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  • KAREN MAY: I'm Karen May.

  • I lead people development here at Google,

  • and have the honor today, as you enjoy delicious food,

  • of introducing Michael Pollan to all of you.

  • Michael-- he doesn't know this yet,

  • but his work has changed my household.

  • Because we say to each other, "Eat food.

  • Not too much.

  • Mostly grains.

  • Mostly plants."

  • So we use our food rules quite regularly.

  • And I think, for many of us, Michael's work

  • directly and indirectly has changed our households

  • for the better.

  • One of Michael's rules that many of you

  • know-- since you're here, I'll assume you know--

  • is to not eat food that your grandmother wouldn't recognize

  • as food.

  • And I understand that's been revised

  • to great- great- grandmother, depending on how old you are.

  • You have to continue to revise that every 20 years or so.

  • And based on when refined sugar was introduced.

  • But we do, also in my household, tease each other--

  • would your grandmother recognize that?

  • Put that down!

  • Grandma wouldn't recognize that.

  • So I think you've made-- you've raised consciousness

  • around the world, in a way that I don't know if you know

  • the full extent of the personal impact.

  • But it's quite lovely.

  • And I'm pleased-- this is not Michael's first time here,

  • but pleased to welcome him back to our talks

  • at Google series, multi-year series, and to have you here.

  • Michael's work, as many of you know well,

  • the body of work preceding the current book, "Cooked,"

  • really takes us through kind of a look at industrialized food,

  • if you will.

  • And Michael tackles agribusiness, and throws

  • devastating criticism at processed food.

  • And I sort of see you, as I experience your work,

  • as one part writer, one part historian, and one part

  • social activist.

  • There's probably another part, nutritionist, and then

  • another part, sort of curious learner in there

  • as well, if I put my development hat on.

  • But all of that comes together to create

  • a very accessible body of work that's

  • both thought-provoking and behavior-changing.

  • So, in this current book, "Cooked," Michael sort

  • of tackles, literally, the art of cooking and helps us

  • see cooking not only as from kind

  • of a social-historical perspective,

  • but also about what happens as you bring ingredients together,

  • and the impact on society, on environment,

  • on families, as well as the impact

  • on general kind of social connectivity.

  • So I think we take something as potentially

  • simple and unidimensional as heating food in fire,

  • and turning it into something that

  • infuses the social fabric in which we live.

  • So it's very exciting.

  • I am very fortunate to be loved by two great cooks, my mother

  • and my husband.

  • I am very fortunate.

  • And in reading "Cooked," I developed

  • a deeper understanding of some of their passion,

  • and where that might come from, as well as

  • appreciation for the gift that they give to me.

  • So, on behalf of the Googlers here and watching us virtually,

  • welcome to Google and thank you.

  • MICHAEL POLLAN: Thank you, Karen.

  • Thank you very much.

  • Thank you.

  • I think this is my fourth visit.

  • And the last time I was here it was

  • because there had been a program to give out

  • copies of "Food Rules."

  • I don't know if any of you were--

  • there's a lucky recipient.

  • And I see it's had an impact.

  • You all look very svelte and healthy.

  • So it works.

  • Very glad to see that.

  • And I'm also glad to see people eating at an event about food,

  • despite the sign as we entered that said,

  • No Eating In This Room.

  • But, honored in the breach.

  • What I'd like to do is first try to tell you

  • a little bit about this project I've

  • been on for the last couple years, which was mastering--

  • that's a strong word-- the art of cooking,

  • and the transformations that we call cooking.

  • But first I want to start by putting it

  • in the context of other books of mine,

  • and of the journey that I've been

  • on since I started coming here, really.

  • And that is, following the food chain.

  • I mean, that's the story of my work over the last dozen or so

  • years, has been trying to figure out where our food comes from

  • and where it goes.

  • And I started this journey, really,

  • with "Omnivore's Dilemma."

  • And that was an attempt to trace four different kinds of meals

  • back to their source on the farm.

  • And what we eat connects us to the land.

  • It's our most profound connection to nature,

  • is our eating.

  • Although most of us are not aware of it

  • as such because we're now so disconnected

  • from the source of our food.

  • And we live at the end of a very long and intricate food

  • chain that's largely opaque.

  • And so in that book, I tried to follow the food back

  • to the land, and see how it was created out

  • of soil and chemicals and fossil fuel and sunlight,

  • depending on what kind of food it was.

  • And then after I did that book, people just were asking me,

  • you talked about every dimension of food except health.

  • And what I really want to know is,

  • what are the links between diet and health.

  • What I eat and what happens to me.

  • And so I plunged into another project, equally exotic to me.

  • And I should tell you, whatever expertise I have,

  • I've acquired as a journalist.

  • Not with any-- I have no academic training in food

  • studies or nutrition or biochemistry or all the things

  • I should have taken in college.

  • I was an English major.

  • And so I delved into nutrition, and looked at, what do we know,

  • and more importantly, what don't we

  • know about the links between what we eat

  • and our odds of chronic disease, our likelihood of getting

  • obese, all these kind of things.

  • It's remarkable how much we don't know about nutrition.

  • And so I was looking at these two ends of the food chain, one

  • after the other.

  • The earth end, and the body end.

  • And I hadn't really paid much attention

  • to the middle of the food chain.

  • Which is to say, the area where the stuff coming off

  • of the farms gets transformed into the meals we eat,

  • and how it gets transformed, and who does the transformation.

  • And I was picking up clues along the way,

  • though, looking at the earth and looking

  • at the body, that those transformations were actually

  • really important, and that they were driving changes

  • going on at both ends of the food chain.

  • So let me explain.

  • So the industrialization of our agriculture,

  • the rise of these giant monocultures

  • of corn and soybeans all over the Midwest,

  • the rise of animal factories, where we put tens of thousands

  • of the same species in tightly controlled situations

  • and feed them these diets that maximize their growth,

  • and these pharmaceuticals that also maximize

  • their growth, that was very much driven

  • or underwritten by the fact that we were no longer cooking.

  • And that we were outsourcing our cooking to large corporations.

  • And when you let McDonald's and Burger King and Olive Garden

  • and all the companies making the processed

  • food in the supermarket do your cooking,

  • they shop in a very particular way.

  • They want to buy from the biggest possible suppliers

  • of the most consistent, cheapest food.

  • And so that the monocultures of corn and soy

  • are very much driven by fast food diets.

