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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
What should we have for dinner? For omnivore like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma. When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffered by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.
The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.
The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.
450 pages, Hardcover
First published April 11, 2006
About the author
Michael Pollan
33 books13.9k followersMichael Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 14,272 reviews
February 18, 2008
Michael Pollan is a journalist, and an omnivore, curious about where the food he puts in his mouth comes from. In the book he follows four meals from the very beginning of the food chain to his plate. What he finds is that the food we put in our mouths turns out to be a big decision- a moral, political, and environmental one.
Part One- CORN
The discussion begins with CORN. Part one of this book is shocking. I knew corn was the main crop grown in America and that farmers growing it are in big trouble, requiring government subsidies just to stay afloat, but Michael Pollan unravels how it got to that point.
After leaving the farm, most of the corn finds its way to the Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) where it is fed to cows, pigs, chicken, turkey, and now even fish. This is problematic due to the fact that cows aren't built to eat corn. They eat grass. This unnatural diet leads to various health problems for the cow that must be countered with a cocktail of antibiotics and hormones, creating more health problems for us.
He follows the corn from the field to the supermarket, where it now infiltrates virtually every processed food on the shelf. I had no idea that corn is broken down and recombined into hundreds of different forms, most notably oils, high fructose corn syrup, and xantham gum (never knew what the hell that was). Just take a look at the food label of any processed food and your probably eating some scientific form of that kernel of corn.
He followed the corn all the way to his meal at McDonald's. Between Pollan, his wife, and his son they packed in 4,510 calories for lunch. The items that contained the highest proportion of corn turned out to be the soda (100%), milk shake (78%), salad dressing (65%), chicken nuggets (56%), cheeseburger (52%), and french fries (23%). And we thought we were eating such a varied diet. As Pollan points out, we are simply industrialized eaters surviving on corn.
Part 2- GRASS
Part two focuses on the organic movement. Everyone thinks they're making a wonderful decision to eat organic and in one sense they are, saving the soil from all of the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides (although some crazy stuff is still allowed under US organic laws). There are the obvious health benefits of not ingesting those things. The dark side is that the bag of Earthbound Farms baby lettuce mix you just bought traveled 3,000 miles in refrigerated trucks using untold amounts of energy. Organic started out as a local movement, but as demands increased, it was forced to industrialize. Supermarkets don't want to deal with several smaller local organic farmers. They want one large buyer to stock all their produce needs. Big Organic is now a 350 million dollar business.
Meet Rosie, the organic free range chicken:
The lesson taken away from Rosie is beware of food labels that state things like "free range" or "cage-free." These are really meaningless statements placed on packaging in an attempt to lessen the guilt of consumers that have informed themselves about the horrors of industrial factory farming. Michael Pollan tracked down Rosie and it turns out that she isn't out wandering in a field of grass. She's in a long indoor structure confined with twenty thousand birds for the first five weeks of her life. When they open the doors at either end after the first five weeks, the birds habits have been set in place, they feel no need to take a chance out in the unknown (which turns out to be a small fenced in patch of grass that could never support all of the birds inside). As Pollan puts it "free range turns out to be not so much a lifestyle for these chickens as a two-week vacation option."
Pollan then visits Polyface Farm just outside of Charlottesville, VA where Joel Salatin raises cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and even rabbits in harmony with the animals natural instincts. It is the true definition of symbiosis, where each species depends on the others and all depend on the grass. Salatin manages all of this using rotational grazing techniques. The cows come through first, then the chickens. The animals are moved on a daily basis to prevent overgrazing and to allow the proper spreading of the animals' droppings which in turn nourish the soil and grasses. He slaughters the chickens on site, in the open air where any of his costumers can watch and see where their food really comes from. Compare this to the CAFOs where the killing stations are off limits to all observers. What's going on behind those walls? Polyface cows and pigs have to be sent off-site due to USDA regulations. People drive from all over to buy his "clean food" and restaurants in Charlottesville proudly read "Polyface Farm chickens" on their menus. They give a variety of reasons when asked why they come all the way to buy Salatin's food:
"I just don't trust the meat in the supermarket anymore."
"You're not going to find fresher chickens anywhere."
"I drive 150 miles one way in order to get clean meat for my family."
"It actually tastes like chicken."
"Oh those beautiful eggs! The difference is night and day- the color, the richness, the fat content."
It is the alliance between the producer and the consumer. The consumers can look the farmer in the eyes and see that the food is produced "with care and without chemicals." They are also keeping the moeny in the community by supporting local farmers.
Part 3- The Forest
His final meal is from ingredients derived from Pollan's owe efforts through hunting and gathering. He realizes this is an unrealistic option in terms of our daily eating, but he wants to undergo this experiment to bring him closer to the food he eats. After hunting wild boar, gathering mushrooms from the forest, collecting cherries from a tree in the neighborhood, he discovers what is for him, "the perfect meal." Why perfect? His meal would not have been possible without the number of people that helped him in his hunting and gathering endeavours. It was an open food chain. He knew where all the ingredients came from and their were no hidden costs. "A meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted."
The bottom line:
What are we eating?
Where did it come from?
How did it make it to our table?
What is the true cost? (politically, environmentally, ethically, and in terms of the public health)
Part One- CORN
The discussion begins with CORN. Part one of this book is shocking. I knew corn was the main crop grown in America and that farmers growing it are in big trouble, requiring government subsidies just to stay afloat, but Michael Pollan unravels how it got to that point.
After leaving the farm, most of the corn finds its way to the Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) where it is fed to cows, pigs, chicken, turkey, and now even fish. This is problematic due to the fact that cows aren't built to eat corn. They eat grass. This unnatural diet leads to various health problems for the cow that must be countered with a cocktail of antibiotics and hormones, creating more health problems for us.
He follows the corn from the field to the supermarket, where it now infiltrates virtually every processed food on the shelf. I had no idea that corn is broken down and recombined into hundreds of different forms, most notably oils, high fructose corn syrup, and xantham gum (never knew what the hell that was). Just take a look at the food label of any processed food and your probably eating some scientific form of that kernel of corn.
He followed the corn all the way to his meal at McDonald's. Between Pollan, his wife, and his son they packed in 4,510 calories for lunch. The items that contained the highest proportion of corn turned out to be the soda (100%), milk shake (78%), salad dressing (65%), chicken nuggets (56%), cheeseburger (52%), and french fries (23%). And we thought we were eating such a varied diet. As Pollan points out, we are simply industrialized eaters surviving on corn.
Part 2- GRASS
Part two focuses on the organic movement. Everyone thinks they're making a wonderful decision to eat organic and in one sense they are, saving the soil from all of the synthetic fertilizers and pesticides (although some crazy stuff is still allowed under US organic laws). There are the obvious health benefits of not ingesting those things. The dark side is that the bag of Earthbound Farms baby lettuce mix you just bought traveled 3,000 miles in refrigerated trucks using untold amounts of energy. Organic started out as a local movement, but as demands increased, it was forced to industrialize. Supermarkets don't want to deal with several smaller local organic farmers. They want one large buyer to stock all their produce needs. Big Organic is now a 350 million dollar business.
Meet Rosie, the organic free range chicken:
The lesson taken away from Rosie is beware of food labels that state things like "free range" or "cage-free." These are really meaningless statements placed on packaging in an attempt to lessen the guilt of consumers that have informed themselves about the horrors of industrial factory farming. Michael Pollan tracked down Rosie and it turns out that she isn't out wandering in a field of grass. She's in a long indoor structure confined with twenty thousand birds for the first five weeks of her life. When they open the doors at either end after the first five weeks, the birds habits have been set in place, they feel no need to take a chance out in the unknown (which turns out to be a small fenced in patch of grass that could never support all of the birds inside). As Pollan puts it "free range turns out to be not so much a lifestyle for these chickens as a two-week vacation option."
Pollan then visits Polyface Farm just outside of Charlottesville, VA where Joel Salatin raises cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and even rabbits in harmony with the animals natural instincts. It is the true definition of symbiosis, where each species depends on the others and all depend on the grass. Salatin manages all of this using rotational grazing techniques. The cows come through first, then the chickens. The animals are moved on a daily basis to prevent overgrazing and to allow the proper spreading of the animals' droppings which in turn nourish the soil and grasses. He slaughters the chickens on site, in the open air where any of his costumers can watch and see where their food really comes from. Compare this to the CAFOs where the killing stations are off limits to all observers. What's going on behind those walls? Polyface cows and pigs have to be sent off-site due to USDA regulations. People drive from all over to buy his "clean food" and restaurants in Charlottesville proudly read "Polyface Farm chickens" on their menus. They give a variety of reasons when asked why they come all the way to buy Salatin's food:
"I just don't trust the meat in the supermarket anymore."
"You're not going to find fresher chickens anywhere."
"I drive 150 miles one way in order to get clean meat for my family."
"It actually tastes like chicken."
"Oh those beautiful eggs! The difference is night and day- the color, the richness, the fat content."
It is the alliance between the producer and the consumer. The consumers can look the farmer in the eyes and see that the food is produced "with care and without chemicals." They are also keeping the moeny in the community by supporting local farmers.
Part 3- The Forest
His final meal is from ingredients derived from Pollan's owe efforts through hunting and gathering. He realizes this is an unrealistic option in terms of our daily eating, but he wants to undergo this experiment to bring him closer to the food he eats. After hunting wild boar, gathering mushrooms from the forest, collecting cherries from a tree in the neighborhood, he discovers what is for him, "the perfect meal." Why perfect? His meal would not have been possible without the number of people that helped him in his hunting and gathering endeavours. It was an open food chain. He knew where all the ingredients came from and their were no hidden costs. "A meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted."
The bottom line:
What are we eating?
Where did it come from?
How did it make it to our table?
What is the true cost? (politically, environmentally, ethically, and in terms of the public health)
April 13, 2017
I was resistant to reading this book because I’m not an omnivore, and also I thought that Pollan’s book The Botany of Desire was brilliant and I suspected I would not feel as fond of this one, which is certainly true. He does write well, but I didn’t find that this book had the eloquence or elegance of the other.
The sub-title of this book could read: It’s Really Ok To Eat Dead Animals, Really It Is. Which I realize for most people it is. But eating flesh foods and other foods made from animals such as dairy and eggs is simply what the vast majority of this book’s readers and the population as a whole do; it’s not an unique argument.
But, I loved the fungi chapter and the corn section. The chapter on mushrooms I’m sure I enjoyed so much because a close friend of mine has told stories of her rural Indiana upbringing and of the very small morel patch they have on their property. So it was really fun for me to read about the foraging/hunting of the mushrooms, including local morels. (The author lives about 30 minutes drive from me and I recognized many of the locations in the book.) The corn section (about the deliberate infusion of corn products into just about every processed food) made me determined to cut way down on the processed foods that I often eat: the one real way this book changed me, not an insignificant one.
A good part of this (apparently beloved) book seemed to me to be the author’s belabored argument that it’s perfectly fine to eat animals. His treatise looked like his attempt to avoid cognitive dissonance (his term although I was already thinking of it like that) so that he could continue to eat in peace as an omnivore, along with about 97% of the U.S. population; being omnivorous is the dominant paradigm. Anyway, his waxing poetic over the glories of killing and eating animals did not sway me. It’s interesting that Pollan continually rebuts his own arguments, but I wasn’t convinced his questioning was as honest as he wanted it to appear, as it seemed to me he already knew the answers he wanted to arrive at about being omnivorous. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he would agree with me about that.
Some of his facts and figures were off. When he talks about tens of millions of animals killed for food in the U.S. for instance; actually, the latest figures I’ve read are 11 billion every year, not including fish. Even the call to eat locally, which I usually subscribe to, is not to be so simplified. One contradictory example I can think of (this issue is not addressed in the book) is the consuming of products (chocolate, coffee, dried fruit, nuts) from the distant rainforest, which, in my opinion, is much preferable to continuing to cut down rainforest trees, and which the natives will allow if they can’t make their living from the rainforest in other ways.
I know my philosophy is shared by a relative few, but the fast food meals, the description which was intended to highlight the large amounts of corn products in all the foods, while I found that surprising and unfortunate, it was the cow and chicken parts of the meal that disturbed me the most. And, as far as the “idyllic” Polyface Farm, I truly wonder what they could do 100% plant products grown.
The sub-title of this book could read: It’s Really Ok To Eat Dead Animals, Really It Is. Which I realize for most people it is. But eating flesh foods and other foods made from animals such as dairy and eggs is simply what the vast majority of this book’s readers and the population as a whole do; it’s not an unique argument.
But, I loved the fungi chapter and the corn section. The chapter on mushrooms I’m sure I enjoyed so much because a close friend of mine has told stories of her rural Indiana upbringing and of the very small morel patch they have on their property. So it was really fun for me to read about the foraging/hunting of the mushrooms, including local morels. (The author lives about 30 minutes drive from me and I recognized many of the locations in the book.) The corn section (about the deliberate infusion of corn products into just about every processed food) made me determined to cut way down on the processed foods that I often eat: the one real way this book changed me, not an insignificant one.
A good part of this (apparently beloved) book seemed to me to be the author’s belabored argument that it’s perfectly fine to eat animals. His treatise looked like his attempt to avoid cognitive dissonance (his term although I was already thinking of it like that) so that he could continue to eat in peace as an omnivore, along with about 97% of the U.S. population; being omnivorous is the dominant paradigm. Anyway, his waxing poetic over the glories of killing and eating animals did not sway me. It’s interesting that Pollan continually rebuts his own arguments, but I wasn’t convinced his questioning was as honest as he wanted it to appear, as it seemed to me he already knew the answers he wanted to arrive at about being omnivorous. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he would agree with me about that.
