"salon" news and stories

Salon.com currently features an interview with Ryan Nerz, author of Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit. The book chronicles Nerz's experiences and observations from having emceed several eating contests over the course of a year. What's even better is that there's another book out on the subject, entitled Horseman of the Esophagus. Incidentally, both have hot dogs on their covers. In the Salon interview, Nerz talks about some of the more hotly contested subjects in the world of competitive eating, namely the "belt of fat" theory, which tries to explain why thin people have better luck in eating competitions than larger folks.

Salon.com recently featured a an interview with food politics writer and frequent NYT Magazine contributor Michael Pollan. The discussion focused mainly on Pollan's new book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Like Pollan's The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma appears to take a few core examples—in this case, four American meals—and discuss them in great detail. Pollan breaks down the the economic and political components of meals from McDonald's and Whole Foods, as well as  organic farms and foraged materials. In the Salon interview, he outlines some of his views on big agriculture and big organic farming, misleading labeling at stores like Whole Foods, and shifting hardwired cravings for fast food.