  • That's what corn and soy is-- it's

  • the building blocks of the fast food diet.

  • The corn becomes the high fructose corn syrup,

  • and the soy becomes the oil in which the fast food is fried.

  • And I realized this when I was studying,

  • I was looking at potatoes, of all things,

  • and I went to a potato farm, which

  • was this amazing landscape in Idaho.

  • It was 50,000 acres divided into these vast crop circles,

  • each one 156 acres with a sweep second hand irrigation pivot

  • that was putting out the water or the fertilizer

  • or the chemicals.

  • And they were using one chemical in particular-- it really

  • stuck with me-- called Monitor, that was such a toxic pesticide

  • that the farmers wouldn't go out into their fields for like five

  • days after they spread it, because it

  • was such a neurotoxin.

  • And they explained-- I said, why do you

  • have to use this chemical?

  • And they said, well, because we're

  • growing Russet Burbanks, which is the only kind McDonald's

  • will buy, and all the other-- and Frito-Lay,

  • and all the other companies.

  • And it's a hard potato to grow.

  • And I said, why do they like that one?

  • And they said, oh, it's the longest potato.

  • So when we get our McDonald's french fries,

  • we love that red envelope with the bouquet

  • of long French fries coming out of it.

  • And the only way you can get that

  • is with the Russet Burbank.

  • Problem is, Russet Burbanks are susceptible to something called

  • net necrosis, those little brown lines you very occasionally

  • will see in a potato, or brown dots.

  • Totally cosmetic defect.

  • No problem eating that at all.

  • But McDonald's will not tolerate it.

  • So the way you deal with net necrosis

  • is Monitor, which is this horrible toxin.

  • And I was thinking, God, so we're

  • kind of complicit in this landscape I'm looking at.

  • And indeed it is driven by the fact

  • that we are letting McDonald's cook

  • our French fries in a certain way.

  • So that's one side, and that's one example of how

  • the collapse of cooking in America

  • is driving the industrialization of our agriculture.

  • And Eric Schlosser told the story really

  • well in "Fast Food Nation," the links between the fast food

  • industry and the new ways of raising

  • chickens and hogs and corn and soy.

  • On the other end, though, when I was looking at the body,

  • this was even more curious.

  • I realized that the collapse of cooking

  • there was taking a huge toll on our health.

  • And although we couldn't tell ourselves

  • with real certainty that saturated

  • fat is the evil nutrient we should avoid if we don't want

  • to get fatter, get heart disease.

  • Or sugar is the really bad nutrient we should avoid.

  • And we're totally still pretty confused

  • about nutrients, good and bad.

  • What we did know was that home-cooked food is--

  • people who eat a home-cooked diet are much healthier than

  • people who don't.

  • And that the best predictor of a healthy diet, regardless

  • of your income, was whether it was cooked at home.

  • And there's a very interesting study I came across that showed

  • that poor women who cook have healthier diets than rich women

  • who don't.

  • So it even undoes the usual class bias

  • toward the poorer you are, the worse your diet is.

  • If you're cooking, you can undo that.

  • So both of these clues were telling me,

  • I really had to deal with this middle link of the food chain.

  • Why aren't we cooking?

  • What is cooking?

  • And why were we willing to let it go

  • from so many of our lives?

  • So that's what kind of got me started.

  • There was also, though, a paradox I was noticing.

  • And I started out by looking at this, well

  • whatever happened to cooking in America?

  • And I wrote a long essay about that for the New York Times

  • Magazine, that ended up in the book in another form.

  • But there was this really curious paradox,

  • which was as rates of home cooking were declining,

  • from more than an hour per person

  • per day in 1965, to 27 minutes now,

  • with four minutes for cleaning up.

  • Which, I know, what kind of cleaning up

  • can you do in four minutes?

  • And it's kind of suggesting that cooking is not too ambitious,

  • that you're crumpling a pizza box,

  • or throwing out some takeout containers.

  • And indeed, if you ask the marketing experts,

  • will you define cooking for me?

  • Is it cooking from scratch?

  • Oh no, we can't even measure scratch cooking.

  • That's too small.

  • It's the combination of any two ingredients

  • qualifies as cooking.

  • So I said, so bottled salad dressing

  • over pre-washed greens?

  • Cooking.

  • Slice of meat between two pieces of bread?

  • Cooking.

  • And in fact, the sandwich is the most popular meal in America,

  • both for lunch and dinner today.

  • And so we were cooking less time,

  • and cooking less in what most of us really think is cooking.

  • But at the same time we were cooking less,

  • we were obsessing about cooking as a culture.

  • And we were watching cooking shows on TV.

  • And we have magazines devoted to chefs

  • who have become cultural heroes.

  • And this struck me is this interesting anomaly,

  • in that what it suggests-- OK, we're

  • spending 27 minutes cooking.

  • How long is the average cooking show on TV?

  • It's 30 minutes, or 60 minutes.

  • So that meant there were tens of millions

  • of Americans who were spending more time watching

  • other people cook on television than were actually

  • cooking themselves.

  • And I don't need to tell you that you

  • can't eat the food you see getting cooked on television.

  • You can't even smell it.

  • And yet, we were doing it.

  • And so I wanted to understand what that was about.

  • Because if you think about our lives, there's plenty of stuff

  • we've outsourced to corporations, right?

  • I mean, we don't change the oil on our car anymore, right?

  • We don't work on our cars anymore.

  • We can't.

  • We can't figure them out anymore.

  • We don't sew our own clothing or darn socks.

  • And there are many things we've let go, we've outsourced,

  • and we have not looked back.

  • No problem.

  • Don't miss that.

  • And I don't watch TV about changing the oil in my car,

  • or darning socks.

  • There are no shows about that stuff.

  • I mean, I'm sure you could find them

  • if you dig deep enough into the cable channels.

  • But in general, they're not popular.

  • So why is cooking different?

  • I think it's a real clue to us that cooking

  • has a certain importance-- an emotional importance

  • and I would argue, even genetic importance to our species.

  • And I want to try to convince you

  • that cooking is central to our identity as humans, that

  • to do it is an agricultural act.

  • To paraphrase Wendell Berry, who said, "Eating

  • is an agricultural act," I would say cooking is even more so.

  • It is a political act, and it is a therapeutic act.

  • And how I came to this was by learning how to do it.

  • I mean, I essentially apprenticed myself

  • to masters of the four transformations

  • that I think we can break cooking down into, each

  • of which represents a technology.

