VOICE ONE:

I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Barbara Klein with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today we tell about the reporter and food expert Michael Pollan. Mister Pollan is a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He also writes for the New York Times Magazine. But Mister Pollan is best known for his two books about the environmental, industrial, scientific, and moral questions about food.

The main question he asks in his writing is "What should Americans eat?" His research shows that this question is more complex than it seems. Mister Pollan's studies about American food production, farming, health and diet have helped redefine the food debate in the United States.

VOICE ONE:

Michael Pollan

In his two thousand six book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma", Michael Pollan explores what he calls America's national eating disorder. He looks at how food is grown in the United States and the ways American eat.

The writer begins by investigating the American industrial food chain. He starts in the cornfields of the mid-western United States because most food Americans eat is linked to this plant.

MICHAEL POLLAN: "Corn as a food is wonderful. Corn as an industrial raw material, or as a food product is another matter. One plant by virtue of its genius and its ability to manipulate us has conquered our land, our food system, all our animals, and it's even conquered our bodies."

VOICE TWO:

Americans eat corn directly as a vegetable and in cereals and other foods. But they also eat it in greater quantities indirectly through corn-fed farm animals and the many starches, alcohols, and sugars made from industrial corn. American farmers grow huge amounts of this corn. To do this, they use dangerous fertilizers and pesticides.

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