Some of his facts and figures were off. When he talks about tens of millions of animals killed for food in the U.S. for instance; actually, the latest figures I’ve read are 11 billion every year, not including fish. Even the call to eat locally, which I usually subscribe to, is not to be so simplified. One contradictory example I can think of (this issue is not addressed in the book) is the consuming of products (chocolate, coffee, dried fruit, nuts) from the distant rainforest, which, in my opinion, is much preferable to continuing to cut down rainforest trees, and which the natives will allow if they can’t make their living from the rainforest in other ways.
I know my philosophy is shared by a relative few, but the fast food meals, the description which was intended to highlight the large amounts of corn products in all the foods, while I found that surprising and unfortunate, it was the cow and chicken parts of the meal that disturbed me the most. And, as far as the “idyllic” Polyface Farm, I truly wonder what they could do 100% plant products grown.
September 8, 2017
I liked Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma so much that I searched goodreads reviews for reasons not to like it.
Let me explain.
Whenever a really influential book like this comes out, there's a pretty reliable pattern that follows. There's the newspaper "toast of the town" effect, followed by bland and ubiquitous morning TV interviews, and, if you're lucky, an innocuous appearance on Oprah, probably followed by a massive boost in sales. However, there is usually a fairly large group of people absolutely pissed off by the book (or film) because it simplifies or overlooks some crucial matter or matters.
I'm aware that Pollan made it all the way to Oprah, and I didn't want to be what some call an "Oprah sheep," but I just couldn't hate The Omnivore's Dilemma no matter how hard I tried.
Pollan goes into quite a bit of detail throughout the book, but in a general way, we could say that he examines the American supermarket and notices that it seems to present food in a way that is detached from the production of food, particularly the natural processes on which food production relies. Pollan examines how food is produced and explores three "food chains" -- the industrial, the pastoral, and the personal. If food production was a spectrum, then the industrial (monoculture, feedlots, preservatives, processed foods, and international shipping) and the personal (hunter / gatherer) would be at opposing ends. Although Pollan acknowledges that a hunter/ gatherer model is an unrealistic way to feed a country, he points out that it has the benefit of connecting the eater to what we might call the ecology of food. So try to move closer to the personal, "conscious" method of eating by finding an alternative food chain.
What does this spectrum mean for us? Organic food does not rely on pesticides or antibiotics, but it is closer to industrial than the personal because it's shipped around the world. Buying food from a local farmer moves us closer to personal since we have some idea of where our food comes from. Meat eaters that have actually seen the animal they're eating die -- or how it dies -- are closer to the personal end of the spectrum. Veggie eaters that eat from the supermarket are closer to the industrial. If nothing else, I can say that I never thought of food in quite this way until I'd read this book.
In fact, there are a lot of ways that I've never thought about food until I read this book. Pollan clearly has a passion for discussing food and he also has the ability to turn what are often quite obviously contrived experiments into enjoyable reading.
I said that I was struggling to find someone that hates The Omnivore's Dilemma, but I wasn't entirely unsuccessful. My wife is sick of hearing me talk about Michael Pollan. So if you hated the book and would like to convince me that it's awful, my wife will surely thank you for your kindness.
In the meantime, I thought The Omnivore's Dilemma was fantastic.
Let me explain.
Whenever a really influential book like this comes out, there's a pretty reliable pattern that follows. There's the newspaper "toast of the town" effect, followed by bland and ubiquitous morning TV interviews, and, if you're lucky, an innocuous appearance on Oprah, probably followed by a massive boost in sales. However, there is usually a fairly large group of people absolutely pissed off by the book (or film) because it simplifies or overlooks some crucial matter or matters.
I'm aware that Pollan made it all the way to Oprah, and I didn't want to be what some call an "Oprah sheep," but I just couldn't hate The Omnivore's Dilemma no matter how hard I tried.
Pollan goes into quite a bit of detail throughout the book, but in a general way, we could say that he examines the American supermarket and notices that it seems to present food in a way that is detached from the production of food, particularly the natural processes on which food production relies. Pollan examines how food is produced and explores three "food chains" -- the industrial, the pastoral, and the personal. If food production was a spectrum, then the industrial (monoculture, feedlots, preservatives, processed foods, and international shipping) and the personal (hunter / gatherer) would be at opposing ends. Although Pollan acknowledges that a hunter/ gatherer model is an unrealistic way to feed a country, he points out that it has the benefit of connecting the eater to what we might call the ecology of food. So try to move closer to the personal, "conscious" method of eating by finding an alternative food chain.
What does this spectrum mean for us? Organic food does not rely on pesticides or antibiotics, but it is closer to industrial than the personal because it's shipped around the world. Buying food from a local farmer moves us closer to personal since we have some idea of where our food comes from. Meat eaters that have actually seen the animal they're eating die -- or how it dies -- are closer to the personal end of the spectrum. Veggie eaters that eat from the supermarket are closer to the industrial. If nothing else, I can say that I never thought of food in quite this way until I'd read this book.
In fact, there are a lot of ways that I've never thought about food until I read this book. Pollan clearly has a passion for discussing food and he also has the ability to turn what are often quite obviously contrived experiments into enjoyable reading.
I said that I was struggling to find someone that hates The Omnivore's Dilemma, but I wasn't entirely unsuccessful. My wife is sick of hearing me talk about Michael Pollan. So if you hated the book and would like to convince me that it's awful, my wife will surely thank you for your kindness.
In the meantime, I thought The Omnivore's Dilemma was fantastic.
August 9, 2010
Wow, it seems like a lot of people didn't notice that this kinda sucked! Weird. It read to me like he wrote The Botany of Desire, decided that that framework- a loose structure in which he can just talk alternately interesting and totally self-serving shit for a whole book- and figured he'd give it another go, but this time as his MAGNUM OPUS. And I was pretty into it, for the most part, but in a lot of the parts where he thinks he's being super even-handed, he's actually often being a boring middle-aged white liberal dude with boring tenured college professor politics. I mean, have you read the part in this book where he decides that animals shouldn't be killed, declares himself a vegetarian, gets stressed out, decides that being a vegetarian is stepping on your friends' toes, then says a bunch of total fucking nothing for twenty minutes (I listened to the audiobook- which, by the way, makes this book sound super preachy even if it isn't, because of the narrator's tone of voice) and decides that vegetarianism isn't a viable way of life? Even though, I don't know, something like a million billion people have been living that way for pretty much forever? Just admit it, Mike: you like eating meat, don't want to make the effort to stop, convinced Peter Singer to concede that, sure, if you're going to eat meat, it's better to eat meat that's been ethically raised and slaughtered (aduh), and decided that that settles it: Pete Singer said you don't have to be a vegetarian, so let's just-
OH MAN after the vegetarian part- we are about three quarters of the way in at this point- Mike decides that he's going to be a hunter, so he writes two hours (it is a trip for me to listen to a book because I do it so rarely, but I am driving across the country and it is a wide country) of the most florid, masturbatory prose I have ever had the privilege of consuming in any medium. ON and ON and ON and ON about the great natural dance, and how probably when you shoot an animal it releases THC (the active ingredient in marijuana; a cannabanoid, which is a science word!) into your brain, 'cause it sure feels like getting stoned. And the beauty of how time slows down when you look through a rifle sight, and how now he is better than people who hunt in their real lives. Thanks for that, Mike. Also thanks for your total lack of solutions for people who can't afford or don't have access to organically grown local fuckin cows that got to play dress-up whenever they wanted up until Temple Grandin killed them. Actually, thanks for your total lack of solutions to anything (besides 'get your friend to clean the pig you shoot,' SPOILER).
It's just... The Botany of Desire was pretty fun! You do better when you tell me about Johnny Appleseed, Michael Pollan, than you do when you try to tell me how to eat. Also I know you did it first but Eating Animals does a better job of explaining about how animals are tortured in american corporate agriculture. The student has become the teacher! O-oh!
OH MAN after the vegetarian part- we are about three quarters of the way in at this point- Mike decides that he's going to be a hunter, so he writes two hours (it is a trip for me to listen to a book because I do it so rarely, but I am driving across the country and it is a wide country) of the most florid, masturbatory prose I have ever had the privilege of consuming in any medium. ON and ON and ON and ON about the great natural dance, and how probably when you shoot an animal it releases THC (the active ingredient in marijuana; a cannabanoid, which is a science word!) into your brain, 'cause it sure feels like getting stoned. And the beauty of how time slows down when you look through a rifle sight, and how now he is better than people who hunt in their real lives. Thanks for that, Mike. Also thanks for your total lack of solutions for people who can't afford or don't have access to organically grown local fuckin cows that got to play dress-up whenever they wanted up until Temple Grandin killed them. Actually, thanks for your total lack of solutions to anything (besides 'get your friend to clean the pig you shoot,' SPOILER).
It's just... The Botany of Desire was pretty fun! You do better when you tell me about Johnny Appleseed, Michael Pollan, than you do when you try to tell me how to eat. Also I know you did it first but Eating Animals does a better job of explaining about how animals are tortured in american corporate agriculture. The student has become the teacher! O-oh!
December 13, 2007
He makes some good points but in the end, it smacks of well-off white man over simplifying an incredibly complex issue. What the book has going for it is that it's a best seller, especially to the faux-liberal, over educated set and it's at least making them THINK about where their food is coming from. What I don't like though, is that it lets them off the hook as far as accountability if they just go about buying the RIGHT kind of meat. Well, all of that free range "humane" meat goes to the same creepy slaughterhouses that the factory farmed animals go to so really, from an ethical stand point, it's no better. Oh and the USDA Guidelines on what is considered free range are ridiculous, 5 minutes ACCESS to the outdoors a day earns you free range classification. Also, the idea of getting all of your meat from nearby sustainable family farms who do their own slaughter and processing is really great in theory but then won't it become a class issue when only rich people can afford it? Oh but I guess those are the same people reading this book so it's cool.
Oh and lots of his numbers were way off...he said we kill millions of animals a year for food in this country, more like BILLIONS. I talked to a guy yesterday who worked in a chicken slaughtering line in a prison way back when and said that he was responsible for personally killing 8,000 birds a day. slicing their necks open. ugh.
Oh another positive: I did learn a lot about corn from the book and have pretty much backed away from anything made with it.
Oh and lots of his numbers were way off...he said we kill millions of animals a year for food in this country, more like BILLIONS. I talked to a guy yesterday who worked in a chicken slaughtering line in a prison way back when and said that he was responsible for personally killing 8,000 birds a day. slicing their necks open. ugh.
Oh another positive: I did learn a lot about corn from the book and have pretty much backed away from anything made with it.
November 7, 2008
I love food. I really love food. I believe it is one of the most fascinating cultural facts in our lives. I particularly love food that is taken as meals and then the words that gather about meals – not least that most beautiful word ‘sharing’. Because food is never better than when it is shared as ours.
Recently I was delighted to learn the etymology of the word ‘companion’. That has become my favourite way to describe the people I’m fond of. The word comes from Latin and means ‘with bread’ – that is, someone you share bread with. Isn’t that the most beautiful of metaphors?
Then again, there is food and then there is food – and this is a book about all of the various types of food available to us in this modern world of ours. It is a book that has made me think about what I eat, how I eat it and to question what can only be called the morality of food. And then it also made me think of the psychology of food and the sociology of food in ways I really didn’t expect.
The book reminded me of many other books. It reminded me of Fast Food Nation, but I think I enjoyed this more (which is really saying something). It reminded me of Orion’s Legacy too, and not just because of the hunting stuff towards the end. This guy is so engaging and interesting. And like any good meal there are general themes and flavours but also many tasty asides.
This book is structured around four meals. Before bringing us to the table for each of these meals he explains how the food got to the table too. The four meals are related to the various ways food is obtained in our modern world. Naturally, the first is industrial farming and the first meal is a McDonald’s hamburger eaten in a car that is being driven at 60 miles an hour.
Did you know that one in five meals eaten in America are eaten in a car? Isn’t that the saddest statistic you have heard today?
Recently I’ve been reading books about economics which have turned out to be very much in favour of free market economics. Essentially, they have told the story of how any interference in the operation of free markets is anathema and that the damnation thus brought about by this interference is found in the distortions that invariably cause harm to what they initially sought to protect. The story of corn farming in the USA is a horribly vivid illustration of the effects of the interference in the operation of market forces leading to grotesque distortions which achieve the opposite of this interference’s original intent. Industrial production of corn using fossil fuel fertilisers so that the corn can be either turned into sugar to create rivers of soft drinks or chaff to feed cows in ways nature never intended is more than just morally questionable. The lives of these cows are an unspeakable torture, made no less so by the fact we have short-circuited their lives to a mere 14 months. These animals don’t normally eat corn and the descriptions of their sufferings when they are forced to is both repulsive and infuriating. If you don’t come away from reading this section thinking, “Not in my name” I can only say you are totally lacking in compassion. This is an industry that could hardly make itself less sustainable. It is clear that it needs to be changed, in fact, it needs to be done away with.
