Michael Pollan is the UC Berkeley Knight Professor of Journalism, author of books such as "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food," and an all-around food guru. After finishing a bowl of steel-cut, locally milled oatmeal topped with bananas and maple syrup, Pollan spoke with The Daily Californian about his upcoming lecture for Cal Performances' "Strictly Speaking" series.

The Daily Californian: What did you have for breakfast today?

Michael Pollan: (laughs) I get that question all the time, but it's okay. I had a bowl of oatmeal, with a little banana cut into it. I'm at a hotel in Madison, (Wisconsin). It was actually locally milled, steel cut oatmeal, it was excellent with some maple syrup. I tend to have oatmeal when I'm on the road, because hotel breakfasts can be a big trap.

DC: In your writing you've extensively criticized industrial food logic. But many in the food industry might respond to your criticisms by saying that, while they may not produce perfectly healthy or totally environmentally friendly food, their industry has made food much more abundant, affordable and available. How would you respond to these claims?

MP: They're right! Industrial agriculture has achieved an amazing accomplishment. You can buy a fast food meal with lots of calories that's attractively packaged for less than you would earn at minimum wage in one hour. In the long history of civilization, that's quite an achievement, when you consider how much time and effort people had to put into making food in the past. But they need to acknowledge that there is a tremendous cost in doing things their way. There's a cost to the environment. Industrial agriculture is the biggest polluter in this country and also the biggest contributor to climate change. And there's a cost to our health. Eating this way is responsible for the chronic diseases that are bankrupting our health care system and creating lots of misery. Like in so many things in life, it's not either or, it's both. We need to understand that cheap food comes at a very high cost. And we need to figure out ways to mitigate those costs.

DC: Do you think that the national healthcare debate is talking enough about food's role in American health?

MP: No. It's a surprising silence. The American diet is the elephant in the room, when you consider that according to the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, three quarters of the money we spend on healthcare in this country--a total of $2.3 trillion--three quarters of that is going towards treating preventable chronic diseases. Now, not all of those are linked to diet, but many of them are. Whatever we do to the system, the rules of the game, won't change the fact that we're spending way too much treating the side effects of the American diet.

Eventually we're going to have to take a look at that, because that's how you would save a significant amount of money. I've seen numbers that say that simply reducing American salt consumption by 20% would save $18 billion. Right there, that one little change … How much would you save if you reduced soda consumption by 20 percent? I don't know the answers, but you would save a certain number of cases of Type 2 Diabetes, each of which costs about $400,000 over the life of the diabetic, to treatSo there's a tremendous amount of savings that can be gained by reforming the food system. And, it's not even all long-term savings. A lot of it is … heart disease obviously takes years and years to develop. But, not so with Type 2 Diabetes. So I think we will have that conversation after we pass health care reform. And the reason is, I wrote about this in a piece recently, the reason is that when the health insurers can no longer deal with chronic disease by essentially kicking people out or declining to cover them because of preexisting conditions, when they're on the hook for all that chronic disease, which they will be under even the weakest health care bill, they will have a powerful interest in preventing chronic disease. And the health insurers will join the fight to reform the food system. They will get involved in The Farm Bill. They will get involved in public campaigns about soda. They will get involved in the soda tax. And when that happens, I think we'll see a lot more movement.

DC: What responsibilities do individual eaters, food corporations and government organizations have in changing the way America eats?

MP: I don't think of it as the consumer's responsibility. It's up to each of us to decide, do we care about our health? Do we care about our kids' health? I think parents do have a responsibility to care for their children, and part of caring for your children is feeding them well. Cooking a meal made from real food, we need to make that part of the social norm for what good parenting is. But individuals, you know, if you don't care about your health, you don't care about your health. I think when people understand that by spending more on healthy food they gain a lot in terms of their health, in terms of their pleasure … This is not an area where you have to trade off and eat cardboard because it's better for you. Today, given the wonderful food that our farmers are producing, sustainable food, the best choices are often the healthiest choices. And if you're a fast food junky, you can spend a little more and get a grass-fed hamburger.

