Michael Pollan just released a brand new website.
Love the nice clean site design. He's got a ton of great content too -- here's a curated selection:
"Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?"
- You can find all of Pollan's articles on the site, including The Modern Hunter-Gatherer, a fascinating description of Pollan's experience hunting -- excerpted from Omnivore's Dilemma. The first line:
"Walking with a loaded rifle in an unfamiliar forest bristling with the signs of your prey is thrilling. It embarrasses me to write that, but it is true."
Read the whole thing, particularly if you're not a hunter.
- Pollan also has an excellent Resources section covering six topics: Sustainable Eating & Nutrition, Growing Food, Politics & Policy, Animal Welfare, Journalism & Writing, and For Parents & Kids.
- A (very) frequently asked question:
"Why aren't you a vegetarian? I'm not a vegetarian because I enjoy eating meat, meat is nutritious food, and I believe there are ways to eat meat that are in keeping with my environmental and ethical values. "
Full answer here. Pollan has done more to influence vegetarian attitudes than any outsider would be able to do. (Just like Ted Nugent will always be more influential in the hook and bullet crowd.)
