Joan Dye Gussow: "I Trust Cows More than I Trust Chemists" | Teachers College Columbia University

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Joan Dye Gussow: "I Trust Cows More than I Trust Chemists"

 

Resilience Magazine reprinted a Spring 2016 interview with TC's ​Joan Dye Gussow by Slow Money Journal. Gussow, Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emerita
 and former chair of the Program in Nutrition, still teaches a course in nutritional ecology at TC every fall. She lives, writes, and grows organic vegetables on the west bank of the Hudson River. Here is an excerpt from the interview:  ​

Slow Money:​ You’ve summed it up in the past by saying, "I prefer butter to margarine, because I trust cows more than I trust chemists." Has your skepticism about technology gotten you into trouble? 

Gussow: How is it in this country we are so willing to look at technology and say that it will solve all of our problems? We always rush right in, let “progress” take over, and never imagine that it may have a negative effect on the overall society. I’m not sure why, but I felt this even in the very early days of the internet, when the excitement was so high. I was thinking, "People aren’t paying attention now to the environment. If everyone is busy watching frogs on their computers, they won’t notice when the actual frogs disappear." That was decades ago and it is so much worse today.

Read the interview here.​

The Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy is housed in the Program in Nutrition, where Gussow teaches. Founded in 1909 by Mary Swartz Rose, PhD., the Program in Nutrition is the oldest university-based nutrition program in the country and established the field of nutrition education.

Published Friday, Jul 8, 2016

Joan Gussow
Joan Gussow