What I liked most about this book was that it didn’t then say: organic is best, buy organic – which is what I thought was coming. In fact, he spends a lot of time talking about how ‘organic’ food isn’t necessarily ‘environmentally friendly’ food. I am one of those dags (oh, Australian slang – it actually means the shit that gets caught in the wool around a sheep’s arse, but has come to mean someone who is a bit ‘naff’, for my English friends, and ‘dorky’ for my American ones) who buys free-range eggs, not because I think they taste any better (I’m sure they don’t) but because I can’t bring myself to eat eggs from chickens that have been treated so appallingly. When I didn’t think about it, everything was fine – but once I did think about it I would rather pay the extra dollar or two so as to be able to enjoy the eggs and not feel like a Nazi prison guard. Some of what he says here about ‘free range’ chickens is also disturbing and the phrase ‘false advertising’ comes to mind.
However, his description of ‘pastoral food’ is a pure delight and possibly worth reading all on its own if you are in a hurry and don’t want to read the whole book. You know, if you are after the fast food version. Sustainable, thoughtful, inspiring – this really is the heart of the ‘lesson’ of this book and was nearly enough to make me want to go off and start a farm. It also contains what is, for me, the saddest line in the book – about the A grade students in the countryside being stolen from the farms and the D grade students being left behind to be exploited by the clever people from Wall Street and to donate lots of money to televangelists. The sad fact is that I found this sad mostly because it confirms so many of my prejudices about those who live in rural areas – it is not hard to see why Marx proposed the mass industrialisation of agriculture. It was the only way he could imagine of dragging these poor souls out of the horrendous world of ignorance and fear that clungs to them like the mud that sticks to their boots.
I think many people may feel this book looses its way towards the end – particularly where he goes off to hunt and gather his own food to prepare his final meal. That is what I thought as this part started. At least, until he got into his stride (which, as always, did not take very long). The stuff he has to say about mushrooms, for instance. is utterly fascinating. I had no idea that we know so little about mushrooms. In fact, our ignorance of mushrooms seems quite staggering. Pollan handles those on the ‘lunar’ end of the fungus world (lunar in both the figurative and literal senses of the word) with a deftness and wit that is a pure joy. If you are thinking of picking the eyes out of this book then this section is another must read.
There are very few pleasures in life that are more human than preparing a meal for the people you love. At least twice in this book he mentions Freud and sex and suggests that Freud could have better based his ideas on desire for food. I suspect that today we are not nearly as stuffed up about sex as we are about food. I learnt an awful lot from this book and had a really nice time with the author as he taught me these things – he is a very clever man and an engaging writer.
If I had lots more time on my hands I would like to write an Australian version of this book, about where our food comes from and the costs of the inputs into producing it. I would also, if I had lots and lots more time, like to spend some time learning how to find field mushrooms and to learn more about what makes these remarkable creatures tick. Did you know that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants?
And the dilemma? Well, actually, there are many, many dilemmas – between industrial and sustainable food, between eating new things and eating what you ‘know’, between conscious eating and wilful blindness. This book didn’t make the writer a vegetarian, and it didn’t make me one either – but I did come away from this book wanting to be more aware of what I eat and what the choices I make when deciding what to eat mean.
If you want to learn about the real eating disorder affecting the world – this really is a book for you.
Recently I was delighted to learn the etymology of the word ‘companion’. That has become my favourite way to describe the people I’m fond of. The word comes from Latin and means ‘with bread’ – that is, someone you share bread with. Isn’t that the most beautiful of metaphors?
Then again, there is food and then there is food – and this is a book about all of the various types of food available to us in this modern world of ours. It is a book that has made me think about what I eat, how I eat it and to question what can only be called the morality of food. And then it also made me think of the psychology of food and the sociology of food in ways I really didn’t expect.
The book reminded me of many other books. It reminded me of Fast Food Nation, but I think I enjoyed this more (which is really saying something). It reminded me of Orion’s Legacy too, and not just because of the hunting stuff towards the end. This guy is so engaging and interesting. And like any good meal there are general themes and flavours but also many tasty asides.
This book is structured around four meals. Before bringing us to the table for each of these meals he explains how the food got to the table too. The four meals are related to the various ways food is obtained in our modern world. Naturally, the first is industrial farming and the first meal is a McDonald’s hamburger eaten in a car that is being driven at 60 miles an hour.
Did you know that one in five meals eaten in America are eaten in a car? Isn’t that the saddest statistic you have heard today?
Recently I’ve been reading books about economics which have turned out to be very much in favour of free market economics. Essentially, they have told the story of how any interference in the operation of free markets is anathema and that the damnation thus brought about by this interference is found in the distortions that invariably cause harm to what they initially sought to protect. The story of corn farming in the USA is a horribly vivid illustration of the effects of the interference in the operation of market forces leading to grotesque distortions which achieve the opposite of this interference’s original intent. Industrial production of corn using fossil fuel fertilisers so that the corn can be either turned into sugar to create rivers of soft drinks or chaff to feed cows in ways nature never intended is more than just morally questionable. The lives of these cows are an unspeakable torture, made no less so by the fact we have short-circuited their lives to a mere 14 months. These animals don’t normally eat corn and the descriptions of their sufferings when they are forced to is both repulsive and infuriating. If you don’t come away from reading this section thinking, “Not in my name” I can only say you are totally lacking in compassion. This is an industry that could hardly make itself less sustainable. It is clear that it needs to be changed, in fact, it needs to be done away with.
What I liked most about this book was that it didn’t then say: organic is best, buy organic – which is what I thought was coming. In fact, he spends a lot of time talking about how ‘organic’ food isn’t necessarily ‘environmentally friendly’ food. I am one of those dags (oh, Australian slang – it actually means the shit that gets caught in the wool around a sheep’s arse, but has come to mean someone who is a bit ‘naff’, for my English friends, and ‘dorky’ for my American ones) who buys free-range eggs, not because I think they taste any better (I’m sure they don’t) but because I can’t bring myself to eat eggs from chickens that have been treated so appallingly. When I didn’t think about it, everything was fine – but once I did think about it I would rather pay the extra dollar or two so as to be able to enjoy the eggs and not feel like a Nazi prison guard. Some of what he says here about ‘free range’ chickens is also disturbing and the phrase ‘false advertising’ comes to mind.
However, his description of ‘pastoral food’ is a pure delight and possibly worth reading all on its own if you are in a hurry and don’t want to read the whole book. You know, if you are after the fast food version. Sustainable, thoughtful, inspiring – this really is the heart of the ‘lesson’ of this book and was nearly enough to make me want to go off and start a farm. It also contains what is, for me, the saddest line in the book – about the A grade students in the countryside being stolen from the farms and the D grade students being left behind to be exploited by the clever people from Wall Street and to donate lots of money to televangelists. The sad fact is that I found this sad mostly because it confirms so many of my prejudices about those who live in rural areas – it is not hard to see why Marx proposed the mass industrialisation of agriculture. It was the only way he could imagine of dragging these poor souls out of the horrendous world of ignorance and fear that clungs to them like the mud that sticks to their boots.
I think many people may feel this book looses its way towards the end – particularly where he goes off to hunt and gather his own food to prepare his final meal. That is what I thought as this part started. At least, until he got into his stride (which, as always, did not take very long). The stuff he has to say about mushrooms, for instance. is utterly fascinating. I had no idea that we know so little about mushrooms. In fact, our ignorance of mushrooms seems quite staggering. Pollan handles those on the ‘lunar’ end of the fungus world (lunar in both the figurative and literal senses of the word) with a deftness and wit that is a pure joy. If you are thinking of picking the eyes out of this book then this section is another must read.
There are very few pleasures in life that are more human than preparing a meal for the people you love. At least twice in this book he mentions Freud and sex and suggests that Freud could have better based his ideas on desire for food. I suspect that today we are not nearly as stuffed up about sex as we are about food. I learnt an awful lot from this book and had a really nice time with the author as he taught me these things – he is a very clever man and an engaging writer.
If I had lots more time on my hands I would like to write an Australian version of this book, about where our food comes from and the costs of the inputs into producing it. I would also, if I had lots and lots more time, like to spend some time learning how to find field mushrooms and to learn more about what makes these remarkable creatures tick. Did you know that fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants?
And the dilemma? Well, actually, there are many, many dilemmas – between industrial and sustainable food, between eating new things and eating what you ‘know’, between conscious eating and wilful blindness. This book didn’t make the writer a vegetarian, and it didn’t make me one either – but I did come away from this book wanting to be more aware of what I eat and what the choices I make when deciding what to eat mean.
If you want to learn about the real eating disorder affecting the world – this really is a book for you.
February 1, 2024
Michael Pollan is quickly becoming a new favorite author.
July 5, 2016
After reading books like these, I'm not sure what to eat anymore.
Michael Pollan, a sort of food journalist, doesn't always give you the kind of clear-cut answers you'd like if you're reading books like this in order to learn what's healthy for your body and what's not. However, here are two important things I did learn:
#1 - Eating only one thing is not good for you in the long run.
#2 - Corn is in nearly everything we eat these days.
America grows corn. The American government pays for its farmers to grow corn. Corn syrup goes into an alarmingly high percentage of our daily foods. Our farmed-fish and cows subsist on corn. Hell, some of our cars run on corn!
CORN!
Another issue is the nitrates used to grow all this corn. Because it's less physically demanding, farmers spread chemical nitrates over their fields. To ensure a good crop, they overcompensate. All this excess washes into our water system, contaminating our drinking water and destroying fish habitats. The Gulf of Mexico spreading outward from the Mississippi Delta is fucked.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is one of those books I've been hearing about for years. In the past, I've read other Pollan books and they were good, but for some reason I held off on this one. Maybe it was like that character in Lost holding on to a copy of Our Mutual Friend, the only Dickens book he hasn't read. I knew this book would be special. I wanted to wait and savor it. I also knew it would be slightly depressing. I wanted to be ready for it.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Pollan is hopeful and allows for the light at the end of the tunnel. He's also willing to try new things like hunting and vegetarianism. He gets his hands dirty and that's what I like to see in my journalists.
Fantastic book! Recommended to all!
Michael Pollan, a sort of food journalist, doesn't always give you the kind of clear-cut answers you'd like if you're reading books like this in order to learn what's healthy for your body and what's not. However, here are two important things I did learn:
#1 - Eating only one thing is not good for you in the long run.
#2 - Corn is in nearly everything we eat these days.
America grows corn. The American government pays for its farmers to grow corn. Corn syrup goes into an alarmingly high percentage of our daily foods. Our farmed-fish and cows subsist on corn. Hell, some of our cars run on corn!
CORN!
Another issue is the nitrates used to grow all this corn. Because it's less physically demanding, farmers spread chemical nitrates over their fields. To ensure a good crop, they overcompensate. All this excess washes into our water system, contaminating our drinking water and destroying fish habitats. The Gulf of Mexico spreading outward from the Mississippi Delta is fucked.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is one of those books I've been hearing about for years. In the past, I've read other Pollan books and they were good, but for some reason I held off on this one. Maybe it was like that character in Lost holding on to a copy of Our Mutual Friend, the only Dickens book he hasn't read. I knew this book would be special. I wanted to wait and savor it. I also knew it would be slightly depressing. I wanted to be ready for it.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Pollan is hopeful and allows for the light at the end of the tunnel. He's also willing to try new things like hunting and vegetarianism. He gets his hands dirty and that's what I like to see in my journalists.
Fantastic book! Recommended to all!
April 22, 2015
Man, this book is great. The best book I read last year, easily. Mushrooms, chicken slaughter, sustainability, french fries, soul-searching questions, it's all here. Just read it already.
Okay, if that didn't sell you, here's more info, from the review I wrote for my farm community (Stearns Farm, Framingham, MA):
The Omnivore’s Dilemma created a lot buzz since its publication in 2006, so you may have read it already. If you haven’t picked it up yet, consider checking it out. At 464 pages, it is definitely on the long side, but it’s an engaging, easy read, and it puts the question “where do we get our food?” front and center in a fascinating way. Its four different sections break up the book nicely (you could read one section a month, for example, if your reading time is limited), and it is also coming out in convenient paperback form next month.
In the book, Michael Pollan traces the history and ingredients of four different meals: one from McDonald's, one from Whole Foods market, one from a small farm in Virginia, and one composed of ingredients that he gathered (and killed) on his own. The meal from McDonald’s (about 70% of which is derived from corn) allows him to take a trip down the rabbit-hole into the world of high fructose corn syrup and the massive, genetically-modified mono-farms that produce the majority of corn in this country. The Whole Foods meal is obviously a step up from this, although here Pollan explores the conundrum of eating organically if that means flying peaches in from Chile in December. This section of the book does a fine job explaining that “organic” does not necessarily mean sustainable. Next Pollan spends a week on a farm in Virginia that serves in many ways as an idyllic model for where to get your food. (Hello, Stearns!) Finally, in a section that is as much “adventure series” as it is agricultural critique, Pollan creates a gourmet meal for his friends using only items he gathered himself, including bread made with yeast collected from his backyard and sea salt procured from the Northern California coast on which he lives.
Hunting and gathering all of your own food these days may seem unfeasible, especially to create the kind of elaborate feast Pollan does. (Although Stearns provides the opportunity to get much closer to that goal). However, even if you are unable to rustle around in the woods for wild boar or visit a fire-blackened forest to pick morel mushrooms, as Pollan does, you will come away from the book re-energized with the commitment to eat locally and sustainably. Pollan may not have deliberately set out to promote CSAs such as Stearns Farm, but that is a happy side benefit of the work. He also writes sensitively and without a sense of moral superiority—it can feel unusual to read a book on this subject that doesn't make you feel bad about yourself. And yet, the information Pollan presents simply and persuasively will compel you to both thought and action, making The Omnivore’s Dilemma an excellent read and great inspiration for the next time you are out in the pick-your-own beds, gathering food for your family’s dinner.
www.outland-ish.com
Honest Tales from Overseas
Okay, if that didn't sell you, here's more info, from the review I wrote for my farm community (Stearns Farm, Framingham, MA):
The Omnivore’s Dilemma created a lot buzz since its publication in 2006, so you may have read it already. If you haven’t picked it up yet, consider checking it out. At 464 pages, it is definitely on the long side, but it’s an engaging, easy read, and it puts the question “where do we get our food?” front and center in a fascinating way. Its four different sections break up the book nicely (you could read one section a month, for example, if your reading time is limited), and it is also coming out in convenient paperback form next month.
