mark bittman's dilemma

A friend of mine sent me a link to Michael Pollan’s talk at the TED conference about consuming from a plant’s perspective. I won’t lie. I was a little disappointed, and couldn’t really get into his message, especially after he explained his concept of “becoming seduced by a potato.” Yeah.

But I did think that Mark Bittman’s talk gave a powerful message. He touches on a lot of issues, and emphasizes the trends/impact a Western diet has on both American health and the environment.
I thought it was interesting that he introduced some policy behind agribusiness and the link to the food pyramid we all know and love. A statistic that really shocked me was the mention of how half the people responsible for developing the food guide pyramid have ties to agribusiness. Something is fundamentally wrong if people with invested interest are responsible for developing the foundations of the American diet.

It seems like the correlation between the food we consume and land degradation, pollution, water shortages, and loss of biodiversity are not emphasized enough. I feel like a lot of people (and this may be a horribly wrong assumption/over generalization) don’t always consider their diet as an outlet for change.

Bittman even cites that one-fifth of all green house gasses come from livestock. He then links that with the statistic about Americans consuming a half a pound of meat a day, when “even the industry obsessed USDA recommends we consume a half a pond of meat a week.” This upward trend of industrial agriculture (not to mention the influence of lobbyists) is problematic not only for human health, but the environment as well.


I’m not trying to promote vegetarianism as a complete solution, but I couldn’t agree more with Bittman’s cautionary closing statement, that we need to stop raising our food industrially, and start being more progressive and consuming more thoughtfully. He threw a lot out there…did anything else jump out at anyone?