Michael Pollan - Criticism

Criticism

Writing in the American Enterprise Institute's magazine, Blake Hurst argues that Pollan offers a shallow assessment of factory farming that does not take cost into account. Daniel Engber criticized Pollan in Slate for arguing that food is too complex a subject to study scientifically and blaming reductionism for today's health ills, while at the same time using nutritional research to justify his own diet advice. He compares Pollan's "straight-forward" anti-scientific method based on only rhetoric to that used by health gurus of history who have peddled diet scams.

Pollan's work was also discussed and criticized by Jonathan Safran Foer in his non-fiction book Eating Animals. Foer criticizes Pollan's argument regarding table-fellowship. Pollan claims that a vegetarian dinner guest causes socially reprimandable inconvenience for the host. Foer responds that in the year 2010 it is easier for hosts to accommodate vegetarians than locavores as hosts will need to do extensive research to find (expensive) non factory-farmed meat.

Vasile Stanescu has criticized Pollan for arguing solely for locavorism which Stanescu argues is physically unfeasible due to a basic lack of arable land. At the same time Pollan in his earlier works rarely if ever refers to reduction of meat consumption as a viable alternative. Pollan is also criticized for hypocrisy in both his support of locavorism and in his indictment of the mistreatment of organic migrant farm workers. While Pollan supports the local food movement for sustainability, his lifestyle also includes an extensive amount of flying, driving, and transportation. While Pollan condemns the unfair treatment of Mexican farm workers on organic farms, he also supports Joel Salatin who has been criticized for xenophobia and strong anti-immigrant sentiment.