In the book, Michael Pollan traces the history and ingredients of four different meals: one from McDonald's, one from Whole Foods market, one from a small farm in Virginia, and one composed of ingredients that he gathered (and killed) on his own. The meal from McDonald’s (about 70% of which is derived from corn) allows him to take a trip down the rabbit-hole into the world of high fructose corn syrup and the massive, genetically-modified mono-farms that produce the majority of corn in this country. The Whole Foods meal is obviously a step up from this, although here Pollan explores the conundrum of eating organically if that means flying peaches in from Chile in December. This section of the book does a fine job explaining that “organic” does not necessarily mean sustainable. Next Pollan spends a week on a farm in Virginia that serves in many ways as an idyllic model for where to get your food. (Hello, Stearns!) Finally, in a section that is as much “adventure series” as it is agricultural critique, Pollan creates a gourmet meal for his friends using only items he gathered himself, including bread made with yeast collected from his backyard and sea salt procured from the Northern California coast on which he lives.
Hunting and gathering all of your own food these days may seem unfeasible, especially to create the kind of elaborate feast Pollan does. (Although Stearns provides the opportunity to get much closer to that goal). However, even if you are unable to rustle around in the woods for wild boar or visit a fire-blackened forest to pick morel mushrooms, as Pollan does, you will come away from the book re-energized with the commitment to eat locally and sustainably. Pollan may not have deliberately set out to promote CSAs such as Stearns Farm, but that is a happy side benefit of the work. He also writes sensitively and without a sense of moral superiority—it can feel unusual to read a book on this subject that doesn't make you feel bad about yourself. And yet, the information Pollan presents simply and persuasively will compel you to both thought and action, making The Omnivore’s Dilemma an excellent read and great inspiration for the next time you are out in the pick-your-own beds, gathering food for your family’s dinner.
www.outland-ish.com
Honest Tales from Overseas
October 31, 2019
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a nonfiction book written by American author Michael Pollan published in 2006. In the book, Pollan asks the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. As omnivores, the most unselective eaters, humans are faced with a wide variety of food choices, resulting in a dilemma. Pollan suggests that, prior to modern food preservation and transportation technologies, this particular dilemma was resolved primarily through cultural influences.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سی و یکم ماه اکتبر سال 2017 میلادی
عنوان: معضل جانور همهچیزخوار؛ نویسنده: مارک پولان (پولن)؛ مترجم: آرش حسینیان؛ مشهد: نشر تلنگر، 1395؛ در یک جلد؛ شابک: 9786009660230؛ موضوع: اولویتهای غذایی از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 21 م
در این کتاب، «پولان» سرراست به سراغِ این پرسش میروند، که ما چه چیزی باید بخوریم. انسان (همانند سایر همه چیز خواران) به عنوان یک همه چیز خوار، که عمدتاً گزینشی موادِ غذایی را مصرف نمیکند، با طیف گسترده ای از گزینشهای غذایی روبروست، و همین امکان گزینش است، که تصمیم گیری را برای او تبدیل به یک معضل میکند. «پولان» نشان میدهد، که پیش از به میدان آمدنِ فناوریهای امروزیِ نگهداری و تبدیل غذا، این مشکل تا حد بسیاری - عمدتاً از راه نفوذ فرهنگی - حل شده بود. اما فناوریهای مدرن، از راه در دسترس قرار دادنِ غذاهایی که تا پیش از این، محدود به فصل یا منطقه ی معینی بود، رابطه ی بین مواد غذایی و جامعه، که زمانی توسط فرهنگ تنظیم میشد، اکنون دچار سردرگمی ست. برای یادگیریِ بیشتر در موردِ این گزینشها، «پولان» به پیگیری هر یک از زنجیره های غذایی میپردازند، که ما را زنده نگاه داشته است: غذای صنعتی، غذای ارگانیگ، و غذایی که برای خود گردآوری میکنیم. «پولان» این داستان را از آغازِ فرآوری این مواد غذایی، تا محصولِ نهایی دنبال میکند، و در این بین نقدی نیز از شیوهٔ تغذیه ی آمریکایی به دست میدهد. نقل نمونه متن از کتاب: «همانند اکثر دیگر موجودات خونگرم، انسان طوری تکامل یافته تا مواد غذایی پر انرژی را ترجیح دهد، این موضوع در علاقه ی ما به چیزهای شیرین قابل مشاهده است و اکثر پستانداران نیز در این ویژگی با ما مشترکند. ما تکامل یافته ایم تا مزه ی قند و چربی (هم از نظر بافت و هم از نظر مزه) را ترجیح دهیم زیرا قندها و چربیها دارای بیشترین انرژی در ازای هر لقمه هستند. اما نکته اینجاست که در طبیعت- یعنی در مواد غذایی کامل- ما به ندرت با این حجم از قند و چربی که امروز در غذاهای فرآوریشده چپانده میشود رویارو میشویم: شما در هیچ کجا میوه ای پیدا نمیکنید که به اندازه ی نوشابه فروکتوز داشته باشد، یا تکه گوشتی از یک حیوان که به اندازه ی یک ناگت مرغ چربی داشته باشد.» حالا میتوان فهمید چرا مواد غذایی فرآوری شده قادر است به این خوبی مردم را به خوردن مقدار هرچه بیشتر ترغیب کنند. «..تحقیقات انجام شده بر روی جانوران این موضوع را به خوبی نشان داده است: وقتی به موشهای صحرایی محلولهایی از ساکروز(شکر) خالص یا چربی خالصِ خوک ارائه میشد- یعنی چیزهایی که به ندرت در طبیعت به این شکل یافت میشوند – آنها آنقدر به خوردن ادامه میدادند که بیمار میشدند…» حال انسان را در برابر فست فودهای فراوان تصور کنید: «…شاید فکر کنید مردم به محض اینکه احساس سیری میکردند دست از خوردن و نوشیدن این وعده های غذایی غولآسا میکشیدند. اما معلوم شد گرسنگی به این شکل عمل ��میکند. محققان نشان داده اند آدمها و حیوانات زمانی که با وعده های بزرگ غذایی روبرو میشوند تا سی درصد بیشتر از مواقع دیگر غذا میخورند از قرار معلوم، اشتهای انسان به شکل تعجب برانگیزی انعطاف پذیر است، و این موضوع از نظر تکاملی به خوبی قابل فهم است: زیرا این برای نیاکان شکارچی-گردآورنده ی ما واجب بوده تا هرجا که امکانش فراهم میآمده زیاد بخورند و به این شکل، برای مواجهه با قحطیهای آینده مقداری انرژی در قالب چربی ذخیره کنند…»؛ پایان نقل. ا. شربیانی
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a nonfiction book written by American author Michael Pollan published in 2006. In the book, Pollan asks the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. As omnivores, the most unselective eaters, humans are faced with a wide variety of food choices, resulting in a dilemma. Pollan suggests that, prior to modern food preservation and transportation technologies, this particular dilemma was resolved primarily through cultural influences.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سی و یکم ماه اکتبر سال 2017 میلادی
عنوان: معضل جانور همهچیزخوار؛ نویسنده: مارک پولان (پولن)؛ مترجم: آرش حسینیان؛ مشهد: نشر تلنگر، 1395؛ در یک جلد؛ شابک: 9786009660230؛ موضوع: اولویتهای غذایی از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 21 م
در این کتاب، «پولان» سرراست به سراغِ این پرسش میروند، که ما چه چیزی باید بخوریم. انسان (همانند سایر همه چیز خواران) به عنوان یک همه چیز خوار، که عمدتاً گزینشی موادِ غذایی را مصرف نمیکند، با طیف گسترده ای از گزینشهای غذایی روبروست، و همین امکان گزینش است، که تصمیم گیری را برای او تبدیل به یک معضل میکند. «پولان» نشان میدهد، که پیش از به میدان آمدنِ فناوریهای امروزیِ نگهداری و تبدیل غذا، این مشکل تا حد بسیاری - عمدتاً از راه نفوذ فرهنگی - حل شده بود. اما فناوریهای مدرن، از راه در دسترس قرار دادنِ غذاهایی که تا پیش از این، محدود به فصل یا منطقه ی معینی بود، رابطه ی بین مواد غذایی و جامعه، که زمانی توسط فرهنگ تنظیم میشد، اکنون دچار سردرگمی ست. برای یادگیریِ بیشتر در موردِ این گزینشها، «پولان» به پیگیری هر یک از زنجیره های غذایی میپردازند، که ما را زنده نگاه داشته است: غذای صنعتی، غذای ارگانیگ، و غذایی که برای خود گردآوری میکنیم. «پولان» این داستان را از آغازِ فرآوری این مواد غذایی، تا محصولِ نهایی دنبال میکند، و در این بین نقدی نیز از شیوهٔ تغذیه ی آمریکایی به دست میدهد. نقل نمونه متن از کتاب: «همانند اکثر دیگر موجودات خونگرم، انسان طوری تکامل یافته تا مواد غذایی پر انرژی را ترجیح دهد، این موضوع در علاقه ی ما به چیزهای شیرین قابل مشاهده است و اکثر پستانداران نیز در این ویژگی با ما مشترکند. ما تکامل یافته ایم تا مزه ی قند و چربی (هم از نظر بافت و هم از نظر مزه) را ترجیح دهیم زیرا قندها و چربیها دارای بیشترین انرژی در ازای هر لقمه هستند. اما نکته اینجاست که در طبیعت- یعنی در مواد غذایی کامل- ما به ندرت با این حجم از قند و چربی که امروز در غذاهای فرآوریشده چپانده میشود رویارو میشویم: شما در هیچ کجا میوه ای پیدا نمیکنید که به اندازه ی نوشابه فروکتوز داشته باشد، یا تکه گوشتی از یک حیوان که به اندازه ی یک ناگت مرغ چربی داشته باشد.» حالا میتوان فهمید چرا مواد غذایی فرآوری شده قادر است به این خوبی مردم را به خوردن مقدار هرچه بیشتر ترغیب کنند. «..تحقیقات انجام شده بر روی جانوران این موضوع را به خوبی نشان داده است: وقتی به موشهای صحرایی محلولهایی از ساکروز(شکر) خالص یا چربی خالصِ خوک ارائه میشد- یعنی چیزهایی که به ندرت در طبیعت به این شکل یافت میشوند – آنها آنقدر به خوردن ادامه میدادند که بیمار میشدند…» حال انسان را در برابر فست فودهای فراوان تصور کنید: «…شاید فکر کنید مردم به محض اینکه احساس سیری میکردند دست از خوردن و نوشیدن این وعده های غذایی غولآسا میکشیدند. اما معلوم شد گرسنگی به این شکل عمل ��میکند. محققان نشان داده اند آدمها و حیوانات زمانی که با وعده های بزرگ غذایی روبرو میشوند تا سی درصد بیشتر از مواقع دیگر غذا میخورند از قرار معلوم، اشتهای انسان به شکل تعجب برانگیزی انعطاف پذیر است، و این موضوع از نظر تکاملی به خوبی قابل فهم است: زیرا این برای نیاکان شکارچی-گردآورنده ی ما واجب بوده تا هرجا که امکانش فراهم میآمده زیاد بخورند و به این شکل، برای مواجهه با قحطیهای آینده مقداری انرژی در قالب چربی ذخیره کنند…»؛ پایان نقل. ا. شربیانی
February 7, 2019
The “national eating disorder” (which, sadly, lumps Canada in with the US of A – because while Canadians don’t quite have the same issues than our neighbors to the south do, it would be preposterous to claim we are not also affected by food-related madness, if only by proximity) Michael Pollan wrote about in this book is something that has always fascinated me. I was raised in a Franco-Italian household, so food and cooking were always big deals; it was not unknown for my mother to laugh right in the face of people who’d even hint that pasta was bad for you. My grandfather once told me that there are two types of people in the world: those who eat to live, and those who live to eat, and that our family belonged in the second category. When I’d visit friends and family in Europe, it was impossible not to notice that they ate stuff that would have made a lot of people at home freak out (Foie gras! Gelato! Bread with everything – even pizza!!), and yet they were generally healthy and happy – as opposed to totally neurotic about calories, fat and exercise. Oh, and the base products they cooked with there tended to be vastly better than the stuff I found at home (it has honestly crossed my mind several times to relocate to France just for the food, and every time I come back from a trip, I grunt at what passes for goat’s cheese here for weeks). Something had definitely gone awry somewhere.
I have long theorized that part of this is cultural: something about the Protestant mind frame of North America is simply averse to pleasurable activities for their own sake (eating being a highly pleasurable activity), so I often wonder if that doesn’t trigger a whole slew of neuroses when indulgent food becomes part of the conversation or appears on a table. But there’s obviously more to it than that.
Pollan’s goal was to take a close look at the human food chain: where does our food come from, how is it grown, made and how does it end up on our table? He identifies three food chains: industrial, organic and hunter-gatherer, and investigates all three in great depth, from the very beginning of its cycle to the end in order to bring a better understanding and awareness of the long chain we are part of.