  • And I want to quickly run you through what those four

  • technologies are, in order.

  • But before I do, this paradox probably owes to the fact

  • that we all still have very powerful memories

  • of being cooked for, of being in the kitchen with our parents,

  • probably our mothers, and that incredible process of watching

  • her conduct these transformations,

  • at the end of which is this profound gift from parent

  • to child, of something you love to eat, a favorite food.

  • I mean, I can remember the foods that my mother would

  • make for me on my birthday, or things

  • that-- the dish during the course of the week that

  • was just-- I loved.

  • And so it goes kind of deep in our lives, I think.

  • And we remember those smells.

  • We remember that transaction of love.

  • And so that's part of it.

  • But it turns out it goes even deeper.

  • And when I said that it's kind of hard-wired into us,

  • I meant that quite literally.

  • What we've learned in recent anthropology

  • is that the transformation in our evolution

  • that separated us from the apes and led

  • to the growth of our brains and the shrinking of our jaws

  • and our gut, which happens about 1.8 million years ago,

  • when we become-- even before we were human.

  • Before we're Homo sapiens-- when we're Homo erectus.

  • That dramatic transformation has kind

  • of mystified archaeologists and anthropologists

  • for a long time.

  • What would cause such a profound change?

  • And for a while they thought maybe it was meat-eating.

  • But meat-eating can't really explain it,

  • because eating raw meat, in fact,

  • you need a giant jaw to chew it.

  • It's really hard to chew, and you

  • need a big gut to digest it, because it's

  • really hard to digest.

  • What it really is, it appears, is the discovery

  • of cooking with fire.

  • And when we figured out this amazing trick,

  • this critical technology, these amazing changes happened.

  • And the reason is that when you cook food,

  • essentially you externalize much of the work

  • and the energy needed for digestion.

  • So that instead of your body having to do it all--

  • and we burn a lot of calories digesting, or we used to-- it

  • takes place, the partial breakdown of the proteins

  • and the carbohydrates and the fats.

  • And it becomes detoxified, and it becomes easier to chew.

  • It's a huge deal.

  • And it really gives us this tremendous evolutionary edge,

  • because it also gives us access to foods other animals can't

  • eat like tubers, most of which are toxic unless you cook them.

  • Cassava, potatoes.

  • You eat raw potatoes, you can have solanine poisoning.

  • But we found when you cook them, you could eat them.

  • And so we had this new stash of calories

  • that other animals didn't have.

  • So it gave us a big edge.

  • But this energetic-- this boom of energy

  • we got from cooking food appears to be

  • what underwrites the growth of our brains.

  • Our brains are tremendous energy guzzlers.

  • They take up about 2% of your body weight,

  • but they use 20% of the energy you take in.

  • So it's expensive to maintain a brain.

  • And you can't do it without cooked food.

  • So you raw foodists, take note.

  • Now, raw food, you ask.

  • OK, well, there are people who eat raw food.

  • And some people try to do raw food exclusively.

  • But most of them don't do very well.

  • And half of the women on raw food diets stop menstruating.

  • They're not getting enough energy.

  • And anyone who does do raw food is highly blender-dependent.

  • I mean, if you know any people who cook raw food,

  • they'd be literally dead without a blender,

  • because that's doing all that chewing

  • and that work of digestion.

  • So I would say that actually qualifies

  • as a primitive form of cooking.

  • So we need cooked food.

  • It's now hardwired into us.

  • We're dependent on it.

  • We're obligate cooks.

  • Now, the other thing, though, that fire

  • gave us is it freed up a lot of time.

  • Before we cooked with fire, we spent a very large portion

  • of our day chewing.

  • And if you look at apes that are our size, similar

  • weight and size, they spend half of their waking hours

  • in the act of chewing.

  • Six hours a day, chewing.

  • It's no wonder they don't get a lot done.

  • You can't have a culture if you're spending half your time

  • chewing.

  • You can't have art.

  • You can't have software.

  • There's all sorts of things-- well,

  • you probably could have software.

  • So it was a great boon to us.

  • And the last thing cooking gave us,

  • and why I think it is so important socially,

  • is that when you start cooking with fire,

  • you start eating in a different way.

  • Cooking gave us not just the stuff,

  • but the occasion, the meal.

  • And here's how.

  • If you're cooking over a fire, remember

  • this is pre matches and lighters.

  • Keeping the fire going is a tremendous undertaking,

  • and requires a lot of cooperation.

  • So you need someone to kind of tend the fire,

  • while someone else is hunting or preparing the food.

  • And it becomes cooperative in a way

  • that hunting and gathering never had to be.

  • In hunting and gathering, you could eat food

  • wherever you found it.

  • You might bringing some home for your family, or you might not.

  • But as soon as you cook, you need cooperation.

  • And you also need to learn how to share.

  • Because if you're cooking this big beautiful chunk of kudu,

  • or whatever this animal is that you get,

  • you have to restrain yourselves from eating it

  • before it's ready.

  • And if you don't have rules surrounding your meal,

  • you will find the biggest, strongest, hungriest,

  • greediest animal will get the food, and you won't.

  • So with meat-eating around fires becomes the rudiments

  • of civilization.

  • A lot of civilization is about restraining your instincts,

  • learning rules of social engagement.

  • And many, many things happen around that fire,

  • including probably language.

  • And this rulemaking, though, is that we're

  • going to divide it this way, and you get this piece

  • and I get this piece.

  • This is the beginning of civilization.

  • So cooking give us a lot.

  • And as we cook less, we're losing a lot.

  • Our brains are not getting smaller,

  • but our guts are getting larger.

  • And we're not eating around the table

  • as much, as we fail to cook.

  • So cooking is really important to us as a species.

  • And there are costs to outsourcing it.

  • Now we're still getting cooked food, obviously.

  • McDonald's and the cafeteria here,

  • everyone will give you cooked food.

  • And the problem is that when we allow

  • large corporations to cook-- and actually, we

  • call it processed food when corporations do it,

  • cooking when humans do it-- when we allow corporations to cook

  • for us, in general, and there are exceptions,

  • they don't cook very well.

  • They tend to use the cheapest possible raw ingredients,

  • and to use the most salt, fat, and sugar

  • to make that food acceptable.

  • We love salt, fat, and sugar.

  • We evolved to-- we have buttons that you can push very easily.

  • We need those nutrients.

