Michael Pollan Love

A few things to start off the post..

#1- the Calphalon Pans winner!! is………….. JIL from PeaceLuvMunchies!

Congrats girl! Email me your shipping address and info and they’ll be send right on over to you 🙂 Thank you to everyone who participated, I hope to have another giveaway in the works soon as well.

#2- Remember the Costa Rica yoga retreat I went on in January? It was beyond amazing and an experience of a lifetime. Well, yoga teachers Camille and Heather are at it again and the dates are June 19-26. I made up the flyer and wanted to let everyone know about it. I couldn’t recommend it more, I did it now knowing anyone and left having life long friends and a better understanding of who I am. If you’re interested you can contact Camille or Heather. Their contact info is at the bottom of the flyer.

So why the Michael Pollan love? Last night Michael Pollan was scheduled to speak at Goucher College. It’s only about a 20 minute drive from me and when Jordan told me about the event a few months ago I immediately reserved my ticket.

I went to a hot vinyasa class last night then quickly grabbed a quiznos veggie sub and drove to pick up Jordan. Her boyfriend had saved us up close and personal seats and I was ready to hear my main man speak. It was a conversational interview so he made sure to answer lots of questions from the interviewer as well as the students of the college.

Michael Pollan went to a small liberal arts college in Vermont and graduated with an English major. He then continued to receive his Masters at Columbia. He believed he would go on to be an English professor. It shows how your career has all sorts of turns in order to get you where you end up.

When asked by a student “what should college students eat?” He responded that when he was in college he was a bad eater himself. He was a big McDonalds lover.

The main answer to this question was “be conscious of what you eat”. Give it a little thought. Your decisions represent a vote and your values. When you think about what you are eating you will make better choices that will benefit the land and animals.

When speaking about his book Omnivore’s Dilemma he explained that two opposite effects happened. Some people came up to him and said “after I read your book, I had to go vegetarian” and others said ” I was vegetarian until I read your book, then I realized that I can consume meat and have it come from the right places”.

When asked if he eats meat the answer was a definite yes. He eats meat, but they’re not from feedlots.  He tries to eat close to the source but food miles is not the only metric. You need to consider how they’re produced. The way the meat was produced is much more important than how it was transported.

Another question asked was “eating healthy is very expensive, so how to eat healthy on a lower end budget”

He answered to getting off of processed foods. Invest your time instead of money. You can cook 3 to 4 meals on Sunday and freeze them for the upcoming week. Eat oatmeal for breakfast, buy beans in bulk. There are options that we can take to still eat quality food but not spend lots of money on it. Cooking is the only way we can control our diets.

We can change the price of food with our decisions we make. In America, we spend less than 10% of our income on food. That is less than any people that have ever lived. Health care costs have gone up because of this. Cheap food has underwritten linings, and the goal should be to make sure people have enough money to buy healthier food, not to make food cheaper. We can vote with our food dollars.

Europe spends 16-17% of their income on food.  We should not have to choose between food and healthcare.

He also stated that the word organic creates a healthy halo around foods. The facts are simple.
Organic junk food is still junk food. We need to be fueling ourselves with real food and focus on that.

Fun fact: He used to own a pet pig when he was younger named Kosher.

I’m so thankful to have had the opportunity to hear him speak. We are starting a movement here, a food revolution and we can decide the future.

I waited in line after the speech to get both my books signed. Unfortunately he didn’t have time to personalize them, otherwise I would have had him write AS + MP forever, or AS + MP = love. haha

Jordan was able to snap a pic of me while I asked him where he ate while he stayed in MD? His answer? PF CHANGS! Never would have guessed. He got the salmon for all of you who are wondering 🙂