Michael Pollan: What Ecology Teaches Us About Human Health

In this interview with Michael Pollan on his new book, Cooked, Michael talks about the transference of terminology developed in the field of ecology into the science of medicine, how these new concepts and terminology are changing how we think about the human body and human health. Niklas Luhmann called this transference of terminology "ecological communication." When we transfer language and codes derived from studies of the environment (though not solely the natural environment) and import that terminology into other fields of knowledge, Luhmann proposes that by this process 'the social system' develops the capacity to respond and adapt to the environment.

Hitt: At one point you referred to “the impoverished westernized microbiome,” and you posed the question of whether the human body needs what some microbiologists call “restoration ecology.” So you’re applying environmental metaphors to the human body. How might this kind of language make us think in a new way about our bodies?

Pollan: I think when you bring the concepts of ecology into your body, that’s a revolutionary new paradigm for medicine and for the philosophy of human identity. It breaks down the “us and them” attitude we bring to nature. It’s a very direct implication of the natural world in the body. We know when we eat, we’re always taking nature into us. But the idea that we’re a host to an ecological community and that that ecological community is obviously shaped by what’s going on in the world—whether we’re talking about toxins, antibiotics—you’re really breaking down that barrier between us and nature out there. Nature is passing through us. I didn’t tease out these implications, but I think it does have important implications for how you think about nature. It definitely brings it home.

Hitt: And also how you think about what you eat?

Pollan: Yes. If it doesn’t necessarily change your diet, it does change your attitude toward the various chemical compounds that poison this environment. We’ve understood that feeding antibiotics to livestock is a public health risk because of the rise of superbugs and antibiotic-resistant microbes, and that’s the reason people have campaigned to remove them. But it turns out there’s another reason to remove them and that is that these antibiotics are poisoning and cutting down on the biodiversity inside you. So there are implications of knowing this that go beyond diet.

Hitt: How was it that scientists recently came to start talking about the human microbiome?

Pollan: There are two tools that have allowed for this wilderness to be explored. One is this new sequencing technology. But the other was theories of ecology. It was when scientists began thinking, “Hey, what if we ask the questions that ecosystems scientists ask?” Which was radical for medicine. Medicine doesn’t usually think that way. And that really opened it up. And they started using terms like community dynamics and invasion resistance. And exotic species. And resilience. So there was an intellectual tool and there was a technical tool. And they were both required to make the breakthroughs we’re starting to make.

Hitt: Wow, that’s cool. So, there really was a kind of theoretical borrowing?

Pollan: Yes. And this may be prove to be a key legacy of ecology—what it teaches us about health. Who would have thought?