Michael Pollan

The 10 Worst People in NYC Restaurants

In the city's dining jungle, these beasts are the scariest

Marion Nestle on Her History With Food Studies and the Future of Food Politics

Look around New York City, and you will see hundreds of this town's young, hip denizens picking up a bundle of organic kale at their local farmers' markets while chatting about their rooftop beekeeping operations or basement brewing ventures. And many of those people are taking their hobbies one ste ... More >>

For At Any Price Director Ramin Bahrani, Bigger Films Demand Bigger Targets

Expand or die

Michael Pollan Launches $10K Food Journalism Fellowships at UC Berkeley

Excellent news for food journalism: UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism is now offering five $10,000 fellowships a year, for early and mid-career journalists to travel and report longform stories on a range of food subjects, from nutritional policy and food science, to technology, culture, a ... More >>

California Says No to Labels on Genetically Modified Food

Food activists against "franken-food" will have to put a pause on taking down genetically modified products. Voters in California rejected Prop. 37, a law that if passed would have made California the first state to label processed food containing genetically modified ingredients. [See More: Mariju ... More >>

Listen: Food Is the New Rock, You Eat What You Are

Food Is the New Rock has a new podcast, and a recent episode features L.A.'s Jonathan Gold. There's a lot of fun food- and music-related chit chat, but the highlight has got to be when Gold mentions that his favorite blog in the world is The Hairpin.

Ethics of Eating Animals: NY Times Announces a Contest and FiTR Provides a Crib

Tomorrow's New York Times Magazine jumps the shark and provides its readers with a moral challenge: Justify your consumption of meat with a 600 word essay. Of course, the dice are loaded, and anyone who favors meat - either actively or passively - has a long row to hoe. Arguments like "everyone does ... More >>

Michael Pollan-Inspired Stop-Animation Video

Making the ideas in Michael Pollan's Food Rules extremely accessible as well as completely adorable might seem an impossible feat. But it has just been accomplished by two contestants in a competition held by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, who made a stop-animation video inspired b ... More >>

New Polls Reveal Americans Aren't Happy With Food System

KB35, Flickr, CC​Is Michael Pollan's message sinking in? Are Americans finally tired of wolfing down government-subsidized Doritos (R.I.P. Arch West) and Big Macs? According to a new poll, the answer is an encouraging, although by no means overwhelming, yes. Recently, Mark Bittman pointed to t ... More >>

A Fork in the Road Guide to Greenmarket Etiquette

Robert Sietsema​ Farmers markets are a bit like inebriation: they have a way of amplifying the best and worst parts of one's personality, of shaving away pleasantries to reveal a certain hard nut of truth about human nature. And they're also like an open-air subway car, particularly on Saturd ... More >>

Now That The Food Pyramid's Gone, Maybe the Food Label Will Follow

Renee Walker​Earlier this summer, the USDA retired its food pyramid, which was getting a little long in the tooth, in favor of a food plate. And while it's been praised for its relative clarity and lack of crudely drawn livestock, the food nutrition label has continued to confuse people. But n ... More >>

Bad News From the Bees in Queen of the Sun

Food Day 2011 Will Attempt to Get America to 'Eat Real'

​Since 1981, World Food Day has come around every October to increase awareness and understanding of hunger, and promote actions to alleviate it. But its scope is just so planetary, so mindful of countries that don't suffer from an overabundance of junk food, subsidized corn, and diabetic thir ... More >>

Hard-Nosed Chefs Say The Customer Can Be Wrong; David Chang Heads to Canada

​The customer is not always right at restaurants like Zucco: Le French Diner, Spotted Pig, and Momofuku, where the house insists its food is served a certain way, no substitutions or alterations allowed. [NY Times] A new bill in California would ban the sale and possession of shark fins, incl ... More >>

Yes, Foodies Are Ridiculous. But Then So Is B.R. Myers!

B.R. Myers​In the March issue of The Atlantic, vegan, curmudgeon, North Korea expert, and animal-rights activist B.R. Myers goes after foodies in an article entitled "The Moral Crusade Against Foodies." I've got to admit, we've given him a very broad target. He begins by extracting damning q ... More >>

Is Paula Deen Scary Enough to Be Your Halloween Costume? Um, That Would Be a Yes.

