Michael Pollan

The big journals and Nobel laureates are the equivalent of Congressional leaders in science journalism.

In general, science journalism concerns itself with what has been published in a handful of peer-reviewed journals - Nature, Cell, The New England Journal of Medicine - which set the agenda.

I mean, we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification.

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.

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.

The things journalists should pay attention to are the issues the political leadership agrees on, rather than to their supposed antagonisms.

For at the same time many people seem eager to extend the circle of our moral consideration to animals, in our factory farms and laboratories we are inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history.

The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.

Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more than finding a funny way to phrase something.

Fairness forces you - even when you're writing a piece highly critical of, say, genetically modified food, as I have done - to make sure you represent the other side as extensively and as accurately as you possibly can.

Perhaps more than any other, the food industry is very sensitive to consumer demand.

Corn is an efficient way to get energy calories off the land and soybeans are an efficient way of getting protein off the land, so we've designed a food system that produces a lot of cheap corn and soybeans resulting in a lot of cheap fast food.

At home I serve the kind of food I know the story behind.

In corn, I think I've found the key to the American food chain. If you look at a fast-food meal, a McDonald's meal, virtually all the carbon in it - and what we eat is mostly carbon - comes from corn.

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.

My work has also motivated me to put a lot of time into seeking out good food and to spend more money on it.

Every major food company now has an organic division. There's more capital going into organic agriculture than ever before.

People in Slow Food understand that food is an environmental issue.

High-quality food is better for your health.