Food Muses

I missed this last Friday when it played on the local PBS station…It’s nice to be able to catch it later on the “intranets”…

Bill Moyers and Michael Pollan…What a pair. A very in-debth exploration of food policy in America ensued. Here is just a part…

BILL MOYERS: What else? Give me a list, quickly, of what we can do to make a difference in this reforming the food system.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, plant a garden. If you’ve got space, and if you don’t, look into a community garden where you might rent a little bit of space, like we saw in East New York.

Cook. Simply by starting to cook again, you declare your independence from the culture of fast food. As soon as you cook, you start thinking about ingredients. You start thinking about plants and animals, and not the microwave. And you will find that your diet, just by that one simple act, that is greatly improved. You will find that you are supporting local agriculture, because you’ll care about the quality of ingredients. And you know, whether you’re cooking or not is one of the best predictors for a healthy diet. It’s more important than the class predictor. People with more money generally have healthier diets, but affluent people who don’t cook are not as healthy in their eating as poor people who still cook. So, very, very important. If you don’t have pots and pans, get them.

Now people say they don’t have time, and that’s an issue. And I am saying that we do need to invest more time in food. Food is just too important to relegate to these 10-minute corners of our lives. And you know, even if you would just take, you know, we watch cooking shows like crazy on television. We’ve turned cooking into a spectator sport. If you would merely invest the time you spend watching cooking shows in actually cooking, you would find you’ve got plenty of time to put a meal on the table.

Bill Moyers Journal . Transcripts | PBS.

I have now listened to the podcast on Saturday and viewed the video this morning…Go read the transcript, listen to the podcast or watch the video. It’ll be time well spent…

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