  • The problem is, in nature, they're pretty rare.

  • In modern industrial economy, they're really

  • cheap and easy to add, and everybody loves them.

  • And when you layer them together,

  • you get food that's irresistible,

  • that stimulates cravings.

  • And that's why the industry, the food processing industry,

  • works with them so much.

  • And they're just very cheap to add to a food.

  • So that's one problem, that you're not

  • going to get high quality ingredients

  • and it's going to have too much salt, fat, and sugar.

  • Another problem, though, which is a little more subtle,

  • is that corporations are very good at cooking

  • certain things, like French fries.

  • Classic example.

  • There's something about home cooking that basically gives

  • you a nudge in the direction of simple foods, simply prepared.

  • Any of you made French fries before?

  • It's a pain.

  • I mean, they're wonderful, but you have to, like,

  • peel the potato-- wash the potato, peel the potato,

  • cut the potato, heat up this big thing of fat,

  • and then spatter your whole kitchen.

  • It's a mess.

  • And then you have to get rid of all that fat.

  • And you're not going to do it more than once a month,

  • if you're an ambitious cook.

  • You're just not going to fry.

  • But McDonald's, or anyone, or Ore-Ida,

  • can make really good French fries

  • so cheaply that they become ubiquitous.

  • And so you end up eating this special occasion food,

  • that I think of it, because I love French fries.

  • Many Americans eat it twice a day.

  • So when you outsource cooking to corporations,

  • they're going to make those labor-intensive, highly

  • desirable cookies and cakes, too, which are also a pain.

  • And so you don't make them that often.

  • So what I'm saying, there's something

  • built into the nature of home cooking

  • that tends to keep you onto the healthier foods

  • than you can have.

  • And it's the ubiquity of these labor-intensive foods that

  • gets a lot of people into trouble.

  • So that's another reason.

  • And a food marketing expert I talked to, this guy in Chicago

  • named Harry Balzer, we were talking about--

  • and he works for the processed food industry.

  • And I was saying, well, what are we

  • going to do about this obesity, this problem?

  • And he said, well, I've got the diet for America.

  • You want to know how to control weight in this country?

  • And I'm, like, taking out my notebook, what

  • is he going to tell me, the secret from deep

  • within the heart of the processed food industry.

  • He says, eat anything you want, as long

  • as you cook it yourself.

  • If you could actually do that, any problems around food

  • would disappear.

  • Because you wouldn't have French fries that often.

  • You wouldn't have dessert every night.

  • And you would eat a healthy diet without counting calories,

  • without looking at any ingredient labels.

  • It would take care of itself.

  • But that's easier said than done.

  • So I kind of took the Harry Balzer challenge,

  • and went out and tried to learn how to cook.

  • And as I said, I divided cooking into these four transformations

  • or technologies.

  • And they happened to correspond to the classical elements.

  • There is cooking with fire, water,

  • which is cooking in pots, with liquid.

  • And then there's air, which is cooking--

  • which is baking, bread, which is putting air into our food,

  • which is very significant.

  • And then fermentation-- earth.

  • Cooking with microbes, the microbes

  • that live in soil-- many of them do.

  • And most kinds of cooking, you could

  • put into one of those transformations or another.

  • And I want to quickly run through what

  • I learned about each one.

  • And they're all interesting in their are different ways,

  • and in each case I found a master to teach me.

  • In the case of fire cooking, I wanted

  • to find the most unreconstructed cooking,

  • the most like that primitive scene that I described,

  • with the people around the fire.

  • And that turned out to be eastern North Carolina

  • barbecue.

  • And I specify eastern, because if you go to western North

  • Carolina, they do it differently.

  • But eastern North Carolina barbecue

  • is whole hog, wood fire, time.

  • That's the recipe.

  • A lot of time-- 20 hours, maybe.

  • And it's just so simple, but dressed up

  • with lots of pretension, and lots of self-dramatizing men

  • telling you how hard it is.

  • But it's really simple, believe me.

  • I've done it since.

  • And I mean, guys know that barbecue

  • is all about taking something very simple

  • and making it look like a big deal.

  • And that's probably been going on for a very long time

  • in human history.

  • And one of things that struck me learning about barbecue--

  • and I explore the science of it, like, why is cooked meat

  • taste so much better than raw meat?

  • And there are these amazing chemical reactions

  • that take place-- the Maillard reaction and caramelization

  • that create, like, 30,000 new compounds that are elusive,

  • that taste like other things, that just kind of complicate

  • the food in a really interesting way,

  • making it more metaphorical, even,

  • and less literal in ways that humans always like doing that

  • to everything-- to language, and to food too.

  • But the thing that struck me is that it's

  • so rule-bound, even now.

  • Cooking the meat outdoors is really rule-bound.

  • And the barbecue pit masters have-- they're, like,

  • more rule-obsessed than any rabbi

  • I've ever met about eating meat.

  • And so I'll say, so what do you think of the barbecue

  • in over in western North Carolina?

  • And they're like, well, those are pork shoulders with sauce.

  • And that's good, but it's not barbecue.

  • And I said, what about what they do in South Carolina?

  • Well, they do a mustard-based sauce and they're eating ribs,

  • and that's not barbecue.

  • And so it's like it's not kosher.

  • Over and over again, it was like Kashrut

  • for goys going on all over the South.

  • So I was very struck by that.

  • And there had been this long tradition

  • that the priest and the butcher and the chef, all

  • through classical history, Greek history, was the same person.

  • {Megaros}.

  • One word for those three functions.

  • That's how important it was, and how ceremonial it was.

  • And cooking meat is still very ceremonial, and it's very male,

  • and it happens in a very theatrical manner.

  • So that was the first science of cooking, the first technology.

  • The second big breakthrough, you have to leap forward way

  • from 1.8 million years ago to just 10,000 years ago.

  • And that is when we begin cooking in pots.

  • It awaited pots.

  • We needed to develop the technology

  • to create clay-fired pots that could withstand a fire,

  • and that you could boil water in.

  • This seems really simple, but it's actually

  • a profound development.

  • It's hard to imagine agriculture getting off

  • the ground without this technology.

  • Because a lot about agriculture is,

  • is eating seeds, right-- grain.

  • And it's very hard to eat grain unless you've softened it

  • in water, and you turn it into a porridge or cooked rice

  • or whatever you're doing.

  • So toasting grain, these little things over fires,

  • you can't get a skewer on them.

