Hello! Here’s the link for your reading assignment for Tuesday night: Michael Pollan’s “Open Letter to the Next Farmer-in-Chief”.
You can read it as it was published online in the NYTimes, clicking through page by page, or you can use the “print link” to read a copy that is all on one page with no ads. (Of course, it’s also easier to print from that link.)
Michael Pollan wrote this a month before the presidential election, although many readers felt he meant to speak directly to Barack Obama.
A while back ago me and my mother had a conversation and she said do you notice that people are getting heavier, especially women. The conversation ended on this note: There is something that they are putting in our food. I remembered our conversation again when I read the article “Open Letter to the Next Farmer- in- Chief”. Michael Pollan said we are eating oil and spewing out greenhouse gases.” Sorry to say everything is contaminated with toxins, even the air we breath. Our diets are filled with empty or cheap calories rather than whole organic produce. Eating orgainc produce can help fight off some of the toxins we consume from the air we breath, water we drink, and food we eat. Americans are overweight and many of the diseases today (like cancer) are linked to our diet. Each one of us has a responsibility as a wise consumer or parent to know what’s going into our bodies. We should read health and nutrition books and observe trusted health-related websites such as FDA.’s website and Dr. Andew Weil’s website. And yes, the government can help by getting us (our food) off fossil fuel and back to a diet of contemporary sunshine as well as improve safety & security of food.
A while back ago me and my mother had a conversation and she said do you notice that people are getting heavier, especially women. The conversation ended on this note: There is something that they are putting in our food. I remembered our conversation again when I read the article “Open Letter to the Next Farmer- in- Chief”. Michael Pollan said we are eating oil and spewing out greenhouse gases.” Sorry to say everything is contaminated with toxins, even the air we breath. Our diets are filled with empty or cheap calories rather than whole organic produce. Eating orgainc produce can help fight off some of the toxins we consume from the air we breath, water we drink, and food we eat. Americans are overweight and many of the diseases today (like cancer) are linked to our diet. Each one of us has a responsibility as a wise consumer or parent to know what’s going into our bodies. We should read health and nutrition books and observe trusted health-related websites such as FDA.’s website and Dr. Andew Weil’s website. And yes, the government can help by getting us (our food) off fossil fuel and back to a diet of contemporary sunshine as well as improve safety & security of food.
Who would have guessed that a food policy, would effect so many different areas, economic, health and enviroment. I think that Michael Pollan makes a great argument to President Obama. Although, I believe that at the present time, all attention should be at the bailout and stimulus for the American people. This “Open Letter” will most likely never be brought up in a serious discussion within the next 8 years.
I agree with nh1011. It’s crazy that something as simple as the food eat is so interconnected with all these issues. At first thought I connected food and health but as I read the article I couldn’t help but think to myself, “oh my gosh I never thought of it like that”. It was a very eye opening article.
I would like to confess, that I never had, growing up in New York my entire life, thought of these arguments brought up in “Open Letter to the Next Farmer- in- Chief.” I never had gone into thinking that so much harm goes into producing agriculture in the United States. Its no surprise to me anymore, that we are the largest group of individuals as a country that consume so much food and that in a unhealthy way. I believe it was 37 percent of greenhouse gasses are exerted by agriculture, which to me is astonishing. Aside from that, the industrialized agriculture that happens, leads tremendous amounts of toxins in the food we eat. Its not surprising that our health care costs have also triples since 1940s.