Go eating - 1 - The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan - IT

1 - Importance of developing local food systems and sustainable agriculture for health, security and environment.
2 - Unsustainable is something that cannot go on because it is consuming or destroying sources or conditions it depends on (radical change is inevitable)
3 - US industrial food system is unsustainable because of:
- Corn dependency (corn oversupply responsible of the sweetness and added fat ubiquity in US diet)
- Energy: 10 calories of fuel energy vs 1 calory of food energy (food is important part of energy problem and climate change crisis)
- Trading (and all the food travelling allover the World)
- Different types of pollution
- Health (we are omnivore, but US diet is getting more and more monoculture)
- Money (cheap food is quite expensive if you consider the hidden - social or not - costs)
- Food security
- Labour
- Ignorance dependency: if we knew how the industrial food is done we would loose appetite
4 - Moore and more people is worrying about their food. A clue is the consumers new behavior (e.g. farmer markets growing fastly)
5 - Organic food (on industrial scale, it is not better than properly industrial food)
- Pizza Hut organic pizza
- Wall Mart organic food from China
6 - A good sustainable model: Polyface farm (Virginia) - Not a zero sum system, it produces more than what it consumes
7 - Local food support reasons:
- land defense
- seasonality and nutritional values
- sociality
- natural world reconnection
- series of non-zero sum relationships
8 - Local food defense:
- Energy
- National Security/Peace
- Public health
9 - New kind of consumer that shop for values and new food chain creation.


Credits:
- UCTV – University of California Television - http://www.youtube.com/user/uctelevision

Links:
- Michael Pollan’s web site - http://www.michaelpollan.com/
- Polyface web site - http://www.polyfacefarms.com/