  • It doesn't really work.

  • So it's no accident that cooking with water

  • comes up at the exact same time that agriculture begins.

  • And they're probably closely allied,

  • and there's probably a chicken and egg phenomenon going on.

  • But when you can do this now, you

  • can do all sorts of new things.

  • You can combine vegetables with meat, for example.

  • You can eat parts of animals that

  • are very tough, because you can break it down slowly.

  • You can braise it and stew it.

  • And what I learned to do was braising and stewing

  • in this chapter.

  • Working with a young Chapanese chef in Berkeley.

  • And you begin to have cuisines.

  • Cooking meat over fire, if you close your eyes

  • you couldn't tell if you were in Brazil, or North

  • Carolina-- leaving the sauce aside-- or Europe, or China.

  • It's meat over fire.

  • But as soon as you cook in pots, and you

  • can mix these vegetables with it,

  • you get these aromatic vegetables

  • like onions and garlic, or onions and pepper,

  • these different combinations of vegetables

  • that really mark a food as part of a culture.

  • So if it has a mirepoix base, that's French cooking.

  • That's onions and celery and-- I always

  • forget-- carrots, thank you very much.

  • And then there's the Asian mirepoix.

  • There are these flavor principles

  • that you really can't establish until you're

  • cooking in pots with liquid.

  • And the other cool thing about it is there's no waste anymore.

  • It's a very economical way to cook,

  • because when you're cooking meat over fire

  • you have the dripping fat, which is all

  • very nutritious, actually.

  • And you're losing all those calories.

  • But in a pot, you get everything.

  • You save it all, and you get the amazing dividend

  • that is a sauce.

  • You can't have sauce before you have these pots.

  • So it does a lot for cuisine.

  • It also does a lot, interestingly enough,

  • for the human lifespan.

  • Once upon a time, when you only had meat cooked over fires,

  • you couldn't wean a baby until they had some teeth

  • and could eat it, or you would have to chew it for them.

  • But now, you can make these soft soups and porridges

  • that allow you to wean babies earlier,

  • which is a great boon to society,

  • because you can increase population and have babies

  • spaced more closely together.

  • And then on the other end of the lifespan,

  • you can keep old people alive longer.

  • Because previously, when you lost your teeth,

  • you were kind of screwed.

  • But now, you have these foods, these

  • gruels that you can keep people alive even without teeth.

  • So the pot actually expands human lifespan,

  • and so it's a very important technology.

  • Now let me leap ahead.

  • I'm going to go quickly, because I really

  • do want to hear your questions.

  • And we can talk about this, or anything else

  • you want to talk about.

  • Bread.

  • One of my favorite technologies of all.

  • Bread is discovered in Egypt, it is

  • thought, about 6,000 years ago.

  • How?

  • Well, probably what happened is somebody

  • made one of those porridges that I was describing.

  • It was some grass seed, and ground, and then added water,

  • and lost track of it.

  • Didn't eat it.

  • And it just sat off in a corner.

  • And some yeast and bacteria got into it,

  • and somebody looked at it one day and says,

  • wow, that's bubbling, and it's gotten big.

  • It's twice as big as it was before,

  • which is kind of amazing.

  • Wow, I just got more food by leaving it alone?

  • And then they thought, hey, let's put it in the oven

  • and see what happens.

  • And even more miraculous, it doubled again in size.

  • And so you can see why bread became this miracle that's

  • part of the Eucharist, the Catholic communion.

  • Because it does seem to come from nothing, or very little.

  • And it becomes quite big.

  • And what's happened, of course, is

  • it's air is the additional food.

  • Or "food."

  • But we've added air to the food.

  • And the significance of this was driven home to me

  • by a food scientist I interviewed for the book, a guy

  • at Davis named Bruce German, who said

  • if I gave you a bag of flour, even whole wheat

  • flour, and water, you could live on that for a little while,

  • but not very long.

  • You would eventually die.

  • But, if you took that water and flour and turned it into bread,

  • you could live indefinitely.

  • So what's going on?

  • Why is that such an important transformation

  • from dough, essentially, he's saying, to bread?

  • Well, he explained what's happening.

  • When you have that starter culture, that sourdough-- which

  • is a culture of both yeast, fungi, and bacteria--

  • when you introduce them to that wet mass of flour and water,

  • they start digesting the polysaccharides,

  • the long-chain proteins and carbohydrates.

  • And the microbes create these enzymes

  • that break down those long chains.

  • The reason they're in long chains

  • is that the seed-- remember we're

  • talking about eating seeds here--

  • that the seed has everything needed

  • for the next generation of plants.

  • It's an amazing pantry of nutrients.

  • It's got it all.

  • Fat, protein, carbohydrate, minerals, vitamins,

  • antioxidants, it's all there.

  • But it's locked up tight, because the plant doesn't

  • want to give it away to animals.

  • It wants to keep it intact for the developing, the germinating

  • seedling.

  • But what the microbes that we introduced do

  • is they break down those-- they break into the pantry

  • and break it down into much more digestible forms,

  • into short-chain carbohydrates or sugars,

  • and proteins that become amino acids.

  • So that's the first transformation,

  • is during that fermentation.

  • And then the second transformation

  • comes when you bake it.

  • Now you know from your elementary physics

  • that if you have boiling water or something like that,

  • it can't really get hotter than the boiling point, at which

  • point it turns into steam.

  • But if you enclose it in the crust of a bread,

  • you create a pressure cooker in which all those little air

  • pockets inside get really hot and steamy.

  • And steam can get much hotter than the boiling point.

  • And you can drive it up to 300, 400, 500 degrees.

  • And what that extreme heat does is thoroughly

  • cook the carbohydrates so that they become very digestible,

  • and much more sweet and delicious.

  • So this is a profound technology,

  • for taking a mush of grass seeds and turning it into a food

  • that you can live on, unless you're gluten-intolerant.

  • But people weren't that gluten-intolerant back then.

  • We can talk about that later.

  • And so, very profound technology.

  • And I worked with-- if some of you, I'm sure,

  • live in San Francisco-- Chad Robertson, who bakes at Tartine

  • and makes what I think is the best bread in the whole world.

  • And I spent a lot of time learning from him how to bake,

  • and when I was making my starter,

  • I didn't know whether it was OK to ask a famous baker to take

  • some of their starter or not, and I

  • thought it wasn't a cool question.

