Michael Pollan the foodie?

Over the course of that next year, I got really interested in food. More so than usual. I had always been interested in food. When my brother and I weren't being lazy and ordering takeout (or when we ran out of money), we cooked for ourselves because we were latchkey kids.

My newfound interest in food, specifically the food industry, came after I listened to an NPR interview with Michael Pollan. He had written an open letter to the next president. It called for food reform and perhaps a "farmer in chief." In the interview, he brought up some key points about the disconnect we had with our food, the troubles with food subsidizing and all the cheap unhealthy calories running our country. He also points out some ways we can make it better for everybody and the land we farm on. It's well worth a listen if you are interested in food.

I would thank him for piquing my interest in our food industry. His book, In Defense of Food (or the shorter, quicker, Food Rules), is a great read because it snaps a lot of common sense back into the way we should be thinking about eating. I'd recommend that as well.

In any case, I started wondering what a foodie was. There isn't an official definition for the term, but most people confuse it with the term gourmet. Gourmets are people who want to eat the best food out there, food connoisseurs, if you will. Picture typical snobby food critics, no offense (not all food critics are snobby). Whereas foodies are just people who are really interested in all the makings behind food, the science, politics, etc.

So was Michael Pollan a foodie? And by that regard, was I starting to become one myself?

Whatever it was, I continued to listen in on the conversations about food, such as the local food movement, organics, ethical animal slaughter and of course vegetarianism.