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The Sickness in Our Food Supply
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The Sickness in Our Food Supply

Michael Pollan
The New York Review of Books, 2020
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9

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Overview
  • Concrete Examples

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Michael Pollan details the broken American food supply chain. He highlights problematic policy choices that led to industry consolidation, unfair labor practices that create toxic working conditions and a commodity-based food economy that results in bad health for consumers. Pollan explains how the COVID-19 pandemic reveals inequities and trends that sustain a brittle marketplace and an unhealthy nation.

Take-Aways

  • The pandemic revealed weaknesses and liabilities that few public figures discuss in the US system of food production and distribution.
  • Unsafe working conditions and producer consolidation make the meat production and distribution system especially vulnerable to COVID-19 disruption.
  • COVID-19 reveals how poorly the US treats “essential” workers, though the nation’s food supply depends on them.

About the Author

The John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley Michael Pollan also teaches at Harvard University. He wrote the bestsellers The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food.

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