Scary: Guy Fieri.​Stumped for a great Halloween costume this year? Check out CHOW's excellent gallery of food-celebrity costumes. Some are scary, like the Paula Deen, complete with lightning-white teeth. Others are just, well, awesome, like the purple-draped Alice Waters or slightly slutty Mic ... More >>

Michael Pollan Endorses the $8 Dozen of Eggs

Michael Pollan gets egg-cited.​In a Wall Street Journal interview, Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and, more recently, Food Rules, defends the $8 dozen of eggs:

Chatting With Veggie Burgers Every Which Way's Lukas Volger About Bodega Vegans and Why So Many Veggie Burgers Suck

Veggie Burger MadnessLukas Volger shows us a veggie burger.​Yesterday, we spoke with Lukas Volger about his new book, Veggie Burgers Every Which Way, in which he gives a long-needed make-over to the bête noire of vegetarian dining. Today in Part 2 of our interview, the author talks about ... More >>

Chatting With Veggie Burgers Every Which Way's Lukas Volger About Reinventing the Bête Noire of Vegetarian Dining

Veggie Burger MadnessLukas Volger displays one of his creations.​Even though it's generally accepted that vegetarian food has evolved by leaps and bounds over the past several years, veggie burgers by and large remain stuck in the herbivore ghetto. There's the Morningstar-Boca Burger contingen ... More >>

Padma and Friends Declare Food Television Safe for Consumption

Keith WagstaffCulinary types discuss culinary television programming.​Michael Pollan's New York Times article "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch" hung heavily over the "Food on the Tube: How TV Shapes the Way We Think About Food" talk Tuesday night at the 92nd Street Y. In attendance: Padma L ... More >>

Chang, Pollan, Grandin Make the 2010 Time 100 List

Jason Koski/Cornell UniversityTemple Grandin​Time has spit out its annual Time 100 list, and managed to make room on it for a few people concerned with what we put in our pie holes.

Fresh Calls Food Activists to Arms, Again

Chef Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern on Health Care, Salt, and the One Food He Won't Eat

Ellen Silverman Photography​Yesterday, we talked to Michael Anthony, executive chef at Gramercy Tavern, about the James Beards, his most embarrassing kitchen moment, and the advent of ramps. Today, in the second half of the interview, find out how Anthony feels about health care, the mayor's ... More >>

Fast Company Names Most Inspiring People in Sustainable Food

parttake/photobucketSome thumbs are greener than others.​Feeling green, perhaps, Fast Company has listed its 10 "Most Inspiring People in Sustainable Food," including farmers, chefs, and urban planners. (Unsurprisingly, a certain organic supermarket chain CEO is noticeably absent from the list ... More >>

Hardcore Homemakers Make Locavorism a Feminist Cause

Femivorism: homemaking for the hardcore.​Has Michael Pollan given women a way to be feminists and stay-at-home moms at the same time? A movement described as "femivorism" involves women who stay at home -- not only to care for their families, but also to grow their own produce, can their prese ... More >>

Moby Chews on Some Gristle

​Being New York's most recognizable bald vegan just wasn't enough for Moby, who's now added "anthology editor" to his list of accomplishments. The musician and Teany co-founder has just edited (with Miyun Park) Gristle, a collection of essays about meat.

There's Poo In Your Coke; Smoky Foods May Be Toxic

​Curtis Allina, the candy company executive responsible for the modern Pez dispenser, has died at age 87. The former vice-president of what is now Pez Candy helped develop the first character dispensers, which became highly collectible. [NY Times] A recent study reveals that nearly half of al ... More >>

The Pollan/Safran Foer Effect: Even 'Bones' Gets Food Political

Books like Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals and the Michael Pollan oeuvre aren't just turning vegetarian starlets into hardcore vegans. Their message of the evils of factory farming may also be reaching mainstream television audiences across the country via such innocuous shows as FOX's foren ... More >>

