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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: 10 Questions with Michael Pollan [Watch (HLS stream): 10 Questions with Michael Pollan](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jsDlJE2h.m3u8) (6:54)  _Published 2010-01-22. The Omnivore's Dilemma author has a new book, Food Rules, out now. Michael Pollan will now take your questions_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:18 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [10 Questions for Jillian Michaels](/video/geUAjcNi/) ### 10 Questions for Jillian Michaels [TIME 100 Michael Pollan](/video/2eD4LruV/) ### TIME 100 Michael Pollan [10 Questions for Michael J. Fox](/video/O1fYDZQe/) ### 10 Questions for Michael J. Fox --- ## Transcript >> So our guest today is Michael Pollan, who is a food activist and author and a journalist and he's recently come out with a book called Food Rules. And thank you very much for being with us. >> Sure, Tim. Glad to be here. >> First question, Catherine Gilmore from Seattle Washington asks, " Your maxim eat food, lots of it mostly plants. [ unk ] to have so much momentum at present in [ unk ] so how can we help insure this approach to eating is widely adopted and doesn't become just another passing fad. >> Well, first let me just correct the language a little bit. It's eat food not too much mostly plants. >> Okay. >> As a writer, I'm kind of sensitive to the rhythms of it as well as the content. >> And, you know, it's a very simple advice yet, they're very challenging to people. And the reason is they're challenging is we exist in an environment and the choices before us are shaped by institutions such as the government's agricultural policies, corporations and their marketing strategies, food scientists and their genius of manipulating us with food science. So doing something is simple as eating real food has become challenging. And what I'm trying to do in Food Rules is kind of cut through the complexity of both the marketing and the science to just point out, " look, this is food and this is what I call an edible food- like substance ." And if you could make that distinction, it then becomes a lot easier. >> Can you please tell us what your current diet is and if it's not vegetarian, why not? Well, that's a very good question. I still eat meat, I'm a carnivore but I eat lot less meat. I've spent so much time of feed lots in confinement hog operations that I can't, in good conscience, and with good appetite eat industrial feed- lot meat so I eat meat from small farms, me I get it to farmers market-- grass- feed beef. And when you eat meat that way, it's a little harder to find and it cost more money, so with the result that you don't end up eating meat every day. To reduce your meat consumption by 20 percent is the equivalent of trading in your gas- guzzling sedan for a [ unk ]. So I'm all in favor of incremental steps in this matter. I have enormous respect for vegetarians and vegans because they've fought through the consequences of the food choices. But I think they're good reasons to eat meat. Good environmental reasons. What we need is a more diversified agriculture and when agriculture really is working. You have animals on farms as well as plants and we're not gonna keep animals on farms unless we're eating them. So I do believe if you've got a good diversified farms system, there are ways to eat meat that are good for you and good for the environment. >> It's kind of a follow up question. Kirsten Hagforce from [ unk ]. What's your guiltiest pleasure and how do you rationalize it? >> You know, I like French fries and I probably shouldn't eat them very often and I actually came up with a rule to help me with that, which is eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself. People made fried chicken when they're entertaining, it wasn't an everyday food. But now, of course, with KFC, you get it every day. So I think that guilty pleasures are great and in fact we shouldn't even feel guilty about them. But I think that if we're willing to put our own labor into securing them for ourselves, we'll have them, you know, on special occasions, which is fine. >> Can small changes in American shopping and eating patterns make a difference collectively? >> Without questions-- look, you get to vote with your fork three times a day. That's a lot more votes than you have in any other realm of life. And we have already seen that getting that vote right even once a day makes a difference. And how do we know this? Well, we see the rise of these alternative markets. We see the rise of farmers markets which were thriving. We see the rise of organic, which has been rising about 20 percent increasing sales about 20 percent a year for 20 years. This is not the result of any kind of government programs or any kind of special incentives. That's just consumers voting with their forks, connecting with farmers who were offering a better product. SO we've already seen a difference. >> Jennifer Kencade from San Francisco, California asks, " I'm all for eating local sustainable food but I'm also a recent college grad living in a very expensive city. Aside of shopping in farmers markets are growing once on food. How do you reconcile your food ethics and cost? >> There is no question that to eat healthy and to eat with some sense of environmental responsibility cost more than to eat badly. I mean, the price of fastfood is astounding, you know how cheap it is. But you can break out of the fastfood culture even on a budget if you're willing to put. If not, you know, and put a little more time into your eating. It also might mean cooking three dinners on a Sunday and putting them in the freezer, or anything like that. And there is one key though to doing this, one word, beans. Very cheap. Very delicious form of protein. >> If you could waive or want them to change only one thing about our food and agricultural system in America, what would it be? >> I think the one thing that I would do is bring animals back on to farms. When you have an animal on a farm and you have a mix farm, you don't have any waste because the animal's waste feeds the crops and the crops feed the animals and it's this elegant solution. And what we did when we took animals off the farm was we neatly divided that solution into two big problems. And those problems are a fertility deficit on the farm, since there's no manure and therefore they need to use nitrogen fertilizer and a pollution problem on the feed lot, where that waste, which would be a blessing on a farm becomes a source of pollution. So if we can get animals back on to farms, we will win in so many different ways. >> What do you think about the outage, it's not the food we eat, it's our eating habits? >> Well, I think he's on to something. You know, we've all heard about the French paradox, this population that can eat all this, you know, supposedly lethal saturated fat and lots of wine and, you know, [ unk ] and very, very rich foods but nevertheless is someone healthier than we are. We think an intense food experience is getting stuffed. They think an intense is having a little bit of something truly delicious. So it may will be that what we eat doesn't matter as much as how we eat it. Are we eating alone? Are we eating at tables with other people? Are we snacking? Are we eating, you know, real meals? All these things may turn out to matter a lot to our health. The French don't stress over food. And one of the things I hope with this book is to help people relax a little bit about food and that it's not so complex as long as you're eating real food. -[ unk ] we wanna run out and have a nice French meal with lots of wine. >> Nice place, right down the street. >> Well, Michael, that's fascinating. Thank you very much. >> Well, thank you Tim. >> Yeah, it was great. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"10 Questions with Michael Pollan","description":"The Omnivore's Dilemma author has a new book, Food Rules, out now. 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