Always interesting to see conspicuous consumption trying on a new outfit.

@ anybody who hasn't googled Ansel Herz yet, the kid is all right.

Too goddamn lazy? Go here, then here.

Yeah, I think microwaves are pretty essential for a lot of working people, and they don't have to be used to heat unhealthy food. It's important to have a vision of social change that can be embraced by common people, people who would find it nearly impossible to live without a microwave.

Fuck this guy. Go vegan, go locavore, go cruelty free, don't eat GMOs, do whatever the fuck you want if you're rich enough to eat $30 hand raised chickens. Industrial farming is not the enemy. It's why several billion people who would otherwise starve to death get to eat. Seriously, fuck him and the white, rich privilege he rode in on.

@2, Jesus, THAT's the latest guy our Stranger friends aren't paying? I mean, if he offers it up in exchange for the exciting opportunity, fine, none of my business. It's a bit like finding out the Tuk Tuk you've hailed has Michael Schumacher behind the wheel.

Interesting perspective, and comparison. You may be right on.

Then again, Jobs' egomania drove a revolution in UE-centered industrial design that everyone who uses any sort of consumer electronics is now benefiting from. I have an Asus-made Google Nexus 7 that I absolutely adore, and that wouldn't exist without the pressure of the iPhone and iPad to drive its creation. Who's to say Pollan's singleminded vision about food culture won't have the same sort of indirectly illuminating effects?

I always asked for Chicken Kiev for my birthday. And rhubarb pie. Fuck cake.

Interesting take on Pollan. I view his literary work, the Omnivore's dilemma, a masterpiece. I am liberal in praise for Pollan, because, I think, he's absolutely right.

That being said, I don't find his attitude snobbish or alienating. He's fighting a multi-billion dollar industry that thinks that high fructose corn syrup is healthy for you (not to mention, potentially another reason the bee's are dying). He is fighting an industry that thinkst that pink slime is a way to save money on products. He's fighting an industry that wants to process everything they possibly can, fill it with chemicals that have no long term studies to back their innertness to the human body.

Without people like Pollan, we will most certainly ruin this earth with chemicals, patents of GMO foods, and canned food. We will become that which you see on the cartoon Wall-E.

Go ahead and mock him... but he just might save your bacon. Unlike Steve Jobs.

I refuse to ruin food by taking it that seriously. Hell I refuse to ruin anything by taking it that seriously.

@3 Frozen microwave meals from Eat Local are delicious, healthy, and quick.

Yeah, ethical shopping has... limited potential to say the least, but what's the alternative? Relying on the FDA or the USDA to suddenly grow a moral compass?

If we don't wake up and listen to people like Michael Pollan now, it's just a matter of time before we end up hearing Charlton Heston screaming about Soylent Green

@4 disproved. @6, horseshit. Typical troll responses to complex issues, and a well-written critique.

I agree with that last paragraph, and really bristle at someone arrogantly responding to a suggestion of a local group. If local sourcing is not the solution, then this is as empty as buying a 35mph Prius in response to global warming.

The majority of people who pop crappy food in the microwave are middle class or wealthy. And there are plenty of lower income people who eat healthy food. Depends on what they know, where they live and what they were brought up with. This little essay makes a lot of assumptions. Polan is an asshole. He is full of himself. A self appointed savior. But mocking food stuffed into a microwave is not being a snob. It's being honest. Low income people struggling to make ends meet do deserve a pass. But lazy cheap heavily subsidized food choices made by the middle class and up are part of what's driving up health care costs for those of us struggling to make ends meet. That shit deserves to be mocked.

@4 - Keep eating shit if it floats your boat but there is no need to blame your acculturation on the messenger.

@13 - The bigger story there would be the resurrection of Charlton Heston. If Monsanto can resurrect people, I can think of a few people I'd rather they work on.

Based solely on this description, he kinda sounds more like the John Stossel of food. Thomas Keller is the Steve Jobs of food.

I'd have starved in graduate school without Marie Callender's pot pies, and I will hear no slander against them.

This is a great critique. The basic problem with Pollan as activist guru is right there in his reply: he suggests a change in consumption, when it's production patterns that are the most devastating source of problems.

I cook from scratch almost every night. I enjoy it. It gives me something to do. But I don't have children to worry about.

And I hate the microwave. I only use it when I've been out drinking, in which case Banquet pot pies and Stouffer Mac 'n Cheese is delicious.

Suggesting that decent, nutritious food is the purview of the wealthy and that the middle class and below should keep eating processed industrial garbage is some Uncle Tom bullshit, you guys. Everyone deserves better. The crime is that only the wealthy can afford to eat well, not that people are finally being told what eating well actually is.

Michael Pollan is a bit off-target and off-tone on the real problem, which is one of class as much as anything, but he's still on the right side.

Fuck you, Pollan. I cook broccoli in my microwave. It's broccoli I buy in a giant bag from Costco. And do you know why? Because after buying a house at the height of the housing boom, still owing $22,000 after it's foreclosed, and owing $30,000 in student loans at 6.8% interest, it's what I can afford.

Oh, and why don't I have time to cook it in the approved method? Because I work full time and have a kid. So fuck you.

