Quotes from Michael Pollan

Also, by demonizing one nutrient -fat- we inevitably give a free pass to anther , supposedly good, nutrient -carbohydrates in this case - and then proceed to eat much of that instead.

That quantities of LSD measured in micrograms could produce symptoms resembling psychosis inspired brain scientists to search for the neurochemical basis of mental disorders previously believed to be psychological in origin.

Nutrition science, which after all only got started less than two hundred years ago, is today approximately where surgery was in the year 1650—very promising, and very interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate on you? I think I'll wait awhile.

Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, and about expressing our identity. As long as humans have been taking meals together, eating has been as much about culture as it has been about biology.

If we could hear the squirrel's heartbeat, the sound of the grass growing, we should die of that roar

For the first time since embarking on this project, I began to understand what the volunteers in the cancer-anxiety trials had been trying to tell me: how it was that a psychedelic journey had granted them a perspective from which the very worst life can throw at us, up to and including death, could be regarded objectively and accepted with equanimity.

psychedelics enhance neuroplasticity.

My notes are an anarchy of disputatious taxonomy I see no need to inflict on the reader.

The palate of taste is limited to the five or six primary colors that the tongue can recognize; olfaction, by comparison, is seemingly limitless in the shadings and combinations it can register and archive—and retronasal olfaction can perceive aromas to which even the nose is blind.

A few years ago, at a conference on organic agriculture in California, a corporate organic grower suggested to a small farmer struggling to survive in the competitive world of industrial organic that you should really try to develop a niche to distinguish yourself in the market. Holding his fury in check, the small farmer replied as levelly as he could manage: I believe I developed that niche twenty years ago. It's called 'organic.' And now you, sir, are sitting on it.

By administering psychedelics in carefully calibrated doses, neuroscientists can profoundly disturb the normal waking consciousness of volunteers, dissolving the structures of the self and occasioning what can be described as a mystical experience.

They hoped to obtain evidence for the audacious theory that Wasson had developed and that would occupy him until his death: that the religious impulse in humankind had been first kindled by the visions inspired by a psychoactive mushroom.

Don't take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.

If we limit psychedelics just to the patient," she explains, "we're sticking to the old medical model

the billions we spend on antiinflammatory drugs such as aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen is money spent to undo the effects of too much omega-6 in the diet.

beer making, which began in earnest around the same time that farming did, helped the early agriculturists compensate for the decline in the nutritional quality of their diet as they turned from hunting and gathering a great many different foods to a monotonous diet of grains and tubers. The B vitamins and minerals in beer, for example, helped compensate for the loss of meat from their diet.

You can't regulate integrity

Cooking food in pots also helped expand the human population, by allowing for earlier weaning of children (thereby increasing fertility) and a longer life span, since both the very young and the very old could now be fed soft foods and nutritious soups out of the pot, no teeth required. (So pots functioned as external mouths as well.)

there is a school of archaeological thought that contends that the reason humanity turned to agriculture was to secure a more reliable supply of alcohol, not food.

a cross between a spa/retreat and a gym, where people can experience psychedelics

If you're concerned about your health, you should probably avoid products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a strong indication it's not really food, and food is what you want to eat.

No poems can please long or live that are written by water drinkers

Humboldt believed it is only with our feelings, our senses, and our imaginations—that is, with the faculties of human subjectivity—that we can ever penetrate nature's secrets. "Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice" that is "familiar to his soul.

I prized, too, the almost perfect transparency of this meal, the brevity and simplicity of the food chain that linked it to the wider world.