The chapters on corn were disturbingly fascinating: I knew it was basically everywhere in processed food (in the form of corn syrup or as feed for a lot of animals that end up on butchers’ counters), but it is even more insidious than I had imagined, and I was stunned to learn how its agriculture was so crucial to American history (for better or worse…); it was the perfect prelude to explore American industrial farming – which was even more upsetting than I expected it to be… But it did help me make sense of a lot of things (shamefully, city slickers like myself know and understand very little about the decline of family-run farms). Like, the guy who helped create synthetic fertilizer was also the guy who developed Zyklon B? Lovely. The reason cows, pigs and chickens are given so many antibiotics and other meds is because we are totally fucking their health and life-cycles by feeding them stuff they wouldn’t naturally eat? Gross.
It is frustrating to read the section about "Big Organic" and to see a demonstration of how products from say Whole Foods, while admittedly better, is not nearly as good an option as we’d like to think. The environmental cost of getting all those veggies to you is still quite brutal. On the other hand, I was very impressed and enthused by all the chapters detailing how Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm functions (though the explanation as to why it's remarkable that Polyface pigs still have their tales was a little traumatic): this eccentric man runs a self-sustaining farm in Virginia, and every detail about it stunned me, from the clever contraptions invented by his father to let the animals graze according to their natural feeding cycles, to the way they distribute their goods locally - all of which is done without fertilizers or weird pharmaceuticals. His agricultural philosophy is probably a bit fringe, as it doesn't fit the industrial model in any way shape or form (too complex and intricate for an industry that's always trying to make things as "simple" as possible), but if this book is to be believed, the resulting products speak for themselves in terms of quality.
I expected the third part to be a bit boring, but I was surprised by how interesting his ideas about the importance of cuisine and food culture as part of human evolution were, and why the lack of strong culinary traditions in America makes people especially susceptible to weird fad diets (see rant in the first paragraph). Also, mushrooms are really fascinating little weird things, aren't they?
It's no secret that Pollan is also pro-meat, which clearly ruffles some feathers. But he is careful to look at both sides of the medal, to make sure readers understand that there are plenty of morally ambiguous issues to wrestle with on both sides. I think with issues like this it is crucial to have a lucid and balanced view of the situation, and I really appreciate that he isn't trying to convert anyone to any specific way of thinking.
A rare feat for a non-fiction book: “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is engrossing! Once picked up, it is difficult to put down, and the information to be found in it is often fascinating (sometimes morbidly so, but what can you do). I also feel a well-researched and engaging book like this can potentially do more to inspire changes in one’s attitude towards their food choices than a bunch of vegans yelling at you about animal cruelty. Pollan is not trying to convince anyone to do anything, but he wants you to be lucid about the farm-to-table process so you can then take this info and make up your mind on your own, and I appreciate that approach a lot.
The growing subculture of urban farming and gardening, local-vores and people being more mindful of the impacts of their dietary and purchasing choices is fantastic, but it seems a bit unrealistic to expect that it is enough to break the monopoly of corn and soybeans. Supermarkets can’t all deal with small and local growers if they want to stay in business, and not everyone can make the trek to the nearest sustainable farm every week (though after reading this, I am investigating options for getting weekly local farm baskets delivered to my home). There is clearly no quick fix to this clusterfuck at the moment. Perhaps the best thing to do is to change habits little bit by little bit: I’d like to think that voting with our wallets will eventually chip away at the system, but that might be my (inexplicably stubborn) optimistic streak speaking.
(An economic angle that is not touched on at all is that some people simply can’t afford anything else than the corn-laden stuff that big food corps want to shove down their throats: while I’m sure some people could make more of an effort, others literally can’t, and as long as they can’t make ends meet, it might not be possible to convince them to renounce the 1$ burger deals… But that’s outside of Mr. Pollan’s scope, I’m afraid.)
Obviously, I loved this book and it gave me a lot to think about - but to be honest, Pollan was preaching to the choir with me a little bit: I happen to love cooking, I make most of my meals from scratch (which has had the unfortunate side effect that I often get disappointed by restaurant food, which I feel I could have improved on had I made it at home) and I pay close attention to the ingredients I buy; this removes a lot of the worst processed stuff from my equation, but not everyone has the patience or inclination to do that – and big food corps know and exploit that as much as they can... If you care about what you eat, this is a very interesting, if somewhat depressing book that I recommend to everyone (if you aren’t going to read it, then at least try to buy free-range eggs when you have the option). I wish I had read it years ago.
I have long theorized that part of this is cultural: something about the Protestant mind frame of North America is simply averse to pleasurable activities for their own sake (eating being a highly pleasurable activity), so I often wonder if that doesn’t trigger a whole slew of neuroses when indulgent food becomes part of the conversation or appears on a table. But there’s obviously more to it than that.
Pollan’s goal was to take a close look at the human food chain: where does our food come from, how is it grown, made and how does it end up on our table? He identifies three food chains: industrial, organic and hunter-gatherer, and investigates all three in great depth, from the very beginning of its cycle to the end in order to bring a better understanding and awareness of the long chain we are part of.
The chapters on corn were disturbingly fascinating: I knew it was basically everywhere in processed food (in the form of corn syrup or as feed for a lot of animals that end up on butchers’ counters), but it is even more insidious than I had imagined, and I was stunned to learn how its agriculture was so crucial to American history (for better or worse…); it was the perfect prelude to explore American industrial farming – which was even more upsetting than I expected it to be… But it did help me make sense of a lot of things (shamefully, city slickers like myself know and understand very little about the decline of family-run farms). Like, the guy who helped create synthetic fertilizer was also the guy who developed Zyklon B? Lovely. The reason cows, pigs and chickens are given so many antibiotics and other meds is because we are totally fucking their health and life-cycles by feeding them stuff they wouldn’t naturally eat? Gross.
It is frustrating to read the section about "Big Organic" and to see a demonstration of how products from say Whole Foods, while admittedly better, is not nearly as good an option as we’d like to think. The environmental cost of getting all those veggies to you is still quite brutal. On the other hand, I was very impressed and enthused by all the chapters detailing how Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm functions (though the explanation as to why it's remarkable that Polyface pigs still have their tales was a little traumatic): this eccentric man runs a self-sustaining farm in Virginia, and every detail about it stunned me, from the clever contraptions invented by his father to let the animals graze according to their natural feeding cycles, to the way they distribute their goods locally - all of which is done without fertilizers or weird pharmaceuticals. His agricultural philosophy is probably a bit fringe, as it doesn't fit the industrial model in any way shape or form (too complex and intricate for an industry that's always trying to make things as "simple" as possible), but if this book is to be believed, the resulting products speak for themselves in terms of quality.
I expected the third part to be a bit boring, but I was surprised by how interesting his ideas about the importance of cuisine and food culture as part of human evolution were, and why the lack of strong culinary traditions in America makes people especially susceptible to weird fad diets (see rant in the first paragraph). Also, mushrooms are really fascinating little weird things, aren't they?
It's no secret that Pollan is also pro-meat, which clearly ruffles some feathers. But he is careful to look at both sides of the medal, to make sure readers understand that there are plenty of morally ambiguous issues to wrestle with on both sides. I think with issues like this it is crucial to have a lucid and balanced view of the situation, and I really appreciate that he isn't trying to convert anyone to any specific way of thinking.
A rare feat for a non-fiction book: “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is engrossing! Once picked up, it is difficult to put down, and the information to be found in it is often fascinating (sometimes morbidly so, but what can you do). I also feel a well-researched and engaging book like this can potentially do more to inspire changes in one’s attitude towards their food choices than a bunch of vegans yelling at you about animal cruelty. Pollan is not trying to convince anyone to do anything, but he wants you to be lucid about the farm-to-table process so you can then take this info and make up your mind on your own, and I appreciate that approach a lot.
The growing subculture of urban farming and gardening, local-vores and people being more mindful of the impacts of their dietary and purchasing choices is fantastic, but it seems a bit unrealistic to expect that it is enough to break the monopoly of corn and soybeans. Supermarkets can’t all deal with small and local growers if they want to stay in business, and not everyone can make the trek to the nearest sustainable farm every week (though after reading this, I am investigating options for getting weekly local farm baskets delivered to my home). There is clearly no quick fix to this clusterfuck at the moment. Perhaps the best thing to do is to change habits little bit by little bit: I’d like to think that voting with our wallets will eventually chip away at the system, but that might be my (inexplicably stubborn) optimistic streak speaking.
(An economic angle that is not touched on at all is that some people simply can’t afford anything else than the corn-laden stuff that big food corps want to shove down their throats: while I’m sure some people could make more of an effort, others literally can’t, and as long as they can’t make ends meet, it might not be possible to convince them to renounce the 1$ burger deals… But that’s outside of Mr. Pollan’s scope, I’m afraid.)
Obviously, I loved this book and it gave me a lot to think about - but to be honest, Pollan was preaching to the choir with me a little bit: I happen to love cooking, I make most of my meals from scratch (which has had the unfortunate side effect that I often get disappointed by restaurant food, which I feel I could have improved on had I made it at home) and I pay close attention to the ingredients I buy; this removes a lot of the worst processed stuff from my equation, but not everyone has the patience or inclination to do that – and big food corps know and exploit that as much as they can... If you care about what you eat, this is a very interesting, if somewhat depressing book that I recommend to everyone (if you aren’t going to read it, then at least try to buy free-range eggs when you have the option). I wish I had read it years ago.
March 31, 2007
I thoroughly enjoyed The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. He's been one of my favorite writers, ever since I read A Place of My Own, some years ago. And I stumble across stories by him in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, often quite by accident, and then look at the byline to see who this talented writer is, and there's Pollan again.
The book has the distinct danger of making you annoying to your spouse/partner/children, because you'll be reading along and feel compelled to share a fact about how industrial corn production has wormed its way into nearly every aspect of the American diet. I know my 12-year-old daughter cringes when we go the store, and I inspect the ingredients, calling out, "Yep, there's corn in this, too."
Pollan is an immensely fun writer, because he enjoys learning about this stuff, and he's skilled at taking the reader along on the journey, not just through the facts, but through feedlots, and chicken slaughtering, and mushroom hunting. He takes a close look at the industrialization of food production (which depends heavily and crazily on corn), large scale organic farming, and then at a sustainable farming operation, and then around a meal that he assembles using his hunting and gathering skills (relying heavily on the skills of others).
For our family, this book seems perfectly timed, since we've been making huge dietary changes around here since Halloween, cutting out animal products and most refined and processed foods. We were doing it for health reasons, but this books adds an entirely new level of justification. Not that Pollan is saying you should become a vegan. Not at all. He's saying that we owe it to ourselves to become more conscious about what we actually put in our mouths, and the effects that its creation is having on us, our culture, and our planet.
My only disappointment is that in the final wrap-up, he focuses on the extreme distance between the industrialized food he and his family consumes and the meal that he makes through hunting and gathering, without mentioning enough of the sustainable farm that he'd visited. (That section made me want to go out and buy some land and start farming. Tomorrow.) We spent so much time with Pollan through this book, I wanted a stronger sense of whether all this had actually managed to change his day-to-day buying and eating habits. But those are really minor points.
(Also, don't miss a terrific essay Pollan wrote for the NY Times in January, Unhappy Meals, about what we really should eat. Really, it's the answer to what was bugging me about the end of his book. It should be included as an addendum to every copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma.)
The book has the distinct danger of making you annoying to your spouse/partner/children, because you'll be reading along and feel compelled to share a fact about how industrial corn production has wormed its way into nearly every aspect of the American diet. I know my 12-year-old daughter cringes when we go the store, and I inspect the ingredients, calling out, "Yep, there's corn in this, too."
Pollan is an immensely fun writer, because he enjoys learning about this stuff, and he's skilled at taking the reader along on the journey, not just through the facts, but through feedlots, and chicken slaughtering, and mushroom hunting. He takes a close look at the industrialization of food production (which depends heavily and crazily on corn), large scale organic farming, and then at a sustainable farming operation, and then around a meal that he assembles using his hunting and gathering skills (relying heavily on the skills of others).
For our family, this book seems perfectly timed, since we've been making huge dietary changes around here since Halloween, cutting out animal products and most refined and processed foods. We were doing it for health reasons, but this books adds an entirely new level of justification. Not that Pollan is saying you should become a vegan. Not at all. He's saying that we owe it to ourselves to become more conscious about what we actually put in our mouths, and the effects that its creation is having on us, our culture, and our planet.
My only disappointment is that in the final wrap-up, he focuses on the extreme distance between the industrialized food he and his family consumes and the meal that he makes through hunting and gathering, without mentioning enough of the sustainable farm that he'd visited. (That section made me want to go out and buy some land and start farming. Tomorrow.) We spent so much time with Pollan through this book, I wanted a stronger sense of whether all this had actually managed to change his day-to-day buying and eating habits. But those are really minor points.
(Also, don't miss a terrific essay Pollan wrote for the NY Times in January, Unhappy Meals, about what we really should eat. Really, it's the answer to what was bugging me about the end of his book. It should be included as an addendum to every copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma.)
February 12, 2024
First of all, what exactly is The Omnivore’s Dilemma? According to the author, there is a national confusion about knowing exactly where our food comes from and what propels us to choose one food over another.
If you are quite busy throughout the day, you might grab some fast food, a boxed meal, or something from a can. Convenience is key. This book does not argue if processed food is good for us; we all know the answer to that. It does, however, try to trace the food chain to find out where it all comes from. If you enjoy the TV show “Inside the Factory” on BBC, you will undoubtedly like this.