  • But I made a point of shaking his hands every time I saw him

  • and not washing my hands, and then adding it to my starter.

  • So I ended up with a Tartine-ish starter

  • that's very lively, until I went on book tour.

  • And I neglected it for two months and it died.

  • So I need to see Chad over lunch very soon

  • and shake his hand, yeah.

  • So that was air.

  • And then the last section I want to talk about

  • is, for me, what was probably the most fascinating.

  • And that was this method of cooking

  • without the use of any heat whatsoever,

  • purely through the action of microbes.

  • What an amazing thing that these microbes can give us everything

  • from wine to cheese to sauerkraut and kimchi

  • and pickles, to chocolate, which is a fermented food.

  • I don't know if you realize that.

  • And coffee, which must be fermented before you

  • can grind the beans.

  • It's an amazing thing that we can use bacteria in this way.

  • It began as a food preservation strategy.

  • Before refrigeration, how would you

  • preserve the harvest to get through the winter,

  • until you had another harvest?

  • Well, you did it by fermenting food.

  • And it's still going on.

  • I was in China recently, and they'll

  • take a bunch of cabbages and they'll throw them in a pit

  • and cover it was soil.

  • And the lactobacillus will go to work.

  • They're already on the leaves of cabbages, and everything else.

  • They're on you.

  • And just like they're waiting to ferment you when you die,

  • they are waiting to ferment cabbages when they die.

  • And so they start breaking down the vegetable matter,

  • releasing lactic acid, which of course is a great preservative,

  • and makes them more nutritious.

  • So I grew up in a very microbe-phobic family,

  • like most of us did in recent years.

  • And my mother was terrified of bacteria.

  • And if she dropped a can of green beans on the ground

  • and it got a dent, she we sure it had contracted botulism

  • and we had to throw it out.

  • And so we had lots of hand-washing

  • and all the normal things.

  • But I met this generation, this subculture

  • of what I call "fermentos"-- people kind of obsessed

  • with fermentation.

  • And they're all around us now.

  • And they're a very interesting subculture.

  • They go a little further than I do.

  • I mean, they'll eat roadkill and high-meat,

  • and they love bacteria.

  • And they're trying to renegotiate

  • the terms of our relationship with these microbes.

  • And I think in that, they're really on to something.

  • They're very casual about hygiene.

  • You'll ask them for a recipe and I'll say, well,

  • shouldn't I wash that crock first, or that cabbage?

  • No, don't wash it, because it has the good bacteria on it.

  • And it turns out though, they're on to something.

  • I mean, we're learning that our war on bacteria,

  • even though it has helped conquer several diseases,

  • has also led to various problems.

  • And it is probably our lack of contact

  • with bacteria as children that is leading

  • to these high rates of allergy and asthma

  • and autoimmune disease.

  • That's the hygiene hypothesis.

  • But we're also learning more recently

  • that the ecosystem of microbes that

  • live in your large intestine-- I mean they're all over you,

  • but especially there-- are very important to your health.

  • And that-- I don't know if you know this, but you are only 10%

  • human.

  • 90% of the cells that you are, that are on your body

  • and in your body, those belong to microbes.

  • You're a super organism.

  • And our health is, in significant ways,

  • mediated by the health of that ecosystem.

  • And we have in our antibiotic culture, literally

  • antibiotic culture, we've been killing off

  • a lot of those microbes.

  • We have not been ingesting them in our diet,

  • with the result that our biodiversity internally

  • is dramatically lower than it is in people probably 50

  • years ago, and we know in hunter-gatherer populations

  • that have these wild, wildly diverse and very healthy

  • microbiomes.

  • So the fermentos are really on to something.

  • And I look in the book at the biology of this,

  • what we're learning about the microbiome

  • and how it affects our health.

  • And that was fascinating to me.

  • It's leading to a revolution in medicine

  • that we will all feel very soon, although we

  • don't have to wait for it.

  • I mean, eating more fermented food

  • is what a lot of these doctors will

  • tell you is a good thing to do.

  • I'm talking about sauerkraut and pickles

  • and all that live culture food.

  • But as important as fermentation is biologically,

  • it's very important culturally too, and this kind of surprised

  • me.

  • A great many cultures have a fermented food

  • they love that other people think is kind of disgusting.

  • And they're polarizing foods.

  • I'm thinking of stinky cheeses and kimchi and sauerkraut.

  • And if you go to China, they love

  • something called stinky tofu.

  • I don't know if any of you have ever had it.

  • It's well-named.

  • It's essentially tofu that's been marinated

  • in rotten vegetables, just black slime of rotten vegetables,

  • usually outdoors.

  • And then maybe if you're lucky, fried after that.

  • It actually-- if you can get it past your nose,

  • it doesn't taste that bad.

  • They love it.

  • And yet they think a cheese, even

  • kind of a not so stinky cheese, a cheddar or something,

  • is the most disgusting food imaginable.

  • They will not-- they can't believe we like cheese.

  • And they say-- and it's oily and the taste stays in your mouth,

  • whereas stinky tofu, it's so clean and the taste disappears.

  • Although, what kind of praise is that for a food,

  • that the taste quickly disappears?

  • I will also point out that they eat stinky tofu exclusively

  • outdoors.

  • So anyway, cultures have this.

  • And the Koreans are very proud of their kimchi.

  • And when I went to Korea, I went to Korea

  • to learn how to make kimchi.

  • And I went to the kimchi museum, in Seoul.

  • I went to one on the south side of the river.

  • There's another one on the north side of the river.

  • And there are a total of six kimchi museums in Korea.

  • And when I was there, I asked the docent a question.

  • I saw all these groups of kindergartners

  • with their little uniforms and yellow backpacks trooping

  • through, learning how kimchi is made-- the urns, the spice

  • mixes, and everything.

  • I said, why do you bring kindergartners

  • to a kimchi museum?

  • And this woman said, because children are not

  • born liking kimchi.

  • OK.

  • It is, by definition, it is the definition of an acquired

  • taste.

  • And these fermented foods are all acquired tastes.

  • And they're one of the ways-- culture's very much

  • about drawing lines, right?

  • And they're one of the ways that we define ourselves

  • against other cultures.

  • And I'm convinced-- I couldn't write

  • about this, because the research isn't there--

  • but that these foods actually change our bodily odors in ways

  • that make us either very comfortable or very

  • uncomfortable.

  • So anyway, fermented foods are really

  • interesting on many different levels.

