Best-Selling Author Michael Pollan to Give Presentation at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Michael Pollan, best-selling author, will give a presentation titled “In Defense of Food: The Omnivore's Solution” on Tuesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hogan Campus Center Ballroom at the College of the Holy Cross. The event is free and open to the public.

The author of Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (Random House, 2002), The Omnivore's Dilemma (Penguin Press, 2007), and most recently In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (Penguin Press, 2008), Pollan will explore what the industrialization of food and agriculture has meant for our health and happiness as American eaters, and examine the growing national movement to renovate the food system.

He will also address the rise of “nutritionism,” which he claims has vastly complicated the lives of Americans without doing anything for our health, except possibly to make it worse. According to Pollan, despite being developed to deal with a genuine problem — the fact that the modern American diet is responsible for an epidemic of chronic diseases, from obesity and type II diabetes to heart disease and many cancers — nutritionism has obscured the real roots of the problem and stood in the way of a solution.

For the last 20 years Pollan has been writing books and articles about food, agriculture, gardens, drugs, and architecture. He has been a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine since 1987 and has published articles in numerous magazines including Harper’s, Mother Jones, Gourmet, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, Gardens Illustrated, and House & Garden.

Since 2003 he has been the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the James Beard Award for best magazine series; the John Burroughs prize for the best natural history essay; the QPB New Vision Award for his first book, Second Nature (Grove Press, 2003); the Reuters-I.U.C.N. Global Award for Environmental Journalism for his reporting on genetically modified crops; and the Humane Society of the United States’ Genesis Award for his writing on animal agriculture.

Pollan’s The Omnivore's Dilemma, was named one of the 10 best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post, it won the James Beard Award for best food writing, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Last summer, incoming freshmen at Holy Cross read The Omnivore’s Dilemma as their summer reading assignment. Chosen because of its emphasis on fundamental social, ethical and environmental questions, the book was a fitting introduction to life at Holy Cross, where students are continuously encouraged to join in dialogue about basic human questions.  All 723 first-year students participated in a banquet prepared with produce from local organic farms and locally-raised livestock.  Each dish was introduced by College chefs, so that students could accurately reflect upon why they’re eating certain foods and where their food came from—major themes in Pollan’s book.