Pollan was also feted at a so-called “Slow Food” brunch earlier in the day.

During his reading at the Iowa City Public Library, Pollan decried the lack of a “strong food culture” in the U.S. and said that the “Western diet” has created an abundance of “Western diseases,” like cancer of the digestive tract, heart disease, diabetes, and more.

Much of Pollan’s talk questioned the efficacy of modern nutrition science which he compared to the early days of surgery and invasive medicine from the 15th century.

The central thesis of his work is that foods are too often thought of as a sum of their nutrients, and that the problem with this bottom-line mentality is that food science has been a constant search for the next magic bullet nutrient, like antioxidants, beta-carotene, or omega-3 fatty acids. He didn’t dispute the power of such nutrients’ benefits, but said this emphasis on biochemistry has too often turned nutritional claims on food packaging into so much medicinal snake-oil.Pollan listed several “red-letter” days in the demise of nutritious thought. One was in 1973 when the Food and Drug Administration repealed a rule which had previously disallowed industrial substitutes in common products like bread or sour cream.

“There are certain traditional foods that everyone knows, like bread and pasta and milk and sour cream. The consumer should expect that those foods are made the way those foods have traditionally been made and don’t have any kind of adulterants in them and if you substantially change the way you’re making your bread or pasta or sour cream or yogurt … you had to call it ‘imitation’ bread or ‘imitation’ sour cream or ‘imitation’ yogurt.

“This has been part of U.S. law since 1938 when the FDA was formed — the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act.

“This rule really bothered the food scientists who had some interesting ideas on how to reformulate sour cream or yogurt. But it also appealed to the public health community at the time which was very eager to get fat out of our diet and create all these low-fat products.  They couldn’t do that because you’d have to call it imitation sour cream and ‘imitation’ was the kiss of death in the marketplace.

“So they petitioned the government and the food industry, with the help of the of the American Heart Association and some other well-meaning groups, to get the imitation rule … thrown out as a regulatory matter.

“In 1973 suddenly you have an explosion of products and you can add all sorts of things to bread or sour cream or yogurt and you didn’t have to say it was ‘imitation.’”

He explained that processing corn (into sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup) and soybeans (into oils and fats) has created many health problems for humans.

He has recently written four articles about the current Farm Bill and credited farm subsidies with encouraging “overproduction” of certain crops.

“Since the ’70s when the epidemic of obesity begins, we have seen the price of sweetened foods and processed foods decline in real dollars. We have seen the price of real whole foods like fruits and vegetables rise …

“If you’re on a fixed income, say you’re that food-stamp recipient with $65 a week to feed a family of four and you’re buying calories with that dollar. Make no mistake that’s all you can afford to buy: calories to keep your family going.

“If you’ve got a dollar you will end up in the processed food aisles because you can get 1,250 calories with the chips or the cookies or the processed foods …”

He also explained his problem with an Iowa farm staple: “Corn as food I have no quarrel with– it’s corn as industrial raw material that I think gets us into trouble.” The author joked that he felt “relatively safe” in Iowa after blasting industrial farming in his books.

Pollan, whose previous books also examine the state of food and nutrition, said that while doing research in Jefferson County, Iowa, he felt stranded in a “food desert.”

At the end of his talk, Pollan shared some eating and food rules before taking questions from the audience.

“Shop the periphery of the store, the edge, the perimeter of the store,” where the produce, dairy and meat sections are usually found. The center aisles often contain the processed products, which he called “edible, non-foods.”

“Pay attention to how your food was grown,” he pointed to grass-fed cattle as an example of heathy food and good agricultural practice, explaining that cows are often heavily medicated when they are fed corn-heavy diets.

“Don’t eat anything that is incapable of rotting.” He said he kept a wrapped Twinkie in his office that was once used as a prop and after several years, it has retained its pliant softness, looking as fresh as the day he bought it. Pollan also explained that white flour, hailed as an advance when it was introduced to the consumer, has a long shelf life because there are so few nutrients in it that it doesn’t attract pests.

He said, “Eat at a table …  a desk is not a table.” He cautioned against frequent “between-meal” snacking because “it’s very much in the industry’s interest to overthrow the meal and get us to eat all day long.”

He also warned the audience not to eat anything that their ancestors living before World War II wouldn’t recognize as food. Pollan summarizes his philosophy in seven words, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

The event was recorded and will be broadcast on WSUI radio 910 AM, this Saturday, Jan. 19 at 8 p.m.

New Pioneer Co-op and the Iowa City Public Library co-sponsored the event with Prairie Lights Bookstore.

Romney noted that he has “made more visits to Iowa than any other candidate.”New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, a national co-chairman of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, said on CNN earlier this week that New Hampshire is “a place where we pick presidents,” but Iowa is “a place where they pick corn.”

On Wednesday morning at a coffee shop in Washington, Ia. Romney said “That’s not my organization, that’s the senator from New Hampshire.”