  • And I learned how to make cheese.

  • I worked with a wonderful nun who's

  • a cheesemaker and a microbiologist.

  • And she actually believes-- she makes

  • this beautiful cheese in Connecticut.

  • And she makes it in a wooden barrel,

  • which is the most-- you know, it drives the health

  • department crazy, because you can't

  • sterilize a wooden barrel.

  • And in fact, the recipe for this traditional French cheese

  • she makes specifies, don't sterilize the wooden barrel.

  • Just rinse it out.

  • Because they're really good bacteria

  • that live in the little crevices.

  • And in fact, she proved to the health authorities, when

  • they tried to shut her down or make her use stainless steel,

  • like every other cheesemaker in America,

  • she got two vats of raw milk from her cows,

  • right in the abbey.

  • And she introduced e. coli into both vats,

  • and waited a couple hours.

  • And at the end of three or four hours,

  • the stainless steel vat was so teeming with e.coli

  • that it was toxic.

  • You couldn't-- that would be condemned, that milk.

  • And the milk in the wooden barrel,

  • it had vanishingly small levels of e. coli.

  • And what had happened?

  • The lactobacillus that lived in the wooden barrel

  • started-- they call it lactobacillus--

  • eating the lactose, their favorite food,

  • breaking it down into lactic acid which killed the e. coli.

  • So you see, these people have been practicing

  • a kind of folk microbiology for hundreds and hundreds of years.

  • And she's mastered that.

  • And the health department went away after this demonstration.

  • And she really believes the cheese is so wonderful

  • that it belongs in the Eucharist,

  • along with those other two fermented foods, wine

  • and bread.

  • And she thinks cheese is a better reminder of the body

  • than bread is, because it rots and reminds us of mortality.

  • And it's like, it's a heretical idea,

  • but it's kind of beautiful also.

  • So, a lot of the cooking I did is not

  • things you're going to do every day.

  • It's really extreme cooking, making cheese or kimchi--

  • although kimchi is really easy to make-- and sauerkraut

  • and baking bread.

  • But I found that doing this, even every now

  • and then, is an incredibly satisfying process.

  • When we learn how to do something for ourselves that

  • is not what we do at work, it's really empowering.

  • So many of us, we live in such a specialized culture.

  • And we've gotten really good at the one thing that we do

  • and selling to the market.

  • And we've outsourced everything else

  • in our lives-- our entertainment,

  • our exercise to some extent, our food certainly.

  • And there's something wonderful about that.

  • It makes this economy go around.

  • But there's something debilitating about it too,

  • and something infantilizing.

  • The fact that we're so dependent on fossil fuel, which is really

  • what allows us to do all this outsourcing,

  • and so dependent on other people,

  • that it feels really good when you do something,

  • you learn a new skill that actually

  • is in support of your body.

  • And so few of us have these anymore.

  • And I found there was-- it was a very satisfying way

  • to spend time, to learn how to bake bread.

  • And learning to diversify your talents,

  • learning how to take care of yourself to a greater extent,

  • I really think, is a precondition

  • for the kinds of political changes we need in this world.

  • I just don't think we're going to tackle things like climate

  • change until people can imagine living in a different way.

  • And if you're highly specialized,

  • you can't imagine living in a different way--

  • without that car, without that fossil fuel,

  • without that restaurant to cook your meals.

  • But as soon as you realize, oh, I could do this,

  • suddenly you're open to change.

  • And so that's why I said it's a political act.

  • Take back control of your diet, take back

  • control of some part of your life

  • that you've been letting other people do for yourself.

  • Not every day, even just occasionally.

  • I think you'll find it feels empowering and really good.

  • So I'm going to leave it there.

  • We have a microphone here if anybody has questions.

  • I'm happy to talk about cooking, gluten intolerance.

  • And I forgot to mention there is one animal that

  • does cook, at least one animal.

  • If you include fermentation under the definition

  • of cooking, squirrels cook.

  • Any animal that buries their food is not just hiding it.

  • They're starting that earth-driven process

  • of breakdown, to make that seed, that acorn healthier.

  • So we're not quite the only animal who cooks.

  • AUDIENCE: Back to the microbes.

  • I think it's great that you've sort of helped

  • get a lot people excited about what is clearly becoming

  • a pretty big deal scientifically,

  • understanding the microbiota and how much it

  • affects all our health.

  • I have a two year old daughter, so I'm

  • very keen to make sure she's exposed to enough

  • of the right microbes, but my wife probably also,

  • intelligently, is worried about exposing her

  • to too many of the wrong microbes.

  • So I'm just curious, have you figured out,

  • for people who are sort of enlightened about this stuff,

  • but still-- we're in a world where the bugs are

  • kind of hostile, and there aren't

  • a lot of things that are-- the good bugs [INAUDIBLE] it's

  • hard to get raw milk, et cetera.

  • Are there good practical ways to get access

  • to more bugs in your diet without being

  • too off the reservation?

  • MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah.

  • Well, I mean, eating whatever fermented foods

  • that your daughter likes.

  • If she likes yogurt, great.

  • Kids tend not to like sauerkraut and kimchi.

  • I mean, they're strongly flavored foods.

  • But try it.

  • But the other thing is not just in the diet,

  • but in the lifestyle.

  • There's a lot of research showing

  • that kids who grow up on farms, especially ones who

  • eat raw milk, drink raw milk, but are exposed to animals,

  • have much lower rates of autoimmune disease.

  • So raw milk is a complicated one, and a risky one.

  • And I don't simply recommend it, unless you're

  • very confident of the farmer who's selling it to you.

  • But taking your kid to farms, having pets-- even having pets

  • has been correlated with lower rates of autoimmune disease.

  • So those exposures while she's that age-- her immune system

  • is being trained right now.

  • And exposure to bacteria during that training is a good thing.

  • Hand washing is still advised, actually,

  • because of-- that's how many germs are conveyed among kids.

  • And not that that's a bad thing, but it's inconvenient

  • if your kid is sick a lot.

  • You're probably building her immune system

  • every time she gets an infection.

  • So, exposure to animals, really good,

  • any kind of food that has live bacteria is really good.

  • AUDIENCE: Thanks.

  • MICHAEL POLLAN: Sure.

  • AUDIENCE: I've read, I guess, all four of your food books.

  • And one thing I don't remember you writing about

  • is a currently popular, or maybe faddish trend in food,

  • and that is molecular gastronomy.

