Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma does not tell people what to eat. So, when the author gave a talk at UC Davis' Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, someone asked him.

"The answer is, simply, eat whatever you want, just think about it first," Pollan said. "Consciousness … that's the only prescription in the book."

Pollan's audience numbered around 1,750, almost a full house in the Mondavi Center's Jackson Hall. The Nov. 29 talk came amid campuswide discussion of The Omnivore's Dilemma, picked as the Campus Community Book Project for 2006-07.

Other events earlier the same day included a writing workshop and a panel discussion, as well as a book signing.

Among those waiting in line for Pollan's autograph was Joan Zimmermann, a program analyst in the School of Education. She had just emerged from Jackson Hall, where she was part of an audience of 250 for the panel discussion.

"I definitely enjoyed delving into deeper, ethical issues regarding farm labor and the moral implications of the cost of food," she said.

Pollan had noted during the discussion that people in the United States, across the board, spend less than 10 percent of their income on food — less than anyone else on Earth — compared with 18 percent in the 1960s.

"Where did all that money go that we're saving on food, what are we spending it on? … Entertainment, cell phones, television.

"We spend shamefully little (on food), given how important it is to our well-being and its environmental impact and the people who work really hard to produce it."

His argument is that most people in the United States can and should pay more for their food, and that by paying more we can help improve the lives of farm laborers, and foster environmental health and human health.

He noted that as food costs went down, health care costs rose from 5 percent of personal income in the United States to 16 percent. "As food was coming down, health care costs were going up — isn't that interesting?"

The government drove down food costs purposely, he said, leading to the nation's glut of processed food in which sweetness and added fat are ubiquitous. The flip side is that this food is not as good for our bodies, and contributes to epidemics of diabetes, obesity and other chronic illness.

Pollan, a UC Berkeley journalism professor, also faulted the nation's food industry for its toll on the environment. He said that of all the fossil fuel consumed in the United States, about 17 percent goes to food production — for tractors and trucks, for example.

Burning all that fossil fuel, he said, puts 4 tons of carbon into the atmosphere annually, contributing to global warming.

"We are subtracting from the world or from resources or from people in a way that can never be corrected," Pollan said, noting how the United States uses 10 calories of fossil fuel to produce a single calorie of food energy, compared with one calorie of fossil fuel per two calories of food energy before the rise of industrial agriculture in the last century.

"Our food system is unsustainable, our industrial food system," he declared.

Not all organics equal

Pollan cited two other major issues inherent in a highly centralized food system:

• Security — The government is doing "absolutely nothing" to protect the food supply.
• Safety — "We are now in effect washing the nation's salad in one big sink, in the Salinas Valley." So, a bacteria outbreak there has the potential to spread nationwide, unlike in previous generations when an outbreak at a local farm stayed local.

Fertilizer is made with fossil fuels, so one way to reduce fossil fuel use is to buy food from farms that use less fertilizer or none at all.

The easy answer is to go organic, but Pollan said that not all organic farms or markets are created equal. As they grow larger, the transportation issue raises its ugly head again — as farms and big chains like Whole Food Markets start sending products all over the country.

At the same time, he said, U.S. producers are importing organic ingredients. "It's very nice that our food dollars are helping take care of the land in China and the Philippines and New Zealand, but I don't think that that's why a lot of us buy organic. I think our goal is to take care of land a little bit closer to home."

Which leads him to small, local organic farms, and food cooperatives and farmers markets — in effect, the "local food economy."

UC Davis made sure to stick with that recipe during Pollan's visit, serving mostly organic food, locally grown, during a reception between his book signing and his evening talk.

The Mondavi Center's Christina Vargas, who frequently arranges for food for special events at the center, said she had never before put in an order for all organic or locally grown food. "We had to work really hard with (campus food vendor) Sodexho to come up with cost-effective appetizers, but we believe we succeeded."

Here is some of the hors d'oeuvres menu: organic chicken herbed sausage bites; organic wild mushroom and caramelized onion focaccia pizza; organic carrot ginger soup shooters, served in shot glasses; and organic sweet potato fries. The menu also featured a "sustainable" food: mini crab cakes.

After the reception, Pollan told his audience: "I've been very well fed while I've been here."

At home, he said, he does not eat "industrial" meat, only grass-fed beef, or eggs from hens that live in battery cages. "We cook a lot more and we shop at a farmers market, and the other big change is we joined a CSA."

CSA stands for community supported agriculture, a subscription program that he described as a "real partnership with the farmer."

For $15 a week, the subscribers in his CSA receive a weekly box of produce. "I'm generally getting away from meat as much as I can … and eating more plants," he said.

He spoke of quality over quantity and said: "I'm convinced that the better the food you eat, the less of it you need to eat."

Pollan noted this line from American writer Wendell Berry: "Eating is an agricultural act." To this, Pollan added that eating is an ecological and political act as well, and he urged people to "vote with your forks!"

"We can help create the world we want to live in, one delicious bite at a time."