laughs] [laughter] >>what is in my refrigerator right now? i haven't looked in there for a little while. um it you know i don't think it would surprise people. i mean the milk's organic >> it wouldn't be freaky stuff? >>no. there's a lot of leftovers 'cause i cook a lot so there are containers of all sorts of odd things that i have to look at every now and then, make sure they're still edible. >> smell. can i eat this? yeah. >>yeah. but there's a you know there's a container of soup that i cooked the other day, there's um there's a salami that a friend made um that i'm about half-way through, there's a bunch of olives, there's um some hot sauce and various salsas, there's um cheese >> are you living the local the local stuff? >>yeah oh yeah. we go to the farmers market every week. it's two blocks from my house

and the food is wonderful. you know i have to go to the cash machine though before i go um [laughs] it's it's not cheap but i've just made it a priority. that's one of the things i spend money on you know and i and i and sometimes it drives me crazy and i feel like this is just too much, they're charging too much for this >> yeah. >> but one of my rules is pay more, eat less. >> pay more >>eat less. >> eat less. >>which is to say, think about food in terms of quality not quantity so i'm i'm doing my best >> so you'd rather pay more and and >> for something really special >>right. >> because i think what we're really after is food experience, really good food experience and you can get that through quality and savoring food and preparing it well rather than just eating a lot of it. >>wow. now i'm hungry actually after talking to you so [laughter] thanks a lot. >>[laughs] >>uh anyway, what what what an honor and a treat to get to talk to you. >>well thank you evan. >>i appreciate i appreciate you coming through. >>i was very happy to be here. >>all right. michael pollan, thanks very much. [applause] ♪

>> funding for overheard with evan smith is provided by hillco partners, texas consultancy and the hillco health and matson mchale and also by the alice clay burg renalds foundation and viewers

>> kevin young was born in lincoln, nebraska. he went to harvard, stanford, brown. his books of poetry include black mariah, for the confederate dead, dear darkness, and jelly roll. >> there's a way a woman will not relinquish her pocketbook, even pulled onstage or called up to the pulpit. there's a way only your auntie can make it taste right. rice and gravy is a meal if my late great aunt tutta cooks it. aunts cook like there's no

tomorrow, and they're right. too hot is how my aunt tutty peppers everything, her name given by my father for seeing her smiling in her crib. there's a barrel full of rainwater beside the house that my infant father will fall into, trying to see himself the bottom. and there's his sister margie yanking him out by his hair, grown long as superstition. never mind the flyswatter they chase you round the house and into the yard with, ready to whup the daylights out of you. that's only a threat. aunties will fix you potato salad and save you some. godmothers, godsends, aunts smoke like it's going out of style, and it is.

make even gold teeth look right, shining, saying, "i'll be john," with a sigh. make way out of no way. keep the key to the scale that weighed the cotton, the cain we raised more than our share of. if not them, then who will win heaven, holding tight to their pocketbooks at the pearly gates, just in case? ( cheers and applause )