Journalist and bestselling author Michael Pollan leads this UC-Berkeley course on “The Rise and Future of the Food Movement” along with his co-teacher Raj Patel. The course includes many guest lectures from food experts all over the world. The first half of the course covers the problems with the American food system, and the second half of the course focuses on some potential solutions to these many problems.
If nothing else, watch the first lecture in which Michael Pollan gives a brief history of the industrialization of food production in America after World War II. It’s an excellent introduction to how we have arrived at the current crisis with the food industry’s dependence on corn and fossil fuels, and its contribution to the obesity epidemic, pollution and carbon emission, and many other costly problems. The lecture starts about 30 minutes into the first class, and Pollan fields a number of questions after his lecture, such as what, if anything, can be done about the current state of the food industry in America. A few of the lectures are unfortunately marred by poor audio, but overall it sounds like a good course.