So, where does the book start? A farm, no doubt. Yes, but the crop of choice is used in almost anything and everything you can possibly imagine. Your food, your car, the textiles you walk on, and it can even be traced to the book cover you are holding in your hand.
This magical crop is 🌽. Over 350 million tons are produced in the U.S. alone. To get a sense of exactly how much corn is used, you’ll have to take a deep dive into the first third or so of the book. (spoiler:– it is utterly fascinating.) It covers economics, industrialization methods, synthetics, agriculture, waste, pollutants, etc. The whole nine yards.
Let’s just focus on one eye-opening food creation. The humble chicken nugget. The trace amount of chicken has been fed corn; the breading that surrounds the chicken is corn; the textured bits on top are made from corn; the emulsifiers are derived from corn; it's fried in corn oil; the leveling agents; the flour; even the acids that help keep it fresh and give it that yellow tinge can be made out of, you got it, corn. It’s just fascinating that time and time again, corn just keeps ‘cropping’ up in almost everything we eat.
This is just a tiny taste of what is covered in the book. Do you want to learn about farming economics? Do you want to get a sense of how basic food is harvested fresh, broken down, and then has nutrients added back in to make it seem fresh? (the iron-y is real) Do you want to take a deep dive into food wording philosophy? How about foraging and hunting? Yep, this has it.
From here, it covers organics, cage-free, food philosophy, grass-fed ideals, ethics, and a tad bit of the big business mindset. The last chapter then details what the ‘perfect’ meal entails and how to make it.
🥕 Basically, if you are a food science nerd like me, you will love it. 🥕
If these topics tickle your tongue, you might just have an exciting time. I thought that overall, it was extremely fascinating. The content is not overtly preachy, does not have an agenda, and gives you just enough information to make your mind wander or give you an inclination to take a deep dive into food based subsets.
🎵| Soundtrack |🎵
❖ Creedence Clearwater Revival - Effigy
❖ Billy Arcila – Just Passing By
❖ 38 Special – Teacher, Teacher
⭐ | Rating | ⭐
❖ 4.5 out of 5 ❖
If you are quite busy throughout the day, you might grab some fast food, a boxed meal, or something from a can. Convenience is key. This book does not argue if processed food is good for us; we all know the answer to that. It does, however, try to trace the food chain to find out where it all comes from. If you enjoy the TV show “Inside the Factory” on BBC, you will undoubtedly like this.
So, where does the book start? A farm, no doubt. Yes, but the crop of choice is used in almost anything and everything you can possibly imagine. Your food, your car, the textiles you walk on, and it can even be traced to the book cover you are holding in your hand.
This magical crop is 🌽. Over 350 million tons are produced in the U.S. alone. To get a sense of exactly how much corn is used, you’ll have to take a deep dive into the first third or so of the book. (spoiler:– it is utterly fascinating.) It covers economics, industrialization methods, synthetics, agriculture, waste, pollutants, etc. The whole nine yards.
Let’s just focus on one eye-opening food creation. The humble chicken nugget. The trace amount of chicken has been fed corn; the breading that surrounds the chicken is corn; the textured bits on top are made from corn; the emulsifiers are derived from corn; it's fried in corn oil; the leveling agents; the flour; even the acids that help keep it fresh and give it that yellow tinge can be made out of, you got it, corn. It’s just fascinating that time and time again, corn just keeps ‘cropping’ up in almost everything we eat.
This is just a tiny taste of what is covered in the book. Do you want to learn about farming economics? Do you want to get a sense of how basic food is harvested fresh, broken down, and then has nutrients added back in to make it seem fresh? (the iron-y is real) Do you want to take a deep dive into food wording philosophy? How about foraging and hunting? Yep, this has it.
From here, it covers organics, cage-free, food philosophy, grass-fed ideals, ethics, and a tad bit of the big business mindset. The last chapter then details what the ‘perfect’ meal entails and how to make it.
🥕 Basically, if you are a food science nerd like me, you will love it. 🥕
If these topics tickle your tongue, you might just have an exciting time. I thought that overall, it was extremely fascinating. The content is not overtly preachy, does not have an agenda, and gives you just enough information to make your mind wander or give you an inclination to take a deep dive into food based subsets.
🎵| Soundtrack |🎵
❖ Creedence Clearwater Revival - Effigy
❖ Billy Arcila – Just Passing By
❖ 38 Special – Teacher, Teacher
⭐ | Rating | ⭐
❖ 4.5 out of 5 ❖
January 23, 2015
Michael Pollan is anti-science.
He blames scientists for the misappropriation of scientific language in advertising. He touts folk wisdom.
I saw him at a book reading and asked him why he is critical of science. He said the science is too easy to abuse, so it should just be ignored.
This is horrible advice. Ignorance doesn't solve anything.
It leaves people vulnerable to those who would mislead and deceive them.
He blames scientists for the misappropriation of scientific language in advertising. He touts folk wisdom.
I saw him at a book reading and asked him why he is critical of science. He said the science is too easy to abuse, so it should just be ignored.
This is horrible advice. Ignorance doesn't solve anything.
It leaves people vulnerable to those who would mislead and deceive them.
May 23, 2010
Update 5/23/2010 Terrific piece by Michael Pollan in the NYRB June 10, 2010, "The Food Movement, Rising" in which he reviews five books: Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, Terra Madre: Forging a New Global Network of Sustainable Food Communities, All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?, The Taste for Civilization: Food, Politics, and Civil Society, Eating Animals
I am beginning to wallow and bask in the mire of food politics, subject of Pollan's piece. It's interesting to read the comments section after any article dealing with meat or vegetarianism. One can almost see the participants spitting on each other. It's like watching Mormon fundamentalists defend polygamy to the College of Cardinals. To quote Troy Duster (from Pollan's piece) "No movement is as coherent and integrated as it seems from afar, and no movement is as incoherent and fractured as it seems from up close." And as we learned from OD, food is all politics from the huge changes initiated by the Nixon administration to bring down the price of food to Michelle Obama's efforts to change the way kids eat. As long as there is government to promote the interests of one group or another, there will be these kinds of battles, but I doubt any of us would wish the total absence of regulation desired by Joel Salatin - except maybe Rand Paul.
It's an interesting communitarian movement, perhaps a throwback to the sixties, but one that appeals to both right and left: the desire to localize and remove oneself from the larger society. That is largely what I meant when I referred elsewhere to Pollan's book as a Libertarian Manifesto. In his 2006 book Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, ... America, Rod Dreher identifies a strain of libertarian conservatism, often evangelical, that regards fast food as anathema to family values, and has seized on local food as a kind of culinary counterpart to home schooling.
Major editing 5/23/2010 about half the content identical to my review of Foer's Eating Animals.
minor editing 4/16/10
Let's see, things we can't or shouldn't eat: butter, steak, meat, spinach because of the salmonella (or maybe it's only the organic spinach that gets contaminated), apples because of the alar, salt, sugar, fat, any food not bought at a farmer's market, any food bought at a non-union grocery, any food bought at a chain, any food that's not organic, any food that's labeled organic by the USDA because their standards aren't strict enough, kosher food, non-kosher, non-grass fed beef (and now we've learned that grass-fed beef is salmonella contaminated, too -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12...,) pasteurized milk, raw milk, etc. etc),
This issue seems to engender as much animosity as whether communion should be allowed to non-Catholics. Factions abound, each with a slightly different take on the issue: those who believe eating meat is immoral; those who believe eating meat from factory farms is immoral; those who believe eating meat is immoral because it's environmentally unsound; those who believe eating meat is bad for your health; those who believe eating meat is fine; those who believe eating some kinds of meat is fine; those who believe eating meat is immoral because animals are sentient beings; and those who think the issue is cultural rather than moral or environmental. How to reconcile these views and where does each of the authors take a stance. All of these views represent a moral position, i.e. a personal one in which the believer needs to persuade others of the necessity of adopting his view to the exclusion of the others and convince that not to do so will result in calamity. Up front we have to recognize that only people who have tons of food available, i.e., the rich, would even consider any of the positions.
Let me state my biases up front. I am very skeptical of any argument that proposes calamity will result if a particular position is not adopted. I am skeptical of moral arguments (not ethical ones). I believe that the most difficult decisions require choosing between grays, not black and white; that sentience as we understand it requires some form of self-awareness and we have little way to judge that in beings that we don't understand (can't communicate with) and that sentience varies tremendously across species, indeed across individuals within that species; and that pain as we understand it may be very different across animals and plants with structures. (David Foster Wallace in "Consider the Lobster" discusses scientific evidence that lobsters, because of their structure, may in fact feel a state of euphoria when being boiled rather than pain as we understand it.)
I worked on two dairy farms for several years, milking about 120 cows, both in stanchions and and parlors, dehorning calves, and shoveling shit. Contrary to Foer's claims, cows are not treated regularly with antibiotics. A test tube of milk coming out of the farmer's tank is pulled before loading on the truck, and this is tested at the plant before being mixed with the rest, and if any suspicion of antibiotic is found, the entire load is dumped and the farmer loses the value of the entire load. We were meticulous about dumping milk from any treated cow (usually for mastitis) for the required period before selling it. Those who think drinking raw milk is the answer are asking for trouble. We did, but that was probably stupid. Besides that I saw what was in the strainer sometimes. None of that milk is tested and come on folks, there's a good reason why we started pasteurizing milk. It saved a lot of lives. I don't have any experience with feedlots, but I do know that stress on animals is to be avoided at all costs as it slows the rate of growth, cuts profits, and leads to disease.
It's impossible to discuss these books in a vacuum, and I need to start out by making clear several assumptions:
1. Humans are omnivores biologically and, in fact, only very recently (say about 10,000 years ago) began to farm grains for food. Before that we were hunter/gatherers relying primarily on meat and berries.
2. Everything is interconnected. Just not eating meat will not even begin to address the issues of environmental degradation. Computers, roads, cars, pets, travel, ipods, plastics, toilet paper, etc., all have their downsides. If Foer and Pollan and Berry et all choose to emphasis one aspect of life and deliver broadsides against that particular activity that's fine as long as we understand that limiting that activity will have a minuscule effect on the environment. More effect would be had if all the hand-wringers stopped flying about the country wasting fuel and polluting the environment, just staying put. Problem is that apocalyptic thinking and lecturing is very profitable.
3. Environmental activism is very much a white, rich, western game. People who have no money and who live a hand-to-mouth existence can't afford to choose. The best way to promote conscious environmental action is by raising living standards around the world. It also reduces the rate of population growth.
4. My very strong bias is that the only practical solution to the myriad number of problems is technological. Some examples: algae oil is already being used successfully mixed with Jet-A by Continental Airlines and the results are a reduction in carbon-footprint of 60-80% and fuel efficiency of 1-2%; production of methane gas as an energy source (very clean burning) from large factory-farms, something not possible if the animals are parsed out in smaller farms where runoff occurs in large quantities, etc., etc.
5. We quite naturally tend to read and find books and data that support a preconceived opinion and avoid those that present an opposing view.
6. My other bias is that I'm very sympathetic to vegetarianism, not veganism, for I love my bread and butter and cheese way too much. I milked cows for several years, churned my own butter and would gladly have turned several fresh heifers into instant hamburger had I been able to after wiping their manure off my face. (If you've ever milked cows you know exactly what I'm talking about.)
NB: I have a problem with beliefs that are so strongly held that believers think they have to claim apocalypse will result if their beliefs aren't adopted by everyone. The Inuit diet consisted of meat alone and meat taken from what is clearly a sentient animal. To suggest they adopt a western, citified, cereal diet is wrong and ridiculous.
This is why one of my heroes is Norman Borlaug who virtually single-handedly began the green revolution that increased wheat yields spectacularly (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/pe...). He DID something, unlike the Paul Ehrlichs who just ran around making a fortune proclaiming the sky is falling. ALL of Ehrlich's predictions have been wrong because of people like Borlaug.
I find the definition of what constitutes sentience to be worse than muddled and mixing up moral issues with that and environmental concerns makes the issues even murkier. There are clearly differences in "sentienceness" from one species to another (no one would argue that a snail has the same level of consciousness as a dog) and whether that should play any part in deciding what to eat or not makes an interesting debate. Personally, I wish the discussion would leave the realm of "morality" with its concomitant religious overtones and focus on the more rational (IMHO) environmental concerns.
I very much enjoyed Pollan, much to my surprise. (I actually listened to this and while Scott Brick is one of my favorite readers, he was all wrong for this book. Way too pedantic sounding.) A very interesting book with tons of detail (which I like) displaying the symbiotic relationship we have with corn and fossil fuels, a very destructive relationship, but one that nevertheless has allowed us to feed many, many more people than would have been possible otherwise. Ultimately, something will have to change, we cannot continue to use 1.5 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food. Pollan emphasizes the mono-culture of corn but the same problems exist with the banana and other crops. In order to ship food to where it's needed requires products that mature at the same time, don't bruise easily, etc. He also shows that virtually all the food we eat has been genetically modified, if not at the gene level, certainly through seed selection, chosen for productivity , disease resistance, and a variety of other qualities.
I learned that in order to increase yields the nitrogen that was added was in the form of ammonium nitrate which existed as a surplus after world war two, no longer needed for explosives. That nitrogen leaches off the ground, into wells, (blue baby syndrome, too much nitrogen cause respiratory issues,) and into the water supply in other ways. (As an aside, no one around here uses much of that, preferring anhydrous ammonia injection directly into the soil with presumably much less runoff.)