Michael Pollan's New Food Rules

The New York Times Magazine's food issue is coming out this weekend, but some of the content is online now, like the cover story on Jamie Oliver's project to make fat Americans slim down. Then Michael Pollan weighs in, as he is wont to do, with some new rules on how to eat. But these aren't actuall ... More >>

Michael Pollan on American Obesity and the Healthcare Debate; Tavern on the Green Files for Bankruptcy

​Following last night's speech by President Obama on healthcare reform, Michael Pollan pens an op-ed pointing to the "elephant in the room" of the health-care debate: the way Americans eat. [NY Times] Tavern on the Green has officially filed Chapter 11, listing assets and liabilities of as mu ... More >>

'Bacon Is Good for Me': The Remix

Remember that episode of Wife Swap where the chubby, angry Southern kid goes apeshit when his new health-nut mom tries to take away his bacon? Behold: the remix. The kid's "bacon is good for me" catchphrase provides the refrain, spliced with shots of bacon pie, a Bacon Explosion, and Kevin Bacon. ... More >>

Island Snacks Recall; Industry Bigwigs Bid Cafe des Artistes Adieu

​The latest food safety scare involves a snack mix made by Snack King Foods in Rochester called Island Snacks Natures Mix. The product, sold at Kmart, is being recalled due to the detection of undeclared sulfites during routine tests. [Forbes] BlackBook rounds up the best comfort food spots ... More >>

New Food Safety Laws Passed; Philippe Sends Spies to Mr. Chow's

​The Cove, a tense new Sundance award-winning documentary about a town in Japan where thousands of wild dolphins are captured for marine amusement parks or slaughtered for food, opens in select theaters today. [Reuters] The House of Representatives passed new food safety legislation yesterday ... More >>

Michael Pollan on Julia Child and Our Culinary End of Days

The imminent release of Julie & Julia has so far launched about five thousand articles, and this weekend, Michael Pollan will bring us one more. The film has inspired Pollan to pen over 8,000 words in the New York Times Magazine about, among other thing, the rise of cooking as a spectator sport, ... More >>

Dying to Eat in Food Inc.

Doc to America's food industry:  You're killing us!

Michael Pollan on the Colbert Report

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cMichael Pollancolbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorGay Marriage The Colbert Report was food-centric last night, including Colbert dining and dashing on the ridiculous $1000 sundae at Serendipity, and this interview with Michael Po ... More >>

Earth Day Prompts Green Talk; Big Ag No Fan of White House Garden

A new study shows that the more choice we have, the more likely we are to opt for unhealthy foods. Fries or salad? Er, what do you think? [CBC] Michelle Obama has incurred the wrath of Big Agriculture by aligning herself with the locavore movement. The Mid-America CropLife Association (MACA) wrote ... More >>

Another Food Scare: Now it's Pistachios

More fodder for those who believe the FDA needs a total overhaul--another food recall! This time, it's pistachios. The recall involves one million pounds of the nuts, possibly contaminated with salmonella, produced by Setton Pistachios in California. The FDA recommends avoiding all pistachios and pi ... More >>

Grocery Auctions & Dinner Deals

More people are cooking at home instead of eating out, but they aren't exactly thrilled about it, according to a recent study. More of us doubted the safety of supermarket food last year compared to how we felt about it four years previous, back in the blissfully innocent days before poisonous pean ... More >>

The Food Bubble: Pop!

Pop!The Times has an interesting article today comparing the restaurant industry to the real estate and financial sectors--there was a bubble, and yes, it burst. The article cites New York Department of Labor stats that show the restaurant industry gained 50,000 jobs in the last seven years, only to ... More >>

Flora! Flora! Flora! It's Plants as Muse in a Big Group Show at a Manhattan Bank

Free Will Astrology: May 7 through 13

They Shoot Journos, Don't They?

CPJ Calls Hotel Palestine Deaths Avoidable

Toxic to the Tongue

How Big Business Feeds You Hazardous Food

Feeding Frenzy

From Celebrity Chefs to Gourmet Guerrillas, Americans Confront the Hazards of the Food World

Books

Chasing the Dragon

Time Warner Goes to China and Gets Shanghaied by Its Hosts

Exit Stage Right

Press Winks As Starr Tries To Dodge Accountability