I disagree with those saying that it is expensive to eat well. It's probably expensive to eat really tasty, well-prepared, healthy food all the time, but a lot of the healthiest foods are also the cheapest. Oatmeal is laughably cheap and easy to prepare. Beans are cheap and healthy - saute some onions and garlic, throw in some diced tomatoes and beans, add some salt and spices - pretty tasty! A peanut butter sandwich (with real peanut butter, just nuts and salt) is not that expensive, and it is nutrient-dense. Eggs are also pretty cheap and reasonably healthy. And by the way, there's nothing the matter with warming up some leftover beans in the microwave.

It's true that if you don't have much time to shop and cook, it's going to get monotonous pretty fast, and it's also true that it can be rough if your job forces you to eat away from your home a lot. But a lot of low-income people don't have these problems, and can easily afford a relatively healthy diet.

This Ansel Herz character is off to an annoying and shrill start.

Christ, the shooting of the messenger is going on in earnest. Did anyone post a video? Because I seriously doubt Herz's objectivity here.

@23 - You aren't very honest:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20…

Michael Pollan is the Upton Sinclair of our time. Your superficial analysis, Unpaid Intern, is well-written and pithy, but quite misguided.

I don't really like food. I just don't care about it. More often than not, the whole issue annoys me.

Let's say you're not big into music. It's not that you don't like any music, it's just not a big part of your life. So you don't really mind that much hearing the same song on the radio when you drive to work, or listening to the same music every time you go jogging.

Now let's say that if you don't listen to 75 to 90 minutes of music every day, you'll waste away and die. Furthermore, if you listen to a lot of the same music a lot, because you're really only doing it to keep from dying, everyone you know will treat you like some kind of uncultured boor. They'll say things like "Well sure, you could just listen to the pre-made CDs they have at the record stores, but it's just so much better to take the time to make a mix CD yourself. It doesn't even take that much time! Just take three or four hours on the weekend to plan out in advance what you'll want to listen to over the course of the week. That way you just pop the CD in your CD player and it's ready to go."

Time spent dealing with food is time that could be better spent on things that actually interest me. If my choice is between spending hours making spaghetti sauce from scratch or getting it out of a jar and heating it up for a few minutes, I'm going to go with the jar. I will derive more or less the same amount of enjoyment from either, and the time saved can be spent doing something else I actually care about.

White people fucking love this douche. Seattle's certainly the prime audience for his overprivileged, lilywhite ass. These are your people, Pollan. I'm not impressed with them or you. Next?

@28 .. thank you Doug. The quality of the food we eat directly impacts our health, additionally having a strong local food economy is an important issue .. Hopefully The Stranger will address Michael Pollan’s visit in a more thoughtful way later on this week

I'm wondering how many people who 'don't have time to cook real food' or 'are too busy with kids' manage to spend three hours a night comatose in front of a television (or blogging)

I love Michael Pollan. I think he's smart and funny and promotes intelligent ideas. He never disses people who don't cook; he simply promotes cooking. He doesn't diss people who eat non-organic, packaged, or fast food; he just promotes the opposite. Unpaid intern is implying that when it comes to food, we should never change, never strive for greater health, never challenge the status quo.

I just cooked a sweet potato in the microwave, instead of sticking it in the oven for 45 minutes and thereby using a hell of a lot more electricity. Oh the horror. Pollan is a good writer and an in-person asshole.

"Jobsian?" Seriously? And twice, even? Christ.

Keep it up, Herz! I enjoy your articles so far, sure, but I especially enjoy the agony in the peanut gallery.

I imagine Mike Daisey might be VERY interested in the Steve Jobs of food...

@32: I would guess that rather a lot of people who don't have much free time outside of work choose to spend it doing things they don't think of as more work.

Organic, Localvorism, etc. are a boutique economy that has nothing to do with the real world issues of farming food for the whole world. Pollan's world is a fantasy. If the goal is to reduce carbon and rural sprawl (as is killing the rainforest for example), then localvorism is not the answer, nor is permaculture. High-yield farming is better, period. Pollan ignores the fact that the current system of food growers, packagers, and groceries are currently offering a bounty of food never before seen, and would put the diet of even kings and emperors of days past to shame. Fucking uppity people and their solutions to problems.

@32, that's pretty judgmental of you. My mom raised my sister and I too, and I did eat lots of processed food. And why? She worked full-time and two small children and a totally checked out husband. I don't remember her sitting on her ass very much.

We don't need to call Michael Pollan "Jobsian" or "Upton Sinclair." His aim is true, but it isn't practical for everyone. For an impoverished parent juggling 2 jobs, their reliance on convenience is not because they're lazy--it's essential to their survival. It is a luxury to choose what we eat in a world with so many hungry people. Consider also that many people who eat less expensive processed foods live in places where fresh fruits and vegetables aren't readily available, but convenience stores are at every corner. It is the epitome of upper middle classism to judge people who eat processed food.

My last point: Food is not a single issue; it is tied to wealth inequality, healthcare, gender and racial inequality, capitalism, politics, economics... Each issue leans on the others, which is why it's kind of silly to argue about any one issue. Be grateful you get to choose what to eat and do what you can to speak out against what's wrong.

@40, and yet, there are still millions of people starving to death every year, and as you point out, it's not because we don't make enough food. Something's really wrong.

@42 Pollan's recipe for food activism would starve MORE people. Efforts to modernize food systems in developing countries are working, especially biotech, which Pollan shuns. They are starving because they don't make enough food- that is the bare truth. That we have too much here is practically irrelevant to the issue since if we send food aid it only makes matters worse for their farming economy. Pollan, Vandana Shiva et al. have blood on their hands.