FOOD LEADER MARK BITTMAN TELLS THE TERRIBLE TRUTH - BUT MAINTAINS OPTIMISM

 I’m Ezra Klein. And this is “The Ezra Klein Show.” [THEME MUSIC PLAYING]

I’ve read Mark Bittman forever. I read him at The New York Times when he wrote “The Minimalist” cooking column, which I loved. 

I don’t think I can tell you how many recipes I made from that. I bought his cookbooks. I had “How to Cook Everything,” that big red one. And then when I went vegetarian, I had “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.” 

I did not have the baking one because I don’t bake. I read his food policy writing. He’s like my cranky food uncle. He’s been there at every step in my food journey. I’ve learned how to cook from him. And I’ve learned, I think, more importantly, a lot about how to think about food from him. 

So when he sent me his new book, “Animal, Vegetable, Junk,” I was excited. But I also was totally unprepared for what the book really is. It is this sweeping history and reinterpretation of humanity’s relationship with food, going back to our hunter-gatherer days, tracing the development of agriculture, the way that changed our social mores and the way that changed our laws, then the industrialization of agriculture, the pressure of both technological advance and the profit motive, the way capitalism and philosophy converge to create a food system that — and there’s really no other way to put this — is poisoning us and poisoning the earth and inflicting cruelty to other creatures on a scale that breaks your mind if you try to contemplate it. 

And that is not to say that system does nothing good. It feeds billions of people with a variety that we never could have imagined at another point in human history. But it’s doing those other things, the poisoning things, too. And we actually have to take that seriously. Bittman’s indictment here is sweeping. And I’m not sure you’ll hear that in this conversation I’m bought in on every piece of it. 

WOW. Just finished listening to the conversation. Ate a salad and a third bowl of potato rice green bean onion soup - delicious!

Delicious, tho, is not a part of Bittman's language.

Photo please.

Costco chickens are very inexpensive. But the chickens suffer for it. They are tortured to stay fat.

Okay gotta go upstairs and ride bike while reading a paperback.

As a kid Bittman read the SETTLEMENT COOKBOOK, as did we.

OUTSIDE now, the birds are all talking to each other. Yes, it's spring and young birds fancy turns to tweeting to their potential partners.

Wood peckers in the sycamore maple tree, chicadees filling the bird house, they will be bringing in bldg materials for their homes, no need to go to Home Depot or Strathman Lumber if you are still there.

Can you hear my washing machine filling up?