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...A one-pound box of prewashed lettuce contains 80 calories of food energy. According to Cornell ecologist David Pimentel, growing, chilling, washing, packaging, and transporting that box of organic salad to a plate on the East Coast takes more than 4,600 calories of fossil fuel energy, or 57 calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of food.

Michael Pollan

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Michael Pollan
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: February 6
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Michael Kevin Pollan
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More quotes by Michael Pollan

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A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius.
Michael Pollan
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Perhaps more than any other, the food industry is very sensitive to consumer demand.
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I try very hard to tell stories and not lecture. I try to approach things as an amateur and not an expert, so that when I'm doing something, I'm starting out in a place a lot like where my readers start out - which is to say, naïve.
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Time is the missing ingredient in our recipes-and in our lives.
Michael Pollan
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To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life afford quite as much satisfaction.
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Are we, finally, speaking of nature or culture when we speak of a rose (nature), that has been bred (culture) so that its blossoms (nature) make men imagine (culture) the sex of women (nature)? It may be this sort of confusion that we need more of.
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The larger meaning here is that mainstream journalists simply cannot talk about things that the two parties agree on this is the black hole of American politics.
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Studies show that organically grown crops produce more of the things (ascorbic acid, lycopenes, resveratrol, flavonols in general, etc) that our bodies need and also have less toxic residue. Science is still catching up with this. J. Agric. Food. Chem. Vol. 51, no. 5, 2003.
Michael Pollan
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For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.
Michael Pollan
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The history of modern nutritionism has been a history of macronutrients at war: protein against carbs carbs against proteins, and then fats fats against carbs.
Michael Pollan
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In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel - it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn.
Michael Pollan
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The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.
Michael Pollan
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...Only the big food manufacturers have the wherewithal to secure FDA-approved health claims for their products and then trumpet them to the world. Generally, it is the products of modern food science that make the boldest health claims, and these are often founded on incomplete and often bad science.
Michael Pollan
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People don't eat nutrients, they eat foods, and foods can behave very differently than the nutrients they contain.
Michael Pollan
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The corporatization of something as basic and intimate as eating is, for many of us today, a good place to draw the line.
Michael Pollan
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If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't be eating it.
Michael Pollan
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There is nothing wrong with special occasion foods, as long as every day is not a special occasion.
Michael Pollan
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I'm not talking about having to consult Julia Child before you can take a pot off the rack. I think that's something we can all do more and do better.
Michael Pollan
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Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is a literal shame, but most of us can: Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food, less than the citizens of any other nation.
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There are things we know and things we don't know about food. But there are certain basic things we do know, and that's what I've tried to build these rules on.
Michael Pollan