In an interview with The Tyee, on which the 100-Mile Diet was launched in British Columbia, Michael Pollan on his son’s eating journey going from finicky eater to foodie (presumably he’d also the eater of Fruity Pebbles). He touches on the dust-up between Michelle Obama with her organic garden on the White House lawn andthe Mid America CropLife Association encouraging her use of pesticides. Pollan suggests this lobbying group for pesticide manufacturers should go by the opposite name the “Bug Death Association.” Apparently the garden has a twin on the grounds of the Department of Agriculture:

On Obama’s side, you’ve got Tom Vilsack who is the Secretary of Agriculture. As the former governor of Iowa, he seemed like a real conventional choice. But in fact he’s been quite surprising, too. He’s also planted a garden at the Department of Agriculture, which you could dismiss as symbolism, but he’s talking a lot about local food and urban agriculture. Most significantly, he appointed as his number two a woman name Kathleen Merrigan, who is a genuine reformer. She founded the organic program at USDA, she wrote the original organic law for Senator Patrick Leahy and she’s a real staunch supporter of sustainable agriculture and she’s running the Department of Agriculture! That’s pretty mind blowing. We’ll see. She’s up against incredible forces of inertia.

Most interesting is a concept we feel bears chronic repeating: that health care cost, public or otherwise, can be directly attributable to lack of prevention stemming from poor diet. Referring to the situation as “the catastrophe of the American diet,” Pollan speculates that President Obama understands abstractly the connection between reducing health care costs and supporting the healthy eating infrastructure. While we’re sure that diet-related causes of chronic disease are a large portion, we’re not quite sure about the accuracy of Pollan’s comment that after smoking and alcoholism that “other than that, chronic disease is mostly food related.”

Alternet