The third annual exposition featured presentations and exhibits about sustainable living, green design, energy conservation and renewable energy.

Another featured Expo speaker, Billy Parish, is an award-winning founder of the Climate Campaign.  He dropped out of Yale University to lead the millennial generation in what he calls the “next great social movement in this country.”

Parish said during his talk that, by using wind power only, Iowa has the potential to produce up to 5 percent of the nation’s electricity needs and that North Dakota was currently providing only 55 megawatts (MW) of the 410,000 MW it could potentially generate through wind powered turbines. 

Here’s Billy Parish:

Watch a video interview with Hunter Lovins and part of her presentation below the fold.Hunter Lovins co-founded the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), in 1982, but left 20 years later.  She is the president and founder of Natural Capitalism Inc.and the recent co-author of the book “Natural Capitalism,” with Paul Hawken.  Their philosophy of natural capitalism champions sustainability, innovation and green technology for corporations and governments.

In the video below she talks about carbon exchanging.  The University of Iowa is participating in a carbon exchange through the Chicago Carbon Climate Exchange, which Lovins says is “an organization of companies, nonprofits, universities, cities, counties, states [who are] trading carbon in a country where there’s no law that says you have to … they create a carbon financial instrument which they can sell to people.”

In this interview, she also gives a summary of her presentation, which focused on what she calls the “drivers of change” in the world.

Part of Lovins’ feature presentation in Macbride Hall can be seen below.  This video includes her slam on corn ethanol.  She said she supports ethanol plant-building, however, because it will lead to cellulosic innovations that she predicts will be much more sustainable.

Another Energy Expo organized by I-Renew will be held this Saturday and Sunday at the Solon High School in Solon, Ia.

Despite some areas where crops were damaged by flooding and powerful winds, most of the corn and soybeans in Iowa are doing just fine. That’s the assessment of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agriculture Statistics Service report released this week, rating 70 percent of the corn in Iowa in good or excellent condition. The week before the flooding, 71 percent of the crops were called good or excellent.

One corn farmer, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey, said Wednesday that “generally, the crops around the state look really good.” But the full impact of unprecedented August rainfall is not fully known. “This August is the rainiest August ever in Iowa,” he said in a telephone interview with Iowa Independent. “And it looks like we’re seeing the third-most precipitation of any month ever in the state of Iowa since they’ve been keeping records, and we have about 1,600 months that we’ve been keeping records.”

Average rainfall across the state for the month of August so far was 9.65 inches, far above the norm of about 4 inches, said Northey.
“We’ll certainly have to wait and see for sure until harvest to see what the damage was,” he said. “The visible damage was very localized. But I’m not sure we even know what the impact is to a crop in standing water this late in the season. We know early in the season how if you have standing water very long it’ll kill the crop and you’ve got to re-plant. But this late in the season, it’s hard to even know what happens. We’ll probably see some stalk rot damage because of the high humidity and warm temperatures.”
Some areas of the state, however, can expect to have huge, possibly record-breaking corn harvests. “We have some really good corn in northeast and east-central Iowa,” said Northey. “The crop report in August suggested that we could have crop reporting districts over there, in about 10 counties, where they would average 200 bushel. We’re not used to those numbers, and it will be interesting to see if that really happens. But as I talk to folks in that area, they are very pleased with their crop. They really feel like they’ve got a good crop coming.”

The rains may have destroyed some crops, but probably saved others. “Although the rains were too much in some cases, they did stop some of the damage that was happening in western Iowa and southern Iowa, where they were really short of rain. In those cases, we were anticipating some losses because of the dry weather, both in corn and soybeans. So it kind of stopped some of that. I think in general we expect a really good crop coming.”

The USDA reported in June that across the nation, farmers have planted an estimated 92.9 million acres in corn this year. Iowa leads the nation in acreage dedicated to corn production.
An August USDA crop report projects a whopping 13.1 billion bushels of corn will be harvested this year in the nation, and if that holds true, it will be the second-largest corn crop in history. The state of Iowa is expected to produce over 2.5 billion of those bushels of corn.

Planting of corn in Iowa is nearly complete, according to a report from Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey.

The Des Moines Register is reporting that growth in the renewable fuels industry is bringing up the value of Iowa farmland.

A Wallaces Farmer article discusses research showing that global warming will cause depletion of soil nutrients.

Wild hogs are on the loose and it's a big problem, according to a story on Radio Iowa.

The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier has a report on how the conservation debate is shaping federal ag legislation.

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader has a story about an Iowa dairy that's going organic.

Iowa Farmer Today reports on the bull market enjoyed by dairy farmers.

The Brownfield Network reported that more melamine has been found in animal feed, but this time imports weren't involved.

Members of Iowa Future Farmers of America were honored with proficiency awards, according to an article on Iowa Farmer Today.

Radio Iowa has a piece about a traveler who is promoting locally grown foods.