Michael Pollan Basically Compares His Cause to Abolitionism and Women’s Suffrage

Not an elitist.
Not an elitist.

Even though he gets invited to dreamy 36-hour dinner parties in Napa and fully supports paying $8 for a carton of eggs, Michael Pollan refuses to let others characterize him as an elitist. In a new interview with Berkeleyside he says, “I appreciate that food and class are intimately tied … But I don’t think Americans should be afraid of aestheticism.”

Not an elitist.

Pollan — who has just released a new illustrated edition of his book Food Rules, with fun pictures by artist and cartoonist Maira Kalman — insists that while eating healthy necessarily costs more, a few changes in policy could make good food more accessible to poor people. He goes on to point out that wealthy people — like himself and Berkeley neighbor Alice Waters — have traditionally been at the forefront of our country’s most important social movements.

There is no question that there is an elite strand within the food movement, but a lot of social change movements in this country — I’m thinking of abolitionists, women’s suffrage, and civil rights as examples — have been started by the affluent because they have the leisure and resources to do so.

There’s an argument for you to whip out the next time a friend calls you bougie for shopping at the farmers’ market!

Michael Pollan: New food rules, but no need to be neurotic [Berkeleyside]
Earlier: Michael Pollan, Kermit Lynch, Several Chefs Enjoy a 36-Hour Dinner Party
Michael Pollan Thinks $8 For a Dozen Eggs Is a Bargain

Michael Pollan Basically Compares His Cause to Abolitionism and Women’s