If you’re looking for a food role model, Michael Pollan is a good choice. He’s not a “diet guru” trying to hawk miracle pills, nor is he a celebrity personal training. Michael is a journalist and he’s been writing about food and nutrition for a long time, so the guy knows a lot about diet, minus all the snake oil selling.
And now, the author of four New York Times bestsellers, most notably the Omnivore’s Dilemma in 2006, is looking for your nuggets of food wisdom or advice for the next edition of his book Food Rules. You can email him.
The Seattle Times interviewed food movement hero Michael Pollan about his latest book, Food Rules, the state of the food in America, and Michelle Obama. About the first lady, Pollan says,
She’s a very important voice in the food movement now, and I think is raising people’s consciousness, people who haven’t read a book like “Omnivore’s Dilemma” or “Food Rules” . . . People tend to underestimate these projects on the part of first ladies and think they’re kind of benign. But actually they can be quite powerful, and I think her contribution will be quite powerful.
Like Michael Pollan, Organic Authority is excited about several projects that the First Lady has been working on, from school lunch reform to the new-and-improved White House garden to her campaign to end childhood obesity.
Pollan also talks about his next book, which is going to be about how we turn raw ingredients into food through cooking and fermentation:
I’m working on a book about cooking, which is really a book about how we transfer things in nature through fire and water. Fermentation is another way we do it, whether we’re making wine or cheese or pickles or sausage. I’m interested in all the alchemies that go on in the kitchen.
The First Lady Michelle Obama took her daughters out to Los Angeles restaurant Lucques for Sunday supper.
Obama Foodorama reports that Michelle, Malia, and Sasha made the trek up from the Camp Pendleton Marine base in San Diego County to have dinner in the city of angels. Good choice. Lucques is a great restaurant in West Hollywood that supports sustainable agriculture and serves innovative and mouth-watering dishes like “grilled lamb sandwich with chickpea purée, french feta and tapenade” and “pan-roasted market fish with black rice, haricot verts, green garlic and roasted apricots.”
It’s great to see the First Lady supporting sustainable food—and showing that kids don’t always need to eat fried chicken nuggets—but she’s also doing us all a favor by showing that sustainable can be fashionable. Seasonal menus, organic ingredients, and eco-friendly attitudes are three great tastes that taste great together. It’s not always easy being green, but the Obamas show how it can be fun. So go out and live a little!
The White House has a plan to get better food to students! Man oh man, it would’ve been nice if Bush or Clinton had thought of this back when I was in school.
The First Lady announced a new program that should help get healthier and tastier food in public schools. Around the country, chefs will be given the opportunity to “adopt” local schools and help renovate their menus. I’m foreseeing dumpsters full of fried chicken patties and italian dunkers.
This is what the White House has to say about the program:
“Chefs Move to Schools” will pair chefs with schools in their communities to bring fun to fruits and vegetables, and teach kids about food, nutrition and cooking in an engaging way. And by working with school food service employees, administrators and teachers – chefs can help deliver these messages from the cafeteria to the classroom.
I’ve worked in a summer camp kitchen, and I know how the processed, fried, and unhealthy food can be tempting from the cook’s point of view, just because it’s so easy to make. That’s why it’s so smart to bring in trained chefs to share their skills and knowledge with students. I’m cautiously optimistic. There are a lot of bad habits that kids gain in school—this program won’t affect the fact that there are tons of junk food vending machines in our schools—but this seems like a step in the right direction.
First Lady Michelle Obama wants to garden, and nothing can stop her, not even a couple feet of snow.
The White House chefs just got done with their spring harvest. Over the winter, the White House’s garden grew close to 50 lbs of its own turnips, spinach, lettuce, arugula, and carrots by using small, temporary “hoop houses,” which acted like greenhouses by trapping sunlight and protecting the plants from the elements. Remember snowmageddon?
But that’s not all. Michelle plans to expand the garden to plant even more for the summer season. Can’t wait to see what they can grow by fall! Check out the new White House video featuring the garden:
And if you want to get an organic garden going in your own yard, check out our gardening section.
Michelle Obama has encouraged all Americans to save a little spot in their yard for growing fresh vegetables. She even brought back the Whitehouse garden, trying to make it organic, until she found out for a long time the lawn was fertilized with raw sewage. But that wasn’t enough to make her quit gardening.
