Graduate School Public Lectures

Our national eating disorder with Michael Pollan

Wed. April 8, 2015       6:30 p.m.

Kane Hall 130, UW Campus

This event is sold out. Please view the other lectures in this series.

A nation hungry for convenience has found low returns in high calories, setting off a health crisis that has forced the United States to reassess our ingrained notions of food and nutrition. In this lecture, best-selling author, journalist and activist Michael Pollan explores a return to “slow food,” discussing how a more intentional approach to the American meal can remedy the effects of our national dietary identity crisis.

For twenty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: food, agriculture, gardens, drugs, and architecture. He is the author of the bestsellers In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

In 2003, Pollan was appointed the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism. In addition to teaching, he lectures widely on food, agriculture, health and the environment.

As the sophistication of science and medicine advances, our understanding of health and wellness for individuals, families and nations grows beyond the mere measure of waistlines. Presented by University of Washington Graduate School and the UWAA, the Weight & Wellness Lecture Series approaches topic of body and size with consideration to socioeconomic structures, nutritional disparity in food sources, brain chemistry, environmental influences and more, showing us that, for human health, it is not always our conventional wisdom that holds the most weight.

For more information, contact the UW Alumni Association at 206-543-0540 or uwalumni@uw.edu.