Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

It's become the mantra of Michael Pollan and the millions of people who read his best-selling books "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" and "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto."

Pollan, a contributing writer to the New York Times magazine and the Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley, will speak Sept. 23 at Winona State University's Somsen Auditorium as part of its Lyceum Series. Three-hundred public tickets were available Monday at The Bookshelf. All were gone in less than 90 minutes.

"We could've easily given away 1,500 to 2,000 tickets that first day," Bookshelf owner Chris Livingston said. "People are still coming in and looking for tickets."

Tickets are being made available first to the WSU community, and more public tickets will be given out starting at noon Sept. 21 at WSU's Performing Arts Center box office. A book signing will follow the lecture.

At least a dozen local book clubs have discussed "In Defense of Food," Livingston said.

"I think his books are really popular with people who are concerned about what they're eating and don't know what to do about it," Livingston said. "There's a big awareness around food in general."

Much of that can be credited to Pollan, who hasn't always practiced what he now preaches.

"I ate plenty of junk," Pollan says about his days as a teenager.

His mother cooked most nights, but when they went out to eat, all bets were off. Fries, hamburgers, soda - all tasted pretty good to Pollan. Not anymore.

"Once you've been on a feedlot, it's hard to enjoy a fast food hamburger," Pollan said.

Now, the author usually starts his day with some fruit, yogurt or cereal. While potato chips still tempt him, he tries to stick to a diet of only things his grandmother would've recognized as food - not "edible food-like substances."

"Ignorance is bliss when it comes to food," Pollan said.

Concerns over food, such as the mad cow disease outbreak of the 1990s, have forced people to confront what they eat, Pollan said.

"That was a real wake-up moment for a lot of people," he said. "We were feeding cows to cows. Nobody really knew that. It was shocking."

Subsequent outbreaks within the food system have helped peel back the curtain of how food is prepared. While many of his readers have been converted to eating locally or organically, Pollan is concerned about the higher cost of better quality foods.

"We need to make healthy foods more affordable," Pollan said. "That needs to be addressed politically."

Pollan suggests cooking for yourself as a way to control portion size and ingredients. His books offer other tips for healthful eating, but Pollan isn't going to pry cheeseburgers and 64-ounce sodas from anyone's hands.

"A big part of the problem is that things that are fine on special occasions have become habits," he said.

Pollan still loves a good burger, as long as it's of the grass-fed beef variety. What others do is up to them.

"My goal as a writer is to simply get people to think about these choices," Pollan said. "If people are conscious about what they're doing, they'll make better choices for themselves and for the planet."