Journalist and UC Berkeley Professor Michael Pollan says UC Davis was the first to officially embrace his book. (Ken Light/photo)
More on Omnivore
Campus chooses 'subversive' The Omnivore's Dilemma to explore ethics of what we eat
It's rare that a piece of writing produces immediate, concrete effects—for journalists as well as academics. But journalist and UC Berkeley professor Michael Pollan's work exploring the origins and ethics of what we eat apparently has contributed to real-world changes.
Whole Foods has publicly announced plans to sell more locally and sustainably grown produce, and the growth of the grass-finished beef industry has been traced to Pollan's NY Times Magazine cover feature, "Power Steer."
This year the UC Davis Campus Community Book Project focuses on Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, a best-selling investigation of food culture and food production in the United States and their environmental, ethical, and health implications.
The project has been exploring these topics through two months of programs, including an art exhibit, speakers, panels, films, book discussions, a tour of local farms, investigations of local food growers and providers, and local farmers markets on campus.
The project culminates in Pollan's visit to campus on Nov. 29, for an afternoon panel discussion and an evening talk at the Mondavi Center.
Modest author
Although he finds the positive changes sparked by his work gratifying, Pollan, director of the Knight Center for Environmental and Scientific Journalism at UC Berkeley, quickly refuses to take too much credit.
"A whole web of factors contributes to change," he says. The impact of "Power Steer," he explains, was not just as a result of what he wrote, but also where it was published. He attributes the success of his newest book to "the luck of timing," characterizing it as "the right intervention at the right moment."
But he also describes journalists as "short-term visionaries." If journalists see too far ahead, he says, they appear "crazy."
Pollan's talent for writing clearly for a general audience was key to his book being selected for the Campus Community Book Project last winter. Several years ago, Pamela Ronald, director of the relatively new Plant Genomics Program, invited Pollan to UC Davis to inaugurate its distinguished speaker series.
Wanting to educate the public about plants genetics, Ronald says she saw Pollan's previous book, The Botany of Desire, as a model of beautiful writing, with an interesting perspective on plant and human "co-evolution" and an engaging, thoughtful, personal approach.
Last summer, she informed the selection team for the Community Book Project that Pollan had a new book forthcoming in April 2006, and Pollan sent the manuscript for consideration as an electronic attachment.
Michael Pollan describes journalists as 'short-term visionaries.' If journalists see too far ahead, he says, they appear 'crazy.'
UC Davis first to embrace the book
"Talk about short-term visionary," Pollan said. "UC Davis was the first to officially embrace the book," long before it was published and achieved critical acclaim and best-seller status.
Some have expressed surprise that UC Davis accepted such a "subversive" book for the community project, given the campus's involvement in the industrialization of agriculture that Pollan critiques.
But, according to both Pollan and Ronald, this surprise betrays an inaccurate view of Davis, which now boasts the largest programs in the world in sustainable agriculture and plant genomics.
Not being scientifically trained, Pollan says, is both a weakness and a strength. Because he was not academically educated in science, Pollan says, he doesn't "presume knowledge on the reader's part."
This forces him to explain clearly and helps him to engage an audience that is not scientifically literate, Pollan explains.
In researching The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan relied on many UC scientists—including several based at UC Davis, reading research reports, interviewing them and asking them to confirm the accuracy of his manuscript.
'Intriguing' article from Davis lab
For scientific comparisons of the nutritional value of organic and conventionally grown produce, for example, he cites an "intriguing" article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry from the lab of UC Davis' Alyson Mitchell, an assistant professor of food and science technology.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan reports that most efforts "to demonstrate the nutritional superiority of organic produce foundered on the difficulty of isolating the great many variables" that impact nutritional quality of produce.
But the Mitchell lab paper compared identical varieties of corn, strawberries and blackberries grown in neighboring plots using different methods. According to Pollan, the lab found that organic produce had higher levels of vitamin C and polyphenols, anti-oxidants that play important roles in nutrition and health.
Pollan also recalls drawing on UC resources to better understand sustainable agricultural practices. He cites Gail Feenstra, a food systems analyst and director of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program based at UC Davis.
Pollan also discussed the economics of farming with Steven Blank of the UC Davis agricultural and resource economics department, a specialist in farm finance management, although Pollan ultimately disagreed with what he considers Blank's "radical free trade" analysis.
Novel experience at the university
Pollan describes the novel experience of writing this book from within an academic environment.
He had always benefited from reading scientific research reports and interviewing scientists. What he hadn't enjoyed before was "the enormous gain from being in a university environment" and the opportunities for casual conversations with people from various disciplines.
When he told UC Berkeley microbial ecologist Ignacio Chapela how the preponderance of corn in the typical American diet made us unknowingly "corn people," Chapela referred him to UC Berkeley biologist Todd Dawson to help him to test his theory.
Dawson taught him that the carbon isotopes from corn were identifiable and used the mass spectrometer to measure the "corniness" in different parts of his McDonald's fast food dinner.
On the home page: Part of the cover for The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Part of the journalist job, Pollan says, is checking the accuracy of sources and, particularly in "a contentious area," being careful not to accept too biased a view.
Although his sources sometimes dislike his conclusions, partly because he puts their knowledge "in a different context," Pollan says he has not been criticized for getting the facts wrong.
Usually his critics charge him with under- or over-emphasis. Sometimes they say his ideas are impractical in the real world.
But Pollan says, "What is practical changes. Large-scale organic agriculture once appeared impractical, but now is big business."