On November 10th, Michelle will drop by Sesame Street to show Elmo and the gang how to grow vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce. Here’s a sneak peek of the episode. And I guess fame has gone to Elmo’s head. He seems a little unwilling to get his hands dirty and dig into the garden too–prima donna!
Take the Mid America CropLife Association (MACA), for instance…this group represents agribusinesses like Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences and DuPont Crop Protection, and they’ve got a bone to pick.
In a letter they wrote to Michelle Obama, brought to the public attention via La Vida Locavore (where you can read the letter in its entirety), MACA expressed concern that the decision to grow an organic garden would give consumers the wrong impression about conventionally grown food – and by that I’m assuming that they mean letting the public at large know that food can actually be grown without using chemicals (imagine that!)….
The letter states…
“We live in a very different world than that of our grandparents. Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family’s year-round food needs.”
Which begs the question: are we really considering children and aging parents who have underdeveloped or compromised immune systems, when we spray our yards, and gardens with poisonous pesticides? Children and pets roll around and play on the lawn and in the dirt. If we are spraying our lawns, and gardens with pesticides we are exposing them to toxic chemicals that can compromise the human body.
The Danger of Exposure
We absorb chemicals and toxins three ways:
Swallowing – ingesting them via our food.
Breathing – via inhalation of air.
Skin and or eye contact – i.e. absorption of your personal care products.
So when you spray pesticides in and around your yard and home, keep in mind that you, your family and pets can absorb its chemicals via all three of these passage ways.
The New England Journal of Medicine, published a study in July of 2000, that states we are more likely to get cancer from pesticide exposure than from hereditary causes.
Studies have also shown that pesticides and toxic chemicals can be up to 10 times more poisonous to child’s underdeveloped immune system.
Clearly, I don’t think that a ‘busy’ lifestyle if enough of an excuse to use pesticides – ever.
What are your thoughts on the MACA letter – and about pesticide exposure overall? I’d love to hear from you!
“Local, affordable, nutritious food should be a right for everyone and not just a privilege for a few,” wrote Alice Waters, acclaimed chef, restaurateur, and food activist in a letter to the White House in January, 2009.
A couple of months earlier at a Chicago fundraiser – which featured an Alice Waters-created menu – Michelle opined “You can’t just make a dinner. It’s got to be a nutritious dinner, grown with good, fresh, clean food. That takes time. Trust me.”
I couldn’t agree with these two fabulous women more. The time has come for healthier, more nutrition-rich food – that’s local, seasonal and organic when possible – to take center stage for our country. What better place to start than with an edible garden?
Groundbreaking Gardening!
The first family is off to a running start when it comes to promoting homegrown eats.
Michelle Obama, an excited group of fifth graders and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack got to work planting a brand new vegetable garden on Thursday, 4/9.
The first sprout hasn’t poked its way through the soil yet, but already, the White House garden – championed by Michelle Obama’s enthusiasm for fresh and healthy food – has several fantastic messages for an under-nourished public that I’ve long espoused:
Home gardening offers a great way to save money on expensive foods at the market – a tasty stimulus package for your kitchen!
Home gardening inspires kids to eat their veggies: studies have shown that kids who grow their own vegetables eat more vegetables!
It’s also a wonderful reason to get outdoors, rejuvenate your soul and reconnect with nature, something we can all benefit from both physically and mentally.
There’s a history of White House gardens. But with the publicity power of Michelle Obama, Slow Food enthusiast Alice Waters and countless other organic foodies, this administration is positioned to get the messages to the masses: grow your own, save money, have fun and eat healthily!
My Own Edible Garden and Get-Started Gardening Tips for You!
When my husband and I moved into our home, we were debating how to landscape our front yard. I suggested we plant an edible garden in both our front and our back yard, including my favorite – scrumptious organic artichokes!
Year after year, our edible garden has reaped us huge rewards in delivering organic produce. It has saved us tons of cash at check-out and made us quite popular on our block: families with children regularly stop to admire our front yard edible garden!
Plus, we’re reminding children about the origin of fruits and veggies – and that they come from the earth first – not just from the supermarket. In this way, my husband and I feel like we’re adding something to the community, which is a great feeling!
Here’s some tips for the beginning gardener. Already have an edible garden? What works for you and what doesn’t? Share your story with OrganicAuthority readers – we’d love to hear from you!
The White House has a plan to get better food to students! Man oh man, it would’ve been nice if Bush or Clinton had thought of this back when I was in school.
Last week, I wrote about 