I do have some issues with his very limited perspective on industrial farming, which he never defines, by the way. My neighbors, family farms all, farm thousands of acres. At what point does the size become optimum? Families run feedlots, too. My veterinarian has 40 steers in a feedlot. Is that a factory farm? They have the same conditions, the same feed, etc., as the larger feedlot a few miles away. It's almost as if Pollan had decided that farming on a grand scale was apocalyptic and then pulled together data to support his view. His data with regard to corn prices are woefully out of date. Just check commodity prices over the last five years. His choice of George Naylor must have required considerable searching in order to find someone who thought just the way he did.
The history of price supports and the switch under the Nixon administration from a "loan" program to direct payments was something I had completely forgotten and had no idea how much influence it would have on corn production. On the other hand, Butz's intent was to increase production to take the heat off Nixon following the huge increase in food prices as the price for corn had increased so dramatically.
All that being said, there's a lot of useful information, particularly with regard to government policy, and lots of fuel to support the libertarian side of the equation. There is no question that our over reliance on fossil fuels will get us into serious trouble very soon.
A final comment. All of the recent food books could only have been written by a society that doesn't have to worry about where its next meal is coming from.
The problem we have is scale. Wrigley just changed their gum wrappers from the little foil wrap to paper and thereby saved the equivalent of 60 million cans of aluminum. There's the problem in a nutshell
Fun trivia: the corn plant has 32,000 genes, more than humans. Astonishing. (Knowledge Magazine Mr/Apr 2010)
I am beginning to wallow and bask in the mire of food politics, subject of Pollan's piece. It's interesting to read the comments section after any article dealing with meat or vegetarianism. One can almost see the participants spitting on each other. It's like watching Mormon fundamentalists defend polygamy to the College of Cardinals. To quote Troy Duster (from Pollan's piece) "No movement is as coherent and integrated as it seems from afar, and no movement is as incoherent and fractured as it seems from up close." And as we learned from OD, food is all politics from the huge changes initiated by the Nixon administration to bring down the price of food to Michelle Obama's efforts to change the way kids eat. As long as there is government to promote the interests of one group or another, there will be these kinds of battles, but I doubt any of us would wish the total absence of regulation desired by Joel Salatin - except maybe Rand Paul.
It's an interesting communitarian movement, perhaps a throwback to the sixties, but one that appeals to both right and left: the desire to localize and remove oneself from the larger society. That is largely what I meant when I referred elsewhere to Pollan's book as a Libertarian Manifesto. In his 2006 book Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, ... America, Rod Dreher identifies a strain of libertarian conservatism, often evangelical, that regards fast food as anathema to family values, and has seized on local food as a kind of culinary counterpart to home schooling.
Major editing 5/23/2010 about half the content identical to my review of Foer's Eating Animals.
minor editing 4/16/10
Let's see, things we can't or shouldn't eat: butter, steak, meat, spinach because of the salmonella (or maybe it's only the organic spinach that gets contaminated), apples because of the alar, salt, sugar, fat, any food not bought at a farmer's market, any food bought at a non-union grocery, any food bought at a chain, any food that's not organic, any food that's labeled organic by the USDA because their standards aren't strict enough, kosher food, non-kosher, non-grass fed beef (and now we've learned that grass-fed beef is salmonella contaminated, too -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12...,) pasteurized milk, raw milk, etc. etc),
This issue seems to engender as much animosity as whether communion should be allowed to non-Catholics. Factions abound, each with a slightly different take on the issue: those who believe eating meat is immoral; those who believe eating meat from factory farms is immoral; those who believe eating meat is immoral because it's environmentally unsound; those who believe eating meat is bad for your health; those who believe eating meat is fine; those who believe eating some kinds of meat is fine; those who believe eating meat is immoral because animals are sentient beings; and those who think the issue is cultural rather than moral or environmental. How to reconcile these views and where does each of the authors take a stance. All of these views represent a moral position, i.e. a personal one in which the believer needs to persuade others of the necessity of adopting his view to the exclusion of the others and convince that not to do so will result in calamity. Up front we have to recognize that only people who have tons of food available, i.e., the rich, would even consider any of the positions.
Let me state my biases up front. I am very skeptical of any argument that proposes calamity will result if a particular position is not adopted. I am skeptical of moral arguments (not ethical ones). I believe that the most difficult decisions require choosing between grays, not black and white; that sentience as we understand it requires some form of self-awareness and we have little way to judge that in beings that we don't understand (can't communicate with) and that sentience varies tremendously across species, indeed across individuals within that species; and that pain as we understand it may be very different across animals and plants with structures. (David Foster Wallace in "Consider the Lobster" discusses scientific evidence that lobsters, because of their structure, may in fact feel a state of euphoria when being boiled rather than pain as we understand it.)
I worked on two dairy farms for several years, milking about 120 cows, both in stanchions and and parlors, dehorning calves, and shoveling shit. Contrary to Foer's claims, cows are not treated regularly with antibiotics. A test tube of milk coming out of the farmer's tank is pulled before loading on the truck, and this is tested at the plant before being mixed with the rest, and if any suspicion of antibiotic is found, the entire load is dumped and the farmer loses the value of the entire load. We were meticulous about dumping milk from any treated cow (usually for mastitis) for the required period before selling it. Those who think drinking raw milk is the answer are asking for trouble. We did, but that was probably stupid. Besides that I saw what was in the strainer sometimes. None of that milk is tested and come on folks, there's a good reason why we started pasteurizing milk. It saved a lot of lives. I don't have any experience with feedlots, but I do know that stress on animals is to be avoided at all costs as it slows the rate of growth, cuts profits, and leads to disease.
It's impossible to discuss these books in a vacuum, and I need to start out by making clear several assumptions:
1. Humans are omnivores biologically and, in fact, only very recently (say about 10,000 years ago) began to farm grains for food. Before that we were hunter/gatherers relying primarily on meat and berries.
2. Everything is interconnected. Just not eating meat will not even begin to address the issues of environmental degradation. Computers, roads, cars, pets, travel, ipods, plastics, toilet paper, etc., all have their downsides. If Foer and Pollan and Berry et all choose to emphasis one aspect of life and deliver broadsides against that particular activity that's fine as long as we understand that limiting that activity will have a minuscule effect on the environment. More effect would be had if all the hand-wringers stopped flying about the country wasting fuel and polluting the environment, just staying put. Problem is that apocalyptic thinking and lecturing is very profitable.
3. Environmental activism is very much a white, rich, western game. People who have no money and who live a hand-to-mouth existence can't afford to choose. The best way to promote conscious environmental action is by raising living standards around the world. It also reduces the rate of population growth.
4. My very strong bias is that the only practical solution to the myriad number of problems is technological. Some examples: algae oil is already being used successfully mixed with Jet-A by Continental Airlines and the results are a reduction in carbon-footprint of 60-80% and fuel efficiency of 1-2%; production of methane gas as an energy source (very clean burning) from large factory-farms, something not possible if the animals are parsed out in smaller farms where runoff occurs in large quantities, etc., etc.
5. We quite naturally tend to read and find books and data that support a preconceived opinion and avoid those that present an opposing view.
6. My other bias is that I'm very sympathetic to vegetarianism, not veganism, for I love my bread and butter and cheese way too much. I milked cows for several years, churned my own butter and would gladly have turned several fresh heifers into instant hamburger had I been able to after wiping their manure off my face. (If you've ever milked cows you know exactly what I'm talking about.)
NB: I have a problem with beliefs that are so strongly held that believers think they have to claim apocalypse will result if their beliefs aren't adopted by everyone. The Inuit diet consisted of meat alone and meat taken from what is clearly a sentient animal. To suggest they adopt a western, citified, cereal diet is wrong and ridiculous.
This is why one of my heroes is Norman Borlaug who virtually single-handedly began the green revolution that increased wheat yields spectacularly (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/pe...). He DID something, unlike the Paul Ehrlichs who just ran around making a fortune proclaiming the sky is falling. ALL of Ehrlich's predictions have been wrong because of people like Borlaug.
I find the definition of what constitutes sentience to be worse than muddled and mixing up moral issues with that and environmental concerns makes the issues even murkier. There are clearly differences in "sentienceness" from one species to another (no one would argue that a snail has the same level of consciousness as a dog) and whether that should play any part in deciding what to eat or not makes an interesting debate. Personally, I wish the discussion would leave the realm of "morality" with its concomitant religious overtones and focus on the more rational (IMHO) environmental concerns.
I very much enjoyed Pollan, much to my surprise. (I actually listened to this and while Scott Brick is one of my favorite readers, he was all wrong for this book. Way too pedantic sounding.) A very interesting book with tons of detail (which I like) displaying the symbiotic relationship we have with corn and fossil fuels, a very destructive relationship, but one that nevertheless has allowed us to feed many, many more people than would have been possible otherwise. Ultimately, something will have to change, we cannot continue to use 1.5 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food. Pollan emphasizes the mono-culture of corn but the same problems exist with the banana and other crops. In order to ship food to where it's needed requires products that mature at the same time, don't bruise easily, etc. He also shows that virtually all the food we eat has been genetically modified, if not at the gene level, certainly through seed selection, chosen for productivity , disease resistance, and a variety of other qualities.
I learned that in order to increase yields the nitrogen that was added was in the form of ammonium nitrate which existed as a surplus after world war two, no longer needed for explosives. That nitrogen leaches off the ground, into wells, (blue baby syndrome, too much nitrogen cause respiratory issues,) and into the water supply in other ways. (As an aside, no one around here uses much of that, preferring anhydrous ammonia injection directly into the soil with presumably much less runoff.)
I do have some issues with his very limited perspective on industrial farming, which he never defines, by the way. My neighbors, family farms all, farm thousands of acres. At what point does the size become optimum? Families run feedlots, too. My veterinarian has 40 steers in a feedlot. Is that a factory farm? They have the same conditions, the same feed, etc., as the larger feedlot a few miles away. It's almost as if Pollan had decided that farming on a grand scale was apocalyptic and then pulled together data to support his view. His data with regard to corn prices are woefully out of date. Just check commodity prices over the last five years. His choice of George Naylor must have required considerable searching in order to find someone who thought just the way he did.
The history of price supports and the switch under the Nixon administration from a "loan" program to direct payments was something I had completely forgotten and had no idea how much influence it would have on corn production. On the other hand, Butz's intent was to increase production to take the heat off Nixon following the huge increase in food prices as the price for corn had increased so dramatically.
All that being said, there's a lot of useful information, particularly with regard to government policy, and lots of fuel to support the libertarian side of the equation. There is no question that our over reliance on fossil fuels will get us into serious trouble very soon.
A final comment. All of the recent food books could only have been written by a society that doesn't have to worry about where its next meal is coming from.
The problem we have is scale. Wrigley just changed their gum wrappers from the little foil wrap to paper and thereby saved the equivalent of 60 million cans of aluminum. There's the problem in a nutshell
Fun trivia: the corn plant has 32,000 genes, more than humans. Astonishing. (Knowledge Magazine Mr/Apr 2010)
April 1, 2010
I had an idea of where this book was headed before I even read it--eat organic, local produce, and choose grass-fed meat over factory farm meat. I knew from a quote in Eating Animals that Pollan eventually dismisses vegetarianism as a decision not grounded in reality. What I didn't expect was for him to reach that conclusion so quickly and without so much as visiting a slaughterhouse.
Instead he visits Polyface farms, slaughters a few chickens in a manner far more humane than the fate met by the chickens sold in the supermarkets. He then hunts a wild pig, and feels good about eating meat again. His hunting expedition takes up far bigger chunk of the book than the measly slim chapter on the ethics of eating animals.
The problem I have with this is that his two experiences do not represent meat consumption as the majority of Americans know it today: it does not come from farms as sustainable as Polyface farms--and even such a farm currently operates below its own ideals since it is not allowed to slaughter any of its own animals except chickens--nor is it a product of "respectful" hunting.* With the latter, Pollan admits that it is not feasible to hunt for our food anyway because there are too many of "us" and too few of "them"--wild animals.
This book should be titled Michael Pollan's Dilemma since it does little to address "The Omnivore's Dilemma" once he completely forgoes examining the main sources of American meat--factory farming--and instead focuses on two exceptions to the rule.
Before starting this book, I knew I wasn't going to agree with Pollan's conclusion, but I did at least expect that its role of raising food awareness would still allow me to recommend it to others. It had a promising start. The chapters on corn and organics are interesting. I was already aware of the abundance of food in the American diet, but the information of how corn adapted was rather new to me. The chapters on organic and local produce leave me with more thinking and researching to do before I can decide how to best adapt my shopping habits. However, I fear that the idealization of hunting and "happy meat" overshadows any other message in the book. People look for justification to continue to eat meat--and Pollan provides them with this by accepting these exceptions, and not even seriously entertaining the alternative of abstaining from animal products altogether.
If this book does empower people to make more informed decisions, then I'm glad for it, but personally, I had a more positive opinion of Pollan from his contribution to Food, Inc. and various interviews than I did after reading this book.
* After his hunting expeditions, Pollan joins the rank of writers who try to make hiding in a bush and pulling a trigger seem poetic. Why anyone would feel pride over shooting a pig is beyond my understanding. It's not as if he's John Locke stranded on an island with only his knives and his instincts. He is more at risk gathering mushrooms. Pollan's account tries to convince the reader of a reverence the hunter feels for his prey, but growing up in a rural area, surrounded by hunters (and even being kin to them), I've yet to be convinced that American hunters feel much more than the thrill of killing and of course, having bragging rights and (of course) their stories to tell.