I think people who can afford to… I think spending more for food than you are right now is a really good investment. I mean, in food like in so many other things, you get what you pay for. We understand that when we're buying a car, everybody knows this. A BMW might cost twice as much as a Ford Focus, but it's a much better product. Nobody disagrees with that. And if you can afford to get the BMW, you might. But nobody seems to realize that the same is true for two eggs. You can get an egg for 8 cents. Or you can buy an egg for 50 cents, a pastured egg, from a chicken that lived outside and ate grass and bugs. And those two things look alike, but they're completely different in terms of the pleasure that they will afford and the nutritional value they will afford. So, part of my work is encouraging people to feel good about spending more on food, if they can. Now there are many people who can't afford to spend more on food. For them, we need to address the issue at the policy level, and make it easier for farmers to sell high-quality food at a reasonable price.

DC: That's interesting. But, I guess where I'm coming from, and where a lot of people my age are coming from, is that I'm very strapped for cash and time. And pizza and soda are always just right there …

MP: Yeah, they're cheap and you get a hit of calories. And, people your age, you're not too concerned with their mortality, and the links between health and eating seem so distant. So I understand that. And good food is more expensive. But, if I were a college student and I was concerned about these issues, in fact I was just asked this last night… One of the things you can do as college students that saves money, is good for your health long term and will have a positive effect on the environment is to eat less meat. Meat has a really large carbon footprint. If you're a meat eater, it's probably the biggest part of your carbon footprint.

DC: Yeah, I've heard that before. On college campuses, people always talk about Priuses, etc. You know, a lot of issues orbit around this whole climate change debate, but no one seems to talk about meat.

MP: Changing your habits around food can have as big an effect as changing the way you get around, as riding a bicycle instead of driving or whatever it is. And, meat is one of the more expensive foods you buy. So that's something that anybody can do, figure out a way to have a more plant-based diet. It'll be good for you and good for the environment. The other thing students can do is intern on a farm. They'll give you plenty of free food.

DC: Are there any farms around the Bay Area that you'd recommend?

MP: I don't know who takes internships, but I know a bunch of them do. I think Full Belly Farm does. What you would do is go to the Farmer's Market and ask the farmers if they need interns. The other thing you can do is see if you can get a job working for a farm at the Farmer's Market, because they need to hire people in Berkeley when they come in for the day, because there's so much traffic at the market. If you put in a couple hours once a week, helping farmers selling food, they will give a lot of food at the end of the day, I'm sure. So that's one way to get really good quality food without spending a lot of money.

DC: One thing that I think makes Berkeley as a city very unique is its one-of-a-kind food culture. What do you like about Berkeley's food culture? Do you have any favorite restaurants / supermarkets / farmer's markets? Do you see anything going on in Berkeley that makes you feel very hopeful about the future of how we eat food?

MP: Well, I don't know if the Farmer's Market on campus is still going on. There was one last year in Sproul Plaza once a week. That was a very encouraging development. I think we're very lucky that you can walk from this campus and get to two or three spectacular Farmer's Markets every week. So that's a very good thing. The food co-ops on campus are doing really good work around sourcing their foods and using more local foods. I've visited with them and I know they're doing really good work.

We have one of the most vibrant local food scenes in the country. It tends to be more expensive, so the challenge is to make it more accessible to students. I'm trying to think about good inexpensive stuff. You know most of the food on the edge of campus is just industrial dreck, I have to say. But … I'm trying to think what else is exciting that's going on today. People's Grocery in Oakland is doing really good work making fresh produce available to people. There are a lot of opportunities to get your hands dirty–City Slicker Farms, People's Grocery, they all need interns and volunteers. In the process of doing that, you can learn a lot about agriculture. We happen to have a community of some of the most skilled farmers in the country within 50 to 100 miles of Berkeley. The Farmer's Market is a good way to connect with those farmers. See whose food you like, and then ask them if they need help.

DC: What do you think about something like the Food Network?

MP: (laughs) Well, I enjoy watching it. I don't know what it has to do with food exactly. They could be doing anything. It's really about sport and competition, at least the prime time shows. I don't know that you can really learn that much about cooking on these shows. The cooking flies by so fast and the focus is on the personalities and the competition. But they're fun to watch. I watch "Top Chef" with my son, and he's very engaged by it. It don't think they really make much of a contribution to solving the problems of American agriculture. They tend not to focus on where the food comes from. It's just food. Do they ever go to the farm? Do they ever go to the market? No. It just kind of shows up on it's own. It comes from the supermarket. It doesn't come from the earth. There was one episode of "Top Chef" where they went to a farm. But that made me realize, "Oh yeah, why doesn't this happen more often?" They're sensitizing people to food, and I suppose they're getting people comfortable with spending more money on food, which is a good thing.