  • Or as Nathan Myhrvold calls it, Modernist cuisine.

  • MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah.

  • AUDIENCE: It certainly violates your grandmother

  • recognizing it.

  • MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, not always, because--

  • AUDIENCE: But at same time, it doesn't

  • seem to have any of the bad things that

  • led you to suggest that rule.

  • So what do you think?

  • MICHAEL POLLAN: I did look into molecular gastronomy.

  • And in fact, Nathan served me a beautiful lunch up

  • at his mad scientist lab in Seattle, as part of it.

  • And I was very interested in it, and that kind of food

  • is interesting and artistically engaging,

  • but I don't think it's central.

  • I don't think it's going to change

  • the way we eat any time soon.

  • And so I think it was a little too rarefied for me to explore.

  • I was really, in this book, trying

  • to get back to the fundamentals, the basics of cooking.

  • And he's on the frontier of cooking.

  • Which is interesting, but I don't

  • know that we're all going to be doing sous-vide and using some

  • of the techniques he's using, even though it produces

  • interesting food.

  • I was trying very much not to write a foodie book.

  • This is not a foodies' book.

  • I hate that term.

  • I think our food culture gets a little bit

  • decadent at various points, in the way we're eating sometimes.

  • And so we really wanted to concentrate

  • on familiar foods that are available to everybody at home.

  • Even though intellectually I find

  • what he's doing fascinating.

  • There may be some applications at some point

  • of what he's doing.

  • And if we can figure out a way to use

  • the techniques of the food scientist

  • to make food more nutritious, I think that would be great.

  • It's striking how little of that work has succeeded so far.

  • That, in general, and I tell the story in the book,

  • in the bread chapter, processing food for thousands of years

  • consistently made it healthier.

  • Coming up with fermentation, cooking in pots, breadmaking.

  • At a certain point, we started processing food

  • to make it less healthy, to make it have a longer shelf

  • life, mostly.

  • And it happens when we go from whole wheat, stone-ground flour

  • to white flour.

  • And so that's kind of an interesting story.

  • And it may be Nathan is at the beginning of a move

  • toward figuring out how to again use technology

  • to make food more healthy again.

  • But not much has happened in that area yet.

  • AUDIENCE: If I can make just one final comment on this,

  • you can now get a really good immersion

  • circulator for only $200.

  • I think in 10 or 15 years, sous-vide cooking

  • is going to be like a blender or food processor.

  • MICHAEL POLLAN: It may be.

  • I'd be curious.

  • The last big addition has been the microwave, which

  • is an interesting technology and it's really good for, like,

  • heating up your cup of tea.

  • It's not really good for cooking.

  • And I don't think it's very good for family life,

  • because you do one thing at a time.

  • So I look forward to the new gadget

  • that we'll put in our kitchens that will actually

  • make cooking easier, and make the food more nutritious.

  • And that might be it.

  • AUDIENCE: So I come from a family of traditional rice

  • farmers in southern India.

  • And when I was growing up, 90% of everything

  • I would eat with my grandparents came from the land around them.

  • They grew it themselves.

  • A couple generations later, many of us, including me,

  • have chosen to pursue other things

  • like develop software and chew food for six hours

  • a day, in an ape like fashion, and outsourcing our food

  • production to other people, and cooking to Google.

  • But no one I know around this area actually

  • says, I want to be an alfalfa farmer or a wheat farmer.

  • Everyone wants to pursue other careers.

  • And I wonder in 50 years from now,

  • will anybody be available to grow this fundamental thing

  • that hedge fund managers and software engineers

  • still need for their survival.

  • Who will be there?

  • Who will grow the food?

  • MICHAEL POLLAN: I think that's a great question.

  • Well, I actually said at dinner the other night

  • with the 125th employee of your corporation, who

  • is now a farmer.

  • His farm is supported by his Google stock.

  • [LAUGHTER] But he's doing really interesting, good farming

  • somewhere in Marin.

  • And in fact, I've met a succession

  • of people who work in your industry who

  • have gotten the bug.

  • I mean, one of the encouraging things going on right

  • now is, for the first time since we've been keeping track,

  • the number of farmers in America is ticking up.

  • It's been going down consistently

  • since we had-- since we measured it, since 1900, say.

  • And there is a generation of young people

  • who's very engaged by the work of farming, which

  • is really important because you point

  • to the big problem with industrial agriculture.

  • It doesn't require a lot a labor.

  • We basically traded labor on the farm

  • for chemicals and machines.

  • And we're paying the cost of that.

  • It's very hard to grow good quality, nutritious,

  • chemically-free food without more people on the land.

  • And we will need many more people on the land

  • if we really want to eat sustainably.

  • But there's also growing food in your own home,

  • which is not trivial.

  • I mean, during the World War II, about 40%

  • of the fresh produce in America was

  • being grown by individuals in their gardens.

  • There's no reason we couldn't do that again

  • even while developing software.

  • So I think the challenge, though,

  • is going to be in places like India,

  • that-- there are many people who want to stay on the land,

  • there are many people who don't want to stay on the land--

  • that the option of staying on the land is preserved.

  • Because that's in danger in many places.

  • I mean, there is a vision of industrializing, developing

  • world agriculture on offer right now, that

  • threatens to flood the cities and lead

  • to a kind of agriculture that will be very hard to sustain

  • because it's so fossil fuel-dependent.

  • So we do live in a specialized economy.

  • We need people to grow our food.

  • The best thing we can do as people writing books,

  • or developing software is, pay them a living wage.

  • Make it attractive.

  • One of my food rules is pay more, eat less.

  • Good food, sustainable food, does cost more.

  • And those of us who can afford to support those farmers

  • need to do it.

  • We need to make it a very attractive way of life,

  • so that we will draw more people into doing it.

  • And we will pay farmers for doing

  • something, as you recognized, is so dependent.

  • No matter what we're doing, we still need food.

  • And food still comes from the earth.

  • And to ignore that connection and lose track of it, I think,

  • is a tragedy.

  • So it begins with supporting farmers

  • who are doing good work.

  • Thanks for your good question.

  • AUDIENCE: Well, I was going to ask a final question,

  • but we've run out of time.

  • So everybody join me in thanking Michael

  • for coming back to Google.

  • MICHAEL POLLAN: Thank you very much.

  • Thank you.

KAREN MAY: I'm Karen May.

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