26 Facts About Michael Pollan

Michael Kevin Pollan is an American journalist who is a professor and the first Lewis K Chan Arts Lecturer at Harvard University.

Michael Pollan was born to a Jewish family on Long Island, New York.

Michael Pollan is the son of author and financial consultant Stephen Pollan and columnist Corky Pollan.

Michael Pollan uses case examples that fit the archetype of four basic human desires, demonstrating how each of these botanical species are selectively grown, bred, and genetically engineered.

Michael Pollan is critical of industrial monoculture claiming it leads to crops less able to defend themselves against predators and requiring large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers which upsets the natural ecosystem.

Michael Pollan describes what he sees as the inefficiencies and other drawbacks of factory farming and gives his assessment of organic food production and what it is like to hunt and gather food.

Michael Pollan finds hope in Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Virginia, which he sees as a model of sustainability in commercial farming.

Michael Pollan holds that consumption of fat and dietary cholesterol does not lead to a higher rate of coronary disease, and that the reductive analysis of food into nutrient components is a mistake.

Michael Pollan explains this seeming paradox by vetting, and then validating, the notion that nutritionism and, therefore, the whole Western framework through which we intellectualize the value of food is more a religious and faddish devotion to the mythology of simple solutions than a convincing and reliable conclusion of incontrovertible scientific research.

In 2018, Michael Pollan wrote How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, a book about the history and future of psychedelic drugs.

Michael Pollan argues that psilocybin and LSD are not drugs that make people crazy, which he calls the biggest misconception people have about psychedelics, but rather drugs that can help a person become "more sane" by, for example, eliminating a fear of death.

Michael Pollan is trying to start a post war on drugs conversation that better takes into account how different one drug is from another and figures out cultural containers for each of them, to use them safely and productively.

Michael Pollan is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a former executive editor for Harper's Magazine.

Michael Pollan has contributed to Greater Good, a social psychology magazine published by the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Michael Pollan wrote and narrated an audiobook, Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World, for Audible.

In 2014, Michael Pollan wrote the foreword in the healthy eating cookbook The Michael Pollan Family Table.

Michael Pollan co-starred in the documentary, Food, Inc, for which he was a consultant.

Michael Pollan was interviewed for Vanishing of the Bees, a documentary about colony collapse, directed by Maryam Henein and George Langworthy.

In 2016, Netflix released a four-part documentary series, which was based on Michael Pollan's book, Cooked, and was directed by Alex Gibney.

In 2015, Michael Pollan received the Washburn Award from the Boston Museum of Science, awarded annually to "an individual who has made an outstanding contribution toward public understanding and appreciation of science and the vital role it plays in our lives" and was named as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

In 2016, Michael Pollan received a honorary degree from the University of Gastronomic Sciences.

Michael Pollan's articles have been anthologized in Best American Science Writing, Best American Essays, The Animals: Practicing Complexity, and the Norton Book of Nature Writing.

In 2008, Michael Pollan received the Washington University International Humanities Medal.

Michael Pollan's work has been discussed and criticized by Jonathan Safran Foer in his non-fiction book Eating Animals.

Michael Pollan has been accused by Jon Entine, who supports GMOs, of using his influence to promote "anti-GMO junk science".

Berkeley biologist Michael Eisen posted a tweet calling Pollan's comment "a new low even in Pollan's 'anti-GMO crusade'".