I'm a huge Michael Pollan fan - for his excellent writing, his top-notch reporting and his dry wit. He spoke last night in San Francisco. Here are a few of his meatier (grass-fed, of course) thoughts:

"As we have spent less of our national income on food, we have seen ourselves spend more and more on health care."

"You have as many neurons in your digestive tract as in your spinal column. What are they thinking?"

"Sex is the only thing we lie about more [than our food intake]."

"Big nutritional studies are off by 20-30%. Nutritional science is about where surgery was in 1650."

We are focusing on finding the "evil nutrient" in the Western diet, rather than the "elephant in the room" - the diet itself. We have framed it as a battle between "blessed nutrients" vs. "evil nutrients."

"As soon as you demonize one nutrient, you give a free pass to other nutrients." For example, when fats were evil, we binged on carbs, like the infamous Snackwells.

Supermarkets are filled with too many "edible food-like substances" that never go bad. "Those bacteria and fungi are still in touch with their food instincts" and won't go near that stuff in the center of the store.

The health care industry will save $500,000 for every case of Type 2 diabetes we can prevent. But that will only become important if the health care industry can't cherry pick and has to cover everyone.

"If any one wall stands between us and changing the system, it's the House Committee on Agriculture." Why can't there be committee members who represent eaters, not just agricultural states?

"There's this unholy alliance between the hunger lobby and the corn lobby. One leaves food stamps alone and the other leaves agricultural subsidies alone."

Since I've been doing work with the San Francisco Food Bank, this statement really saddens me. He's referring to past farm bills, which also have included all the funding for food stamps and other food assistance programs. It's ridiculous to link these two agendas, and nobody wants quality food more than hunger advocates. The unfortunate truth is, the "hunger lobby" has been forced to sleep with the devil, because they'd rather do that than watch people go hungry. There's a real lack of attention to hunger issues by those seeking to reform our food systems - and those in poverty would be severely affected by an upward adjustment of food prices. It's crucial that food advocates and hunger advocates join together to make sure everyone has food that is good, clean and fair. OK, end of editorial. More Pollan:

We need to connect the dots between production, health and climate change when it comes to food. Creating a "food czar" might help do that.

"The Department of Agriculture treats food as a production problem."

What's Pollan working on at the moment?

"I have a young readers' edition of The Omnivore's Dilemma coming up in the fall."

He's also been asked by doctors to put together his rules for eating (aside from the seven-word mantra on the cover of In Defense of Food - "Eat food. Not to much. Mostly plants.") If you have a personal food rule you'd like to share, you can email it to FoodRules@MichaelPollan.com.

Yes, Italians have their pasta shaped like butterflies, ears and angel’s hair – but on my recent trip to Vietnam, I saw noodles in the most unusual forms I’ve ever encountered.



You can grab a hearty bowl of pho at almost any street corner (BTW, don’t call it “foe” - it’s pronounced “fur” in north Vietnam and “far” in south Vietnam.) Pho’s basic, fettuccine-shaped rice noodles are just the beginning of the Vietnamese noodle empire.

In Hanoi, I sampled wonderful steamed rice-noodle crepes, wrapped around minced mushrooms and topped with fried onions...

It was mesmerizing to watch the store-front chef pour the batter into her cloth-lined steamer then, a few minutes later, peel the slightly gummy translucent crepe off (all while holding her baby) and hand it to her husband, who added the filling, rolled it and snipped it into four floppy sections with a pair of scissors. You can see the whole process on this video:


In Hue, the last imperial capital, all sorts of dishes were invented to coddle the whims of Emperor Tu Duc, a legendary picky eater. His 50-course banquets were a parade of winsome little morsels, including some descendents you can sample today. (You can also visit his sprawling tomb and imagine him lounging in the pavilion by his artificial lake while reciting poetry to a few of his 1,000 or so concubines.)

I was surprised when one Hue noodle dish, called banh beo, appeared as a collection of 14 little bowls, the size you might use for soy sauce. A pool of rice batter had been ladled into each one and then steamed. They were topped with dried shrimp and a crispy curl of fried pork rind...

The proprietress demonstrated how to spoon a bit of fish sauce on top and peel the disks out of their bowls...

The same humble café served rice noodle batter bundled into banana-leaf packets and stir-fried. Each one was a flat envelope, a gift to unfold and taste how the earthy-green flavor of the leaf infused the pasta...

In Hoi An, noodle dumplings are shaped around shrimp, ending up looking somewhat like a flower. Supposedly only one family has the recipe for these “white roses” (Banh Bao Vac) – and the water to make them must come only from ancient Ba Le well. You’ll find the well down a narrow alley, where someone will likely be pulling up buckets of water to fill jerry cans that fuel production of this hors d’oeuvre that graces most local restaurant menus...

Cao lau, also a Hoi An specialty, may reflect the Chinese and Japanese influence on the cuisine of this old trading town. It features thick, chewy noodles, which are also supposed to be made with water from the legendary well. At its best (my favorite version was this one, at the elegant Brother Café), the pork broth at the bottom of the bowl is reduced to a rich, savory umami bomb...

Be sure to stir it all up, so you get bits of sliced pork, bean spouts, noodles and one of the crispy little pillows of fried dough that top the dish, in every bite.

Of course, there’s more, like wads of cold rice vermicelli that you tuck into rice paper with basil, mint, young bananas and grilled pork. Or the heftier rice noodles they slam onto the table at Cha Ca La Vong, the grubby Hanoi joint that serves addictive cubes of fish that you fry in a skillet on your own little brazier. Oodles and oodles...

I just returned from Vietnam, land of a million noodles – and I wolfed down plenty of them…banh nam, banh pho, cao lau, banh beo…

So what did I want upon hitting American soil again? More noodles. I was nursing a cold and craving comfort food. Made me realize that noodles have got to be the ultimate, universal comfort meal.

But I didn’t try to duplicate the Vietnamese recipes I’d tasted. I went straight to my tried and true favorites:

• Spaghetti Carbonara (which the spell-checker wants to rename “spaghetti coronary” – appropriate if you go overboard on the bacon). But not just any recipe. The quintessential, toss-together carbonara in Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires is simply the best. For two people, I use half the pasta, but still throw in two eggs. Ruth notes that “real” spaghetti carbonara doesn’t use cream, so neither does her recipe. How good is it? We devoured the entire bowl before I thought to take a picture. Always soul satisfying.


• Macaroni and Cheese. It can be nasty out of a box – yet sublime when it’s homemade. I love the recipe for Creamy Macaroni and Cheese that ran in the NY Times a few years back. Downside: it uses an entire pound of sharp cheddar (so maybe the spell-checker should suggest “macaroni and coronary”). Upside: you don’t have to pre-cook the pasta. I like to toss some panko breadcrumbs on top for the last ten minutes. Makes a great crispy crust. The stuff is so decadently delicious I’ve even served it to dinner guests.

Have you tried these? Got something better? Tweet me @BeenThere8That (too much spam on the blog comments).