Quotes from Michael Pollan

David] Wallerstein discovered that people would spring for more popcorn and soda- a lot more- as long as it came in a single gigantic serving. Thus was born the two-quart bucket of popcorn, the sixty-four-ounce Big Gulp, and, in time, the Big Mac and the jumbo fries.

Nuestra cultura codifica las reglas para comer sabiamente en una complicada estructura de tabúes, rituales, recetas, modales y tradiciones culinarias que nos evitan tener que enfrentarnos de nuevo al dilema del omnívoro en cada comida.

La actividad agrícola no se adapta a las explotaciones a gran escala por la siguiente razón: la actividad agrícola se ocupa de plantas y animales que nacen, crecen y mueren».

a much better and certainly more useful antonym for "spiritual" might be "egotistical." Self and Spirit define the opposite ends of a spectrum, but that spectrum needn't reach clear to the heavens to have meaning for us. It can stay right here on earth.

La falta de una cultura de comida estable nos hace muy vulnerables a las lisonjas de los ingenieros alimentarios y los estrategas del marketing, para quienes el dilema del omnívoro no es tanto un dilema como una oportunidad. La industria alimentaria está muy interesada en exacerbar nuestra ansiedad ante lo que debemos o no comer, para así poder aliviarla después con nuevos productos.

Researchers have found that people (and animals) presented with large portions will eat up to 30 percent more than they could otherwise. Human appetite, it turns out, is surprisingly elastic, which makes excellent evolutionary sense: It behooved our hunter gatherer ancestors to feast whenever the opportunity presented itself, allowing them to build up reserves of fat against future famine.

From a typical McDonald's meal] this is how the laboratory measured our meal: soda (100%), milk shake (78%), salad dressing (65%), chicken nuggets (56%), cheeseburger (52%), and French fries (23%).

We simply don't have the words to convey the force of these perceptions to our straight selves, perhaps because they are the kinds of perceptions that precede words.

To eat corn directly is to consume all the energy in the corn, but when you feed that corn to an animal, 90% of its energy is lost... what this means is that the amount of food energy lost in the making of something like a Chicken McNugget could feed a great many more children than just mine, and that behind the 4,510 calories in our meal, tens of thousand corn calories could have been used to feed many more people.

Noi avem tendinÈ›a s? ne îndrept?m atenÈ›ia È™i È™tiinÈ›a spre via?? È™i creÈ™tere, dar fireÈ™te c? moartea È™i descompunerea nu sunt mai puÈ›in importante pentru operaÈ›iile naturii, iar ciupercile sunt st?pânii necontestaÈ›i ai acestui t?râm.

Cheese is all about the dark side of life - Sister Noella; aka The Cheese Nun

We gardeners have always had trouble heeding Henry Ward Beecher's sound nineteenth-century advice, that we not be "made wild by pompous catalogs from florists and seedsmen.

Shame seems to be the going price of achievement, particularly the achievement of knowledge or beauty.

All told, growing food organically uses about a third less fossil fuel than growing it conventionally, though that savings disappears if the compost is not produced on site or nearby.

Comer nos pone en contacto con todo aquello que compartimos con el resto de los animales y con lo que nos separa de ellos. Nos define.

I would never have found it if not for psychedelics. This strikes me as one of the great gifts of the experience they afford: the expansion of one's repertoire of conscious states.

The point is that, as eaters (if not as scientists), we know all we need to know to act: This diet, for whatever reason, is the problem.

A mouse is the size of a mouse for a good reason, and a mouse that was the size of an elephant wouldn't do very well.

Americans today spend less on food, as a percentage of disposable income (10%), than any other industrialized nation... meaning that we could afford to spend more on food if we chose to.

In wildness is the preservation of the world, Thoreau once wrote; a century later, when many of the wild places are no more, Wendell Berry has proposed this necessary corollary: In human culture is the preservation of wildness.

The next Skylight sound bite goes like this: "We got barbecue, slaw, and cornbread, that's all," Samuel recites. "When you come here, it's not what you want, it's how much of it you need.

Compared with many scientists—or for that matter many spiritual types—Roland Griffiths possesses a large measure of what Keats, referring to Shakespeare, described as "negative capability," the ability to exist amid uncertainties, mysteries, and doubt without reaching for absolutes, whether those of science or spirituality.

Nu am f?cut operaÈ›ia suficient de mult timp pentru ca t?ierea puilor s? devin? o rutin?, dar munca a început s?-mi dea senzaÈ›ia unei proceduri mecanice, iar aceast? senzaÈ›ie, poate mai mult decât oricare alta, m-a tulburat: cât de repede te poÈ›i obiÈ™nui cu orice, îndeosebi atunci când cei din jur nu cred nimic despre ceea ce faci.

GMO seed is just the latest chapter in an old story: Farmers eager to increase their yields adopt the latest innovation, only to find that it's the companies selling the innovations who reap the most from the gain in the farmer's productivity.