Michael Pollan on Food
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2014
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What should we eat? Jo Fidgen talks to the influential American writer Michael Pollan about what food is - and what it isn't. In an interview before an audience at the London School of Economics and Political Science he criticises the way the food industry has promoted highly-processed products delivering hefty doses of salt, sugar and fat. He believes that the plethora of accompanying health claims have left us more confused than ever about what food really is, where it has come from and its impact on our health and the environment. His solution? To cook at home. He argues that this simple change will guarantee a healthy diet and stop us relying on big food companies to feed us. It is also, he says, a profoundly political act. But is it a realistic proposition for busy working families or simply a middle-class ideology?
Producer: Sally Abrahams.
Transcript
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| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
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| 0:37.9 | I'm Hugh Levinson, the editor, and this is the first in a new series. |
| 0:41.8 | Now, for a long time I've really wanted to bag an |
| 0:44.3 | appearance by the American writer Michael Pollan and I'm delighted to say we've got |
| 0:49.4 | him. I really think you'll enjoy the next half hour. Over to presenter Joe Fitchin. |
| 0:54.3 | Hello, welcome to the London School of Economics and Political Science and a special edition of Analysis. |
| 1:05.1 | I'm Joe Fijon and the man who's drawn such a large crowd here tonight is Michael Pollan, one of the most |
| 1:11.2 | influential writers about food and farming today. |
| 1:15.0 | He's a professor of journalism at Berkeley in California, |
| 1:18.0 | and the author of several books that argue that we need to rethink our relationship with food for the sake of our health and for the |
| 1:25.0 | well-being of every link in the food chain. |
| 1:28.6 | Michael, one of the ideas that's made you famous is your three rules of eating. |
| 1:33.7 | What are they? |
| 1:34.7 | Yeah, my seven word mantra. |
| 1:37.9 | Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That's what years of research has come down to. It was a little |
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