DC: One thing that really differentiates your work from other authors who deal with similar topics is your style of writing. Your books often tell stories, use vivid prose and just sound fresher than most nonfiction writing. Which writers, fiction or nonfiction, would you point to as having influence on your style?

MP: Well, I think you're picking up on something important for me. The storytelling is really the important part. It's one thing to learn a subject and develop your own conclusions or your point of view on it and to argue it. But it's quite another thing to figure out a way to tell a story to bring people aboard, so that they will learn about something that they might not have been interested in. I'm always trying to write for the people who haven't been converted. I write for the people who don't think they care or want to read an article about the cattle industry or nutrition. So, I work hardest on that.

And that's what I teach on campus too. I teach students how to tell stories as a way to explore complex issues that might otherwise be very abstract and mind-numbing. The writers I admire, I'm trying to think who we're reading in class... Ted Conover is a journalist I really like… Susan Orlean, Richard Preston, Wendell Berry is a real hero of mine, Sandra Steingraber, less well know, but really good writer on the environment… um, uh, oh what's his name? Um, uh, the guy who wrote Great Plains and has a book about Siberia coming out? … He writes for the New Yorker… I can't remember this one… I could send you an email or something. (Writer's note: After some cursory Googling I did after the interview, I'm pretty sure the writer's name is Ian Frazier) So, there's a whole bunch. There's a lot of interesting narrative nonfiction going on, and that's what I teach in the J-School. The challenge is really mastering a subject and then finding out how to turn that subject into a story, because the subject and the story are two different things. The harder part is to find the story. It's like a path through the subject. I mean, that's where I come from. I come out of the humanities, you know? I was an English major.

DC: Yeah, it shows.

MP: Thanks, I hope it shows.

DC: It seems to me that especially in the last decade or two, there's been a staggering proliferation of books on food. There are a lot of people now telling you how to eat, what not to eat, etc. Do you think our society's deep-seated anxiety over food has affected our ability to take pleasure in eating?

MP: No question. I think we have a lot of trouble taking pleasure in food. And the books aren't all helping. I try to stress that in my work, that this should be enjoyable and that obsessing about nutrients isn't going to make you healthier and it's not going to make you happier. Happiness in eating is just about eating real food with other people. I really subscribe to a lot of the Slow Food ideals in that. But the positive thing is, sure we're obsessing, but we're also having a conversation about something we haven't been talking about for too long. Out of this conversation hopefully will come reform. I think that there's a lot of evidence that we're moving in that direction. When a culture has a big conversation about something like this, things move a little bit. I'm very optimistic. There's so many positive things going on, especially that young people have embraced this as their issue. I think young people really get it. They understand the links between their personal values and politics, and that the choice of what to eat and not eat is a decision about their identity and their politics. The idea of voting with your fork is something that students really seem to understand. And the ethical implications of eating … you know, whether you eat animals or not, the carbon footprint of your food choices. This is something that students really get.

DC: Do you see anyone at the government level embracing these issues in a meaningful way?

MP: Yeah, Michelle Obama. I think (the garden at the White House) is very important. You could just say it's symbolism, but in fact, it's very important symbolism. She has elevated this conversation and the idea of eating real fresh food and feeding your children real fresh food. I think she's done a lot to advance the movement. I think the Department of Agriculture is doing some really positive things right now. There are a couple real reformers now in the Department of Agriculture. Very little is happening in Congress, I'm sad to say. Congress is still completely dominated by Agrobusiness.

DC: What will you focus on in your upcoming lecture at Zellerbach?

MP: I'm going to try to connect the dots between personal health and the health of the environment, and try to expand peoples' definition of health beyond their own bodies to show why your health is tied to the health of the food chain. Instead of obsessing about nutrients, we should be thinking about the health of the food chain we're in. So it's going to be about health and nutrition. It's going to start on the supermarket and end on the farm.

Tags: ZELLERBACH HALL, CAL PERFORMANCES, MICHAEL POLLAN, THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA, IN DEFENSE OF FOOD