Michael Pollan: uncertainty

Transcript context

…So it’s meditation and psychedelics, but otherwise, we’re . . . [laughter] I’m sure, given some time, I could come up with other things. Eating differently is a free-lunch change. It’s a lunch change. If we’re talking about people’s emotional well-being or psychological well-being, one of the areas that we have much to learn about is the links between mood and food and that the kind of junk-food diet, this energy-dense food that we’re eating, lots of carbohydrates, puts people on an emotional roller coaster. I’m sure it’s tied to their insulin levels and things like that, and that a healthy diet tends to make people feel better. I don’t know that this has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of a social scientist yet, but I do think that there are enormous gains. Exercise is another one. God, there’s a whole list. As good social scientists, we want to look for the cross-sectional variation. I once remarked that John Lennon benefited from psychedelics more than Paul McCartney did.…

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