Goodman: We’re talking to Michael Pollan. His latest book, now out in paperback, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Your words of wisdom? Your food for thought? Eat food, not too much, mostly plants?

Goodman: What do you mean, “edible food-like substances”?

Pollan: Well, these are products of food science. These are the stuff in the middle of the supermarket, the stuff that doesn’t go bad for a year, deathless food, immortal food. You have to think, well, what does it mean to say a food has got a shelf life of six months or a year? It means it has been engineered to resist bacteria, pests of all kinds, fungi, mold. And what does that mean? Well, it has no nutritional value for those things. The insects, the bacteria, they’re not interested in the Twinkie, because there’s nothing of nutritional value in it.