Instead he visits Polyface farms, slaughters a few chickens in a manner far more humane than the fate met by the chickens sold in the supermarkets. He then hunts a wild pig, and feels good about eating meat again. His hunting expedition takes up far bigger chunk of the book than the measly slim chapter on the ethics of eating animals.
The problem I have with this is that his two experiences do not represent meat consumption as the majority of Americans know it today: it does not come from farms as sustainable as Polyface farms--and even such a farm currently operates below its own ideals since it is not allowed to slaughter any of its own animals except chickens--nor is it a product of "respectful" hunting.* With the latter, Pollan admits that it is not feasible to hunt for our food anyway because there are too many of "us" and too few of "them"--wild animals.
This book should be titled Michael Pollan's Dilemma since it does little to address "The Omnivore's Dilemma" once he completely forgoes examining the main sources of American meat--factory farming--and instead focuses on two exceptions to the rule.
Before starting this book, I knew I wasn't going to agree with Pollan's conclusion, but I did at least expect that its role of raising food awareness would still allow me to recommend it to others. It had a promising start. The chapters on corn and organics are interesting. I was already aware of the abundance of food in the American diet, but the information of how corn adapted was rather new to me. The chapters on organic and local produce leave me with more thinking and researching to do before I can decide how to best adapt my shopping habits. However, I fear that the idealization of hunting and "happy meat" overshadows any other message in the book. People look for justification to continue to eat meat--and Pollan provides them with this by accepting these exceptions, and not even seriously entertaining the alternative of abstaining from animal products altogether.
If this book does empower people to make more informed decisions, then I'm glad for it, but personally, I had a more positive opinion of Pollan from his contribution to Food, Inc. and various interviews than I did after reading this book.
* After his hunting expeditions, Pollan joins the rank of writers who try to make hiding in a bush and pulling a trigger seem poetic. Why anyone would feel pride over shooting a pig is beyond my understanding. It's not as if he's John Locke stranded on an island with only his knives and his instincts. He is more at risk gathering mushrooms. Pollan's account tries to convince the reader of a reverence the hunter feels for his prey, but growing up in a rural area, surrounded by hunters (and even being kin to them), I've yet to be convinced that American hunters feel much more than the thrill of killing and of course, having bragging rights and (of course) their stories to tell.
November 16, 2017
remember when this book, written by a proud meat-eater, accidentally made me a vegetarian?
Okay, but seriously, I'd recommend giving this a read. Give the teen version a read if you really can't take a 450-page nonfiction book. Either way, I think everyone needs to know exactly how the food industry works. And no, it's not advocating for you to become a vegetarian - it's simply showing truths. The lack of attempt to guilt readership is honestly what stands out about this book. By showing reality without pushing an opinion on what the proper solution is, Pollan manages to be especially convincing. I truly think this book is worth the read.
Okay, but seriously, I'd recommend giving this a read. Give the teen version a read if you really can't take a 450-page nonfiction book. Either way, I think everyone needs to know exactly how the food industry works. And no, it's not advocating for you to become a vegetarian - it's simply showing truths. The lack of attempt to guilt readership is honestly what stands out about this book. By showing reality without pushing an opinion on what the proper solution is, Pollan manages to be especially convincing. I truly think this book is worth the read.
May 25, 2019
The Omnivore's Dilemma is definitely worth your thyme!
Have you ever thought about where that burger came from?
How about the diet of your store-bought salmon?
Are you just tired about hearing about the exhaustive origins of your food at every fancy restaurant?
Do you wish your hipster friends would stop trying to get you to forage for mushrooms?
Then I've got the book for you!
I'd been taking down the audiobook of Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals intermittently for months. It first started as a companion on a road trip, but gave way to the book I occasionally put on as I was doing some housework. At first, I found it a bit dull and slow-moving, due in no small part to Scott Brick's slow, laborious narration of the book. But as soon as I ticked up the narration speed to 1.5x, I couldn't stop finding excuses to put on my headphones and listen to this superb treatise on food.
This book is about humankind's relationship to food, the environment, and our own personal health. Earlier this year, I reviewed The Dorito Effect by Mark Shatzker, and while both books deal with food, Pollan's book is more concerned with ecology than taste and flavour. Though, it should be noted, that there are plenty of delicious sounding food descriptions littering the 16-hour listening experience.
Four Meals
The premise of Pollan's book is based around four meals: fast-food, industrial farm, self-sustaining organic farm, and one meal hunted, foraged, and prepared by Pollan himself. Using this intuitive structure, Pollan is able to progress from least enjoyable and viable to the most rewarding and delicious of his meals. It also works because Pollan digs deep into the thoughts, historical events, and effects on the larger world that have shaped our industrial food chain. Though I like to think I know a lot about food and how the human body converts that food into energy, this book made me realize how little I know about the tumultuous transition between captured solar energy and the slab of meat on my plate.
Even if, when Pollan really digs into the ubiquity of corn in North American foods, I couldn't help but thinking of this clip.
I won't attempt to condense Pollan's ideas into this simple review, but I will say that it helped me to think more fully about the meal from its origins to my plate. I'll admit that I've often been semi-interested to hear the stories and origins of my food in restaurants, but I now have a deep respect for what those restaurants are trying to accomplish. It makes more sense after listening to this book that you'd want to eat foods that are in season. Knowing where one's food comes from is an attempt to connect to that lost part of our evolutionary history, when eating meant that one had to discover, collect, and process a meal by their own hands.
I don't mind saying that this book makes me want to convert my backyard into farmland and that I began actively looking for opportunities to fish, hunt, and forage locally. Pollan makes convincing arguments, but is also an infinitely likeable guy. Pollan rarely preaches and he admits to enjoying the convenience that industrial foods provide. That Pollan is more of an everyman makes the listening experience more enjoyable, relatable, and helped me feel as if I could make some changes to my diet that would be more sustainable.
Books about food aren't for everyone, but this one makes a case for being one everyone should read or, as in my case, listen to. Indeed, though I love to read fiction, nonfiction seems to work best for me in audio format. Though the book is a tad older (originally published in 2006), it is highly relevant today when many of us have to decide between the slightly pricier local vegetables and the more affordable industrial greens. For the duration of my reading it made me a more conscious eater, and I have to say that I learned a lot more than expected! Be sure to check this one out!
Have you ever thought about where that burger came from?
How about the diet of your store-bought salmon?
Are you just tired about hearing about the exhaustive origins of your food at every fancy restaurant?
Do you wish your hipster friends would stop trying to get you to forage for mushrooms?
Then I've got the book for you!
I'd been taking down the audiobook of Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals intermittently for months. It first started as a companion on a road trip, but gave way to the book I occasionally put on as I was doing some housework. At first, I found it a bit dull and slow-moving, due in no small part to Scott Brick's slow, laborious narration of the book. But as soon as I ticked up the narration speed to 1.5x, I couldn't stop finding excuses to put on my headphones and listen to this superb treatise on food.
This book is about humankind's relationship to food, the environment, and our own personal health. Earlier this year, I reviewed The Dorito Effect by Mark Shatzker, and while both books deal with food, Pollan's book is more concerned with ecology than taste and flavour. Though, it should be noted, that there are plenty of delicious sounding food descriptions littering the 16-hour listening experience.
Four Meals
The premise of Pollan's book is based around four meals: fast-food, industrial farm, self-sustaining organic farm, and one meal hunted, foraged, and prepared by Pollan himself. Using this intuitive structure, Pollan is able to progress from least enjoyable and viable to the most rewarding and delicious of his meals. It also works because Pollan digs deep into the thoughts, historical events, and effects on the larger world that have shaped our industrial food chain. Though I like to think I know a lot about food and how the human body converts that food into energy, this book made me realize how little I know about the tumultuous transition between captured solar energy and the slab of meat on my plate.
Even if, when Pollan really digs into the ubiquity of corn in North American foods, I couldn't help but thinking of this clip.
I won't attempt to condense Pollan's ideas into this simple review, but I will say that it helped me to think more fully about the meal from its origins to my plate. I'll admit that I've often been semi-interested to hear the stories and origins of my food in restaurants, but I now have a deep respect for what those restaurants are trying to accomplish. It makes more sense after listening to this book that you'd want to eat foods that are in season. Knowing where one's food comes from is an attempt to connect to that lost part of our evolutionary history, when eating meant that one had to discover, collect, and process a meal by their own hands.
I don't mind saying that this book makes me want to convert my backyard into farmland and that I began actively looking for opportunities to fish, hunt, and forage locally. Pollan makes convincing arguments, but is also an infinitely likeable guy. Pollan rarely preaches and he admits to enjoying the convenience that industrial foods provide. That Pollan is more of an everyman makes the listening experience more enjoyable, relatable, and helped me feel as if I could make some changes to my diet that would be more sustainable.
Books about food aren't for everyone, but this one makes a case for being one everyone should read or, as in my case, listen to. Indeed, though I love to read fiction, nonfiction seems to work best for me in audio format. Though the book is a tad older (originally published in 2006), it is highly relevant today when many of us have to decide between the slightly pricier local vegetables and the more affordable industrial greens. For the duration of my reading it made me a more conscious eater, and I have to say that I learned a lot more than expected! Be sure to check this one out!
January 25, 2009
A wise man recently told me, "Capitalism is here to stay." With that in mind, Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is a feel good guide to consumerism at its most sustainable, organic, locally grown, and ultimately high-end. Yes, this is an eye-opening read that will, at first, make you want to stop eating all together then compel you to grab a sturdy pair of boots you can kick around in, throw on some clothes that will certainly get dirty, if not bloody, and step into the splendors of the natural world. Pollan leads us on an epicurean journey that most of us could take only through the guiles of his literary skills and a comfortable armchair. We dredge through the horrors of industrial farming, contemplate over the simplicity of small, sustainable growers, and track through the forests of Northern California hunting wild boar and foraging for chanterelles. What we discover on his trek for the "Perfect Meal" is no real surprise to anyone who pays attention to the news. Americans are squeezed tightly between the behemoth corporate Charybdis that's killing us with corn-fed livestock and wreaking havoc across the country, spilling into our oceans. Then there's Scylla to our left, the over-priced, just beyond our reach, pure and golden harvest of sustainable, organic, locally grown food. However, unless you live in Northern California--and Pollan does!-- or one of the few corners of the U.S. where you can easily access this food on a weekly basis without the guilt of carbon footprints, or have the property to grow for yourself--ahem! subprime mortgage crisis, you'll just have to imagine the good life and take Pollan's word for it.
Pollan seems to willfully neglect the chasm between the haves (those who can waltz into Chez Panisse, meet with Alice Waters, and enjoy fresh goat cheese and endive) and the vast amount of have-nots, who demand and therefore fuel our fast food nation. In one chapter Pollan indulges in the quintessential American family experience of ordering 2 Big Macs, super-sized fries, and a Happy Meal. He queasily downs the over-processed, cholesterol clogging feed with his family in the comfort and convenience of his convertible car. What he fails to recognize is that people do this not necessarily because its fun, but if we're treated as "Human Resources" we will act like Human Resources. Just pull onto your nearby freeway, and you'll see for yourself. It's not hard to spot any nameless driver passing by, cheeseburger or breakfast burrito in one hand, steering wheel in the other. For most people, eating is not a ritual to be shared with the family and support local businesses. Eating is simply re-fueling; something workers or resources do on their way to or from work. Expressways as feedlots is by no means acceptable, but it is the state of our society, or at least a stratum and economic phenomenon that Pollan has decidedly left out.
Pollan means well and we certainly can't go on eating the same food in the same way. Lest we keep pumping money into a health and food system, which in turn pumps our television with commercials that in one minute entice us with grease-laden, over-processed meat to clog our hearts and arteries. Then the next minute another commercial urges us to get hooked on Lipitor or Lopressor, which we probably wouldn't need if we hadn't eaten those cheeseburgers in the first place. We also can't ignore that the cost of our appetites is speedily deteriorating the Elysian fields that made us a First World Super power.
Capitalism is here to stay, and consumers need to be informed--should be informed, about what we put in our bodies and how we feed our children. We need to start paying the real cost of food up front instead of getting hit with the hidden costs through doctor's bills and E Coli recalls. Still, Pollan's feast is difficult to swallow, much less nearly impossible to sit down to and really enjoy because he has an expense account and two years to scour the East and West Coasts for his meal. The Omnivore's Dilemma is perilous indeed. But I can't help wonder who exactly is this omnivore that Pollan's referring to? Poring over his book, I learn his omnivore has time to hunt for morels, knows how to make a souffle, and has two weeks to spare to arrange a dinner party for twelve guests among the bountiful gardens of Berkeley, California. Pollan's omnivore's dilemma comes down to what to eat and how to eat it when you have the time and means to contemplate. That's all very well and good, but the rest of us "omnivores" are still over-worked, under-nourished, and starving.
Pollan seems to willfully neglect the chasm between the haves (those who can waltz into Chez Panisse, meet with Alice Waters, and enjoy fresh goat cheese and endive) and the vast amount of have-nots, who demand and therefore fuel our fast food nation. In one chapter Pollan indulges in the quintessential American family experience of ordering 2 Big Macs, super-sized fries, and a Happy Meal. He queasily downs the over-processed, cholesterol clogging feed with his family in the comfort and convenience of his convertible car. What he fails to recognize is that people do this not necessarily because its fun, but if we're treated as "Human Resources" we will act like Human Resources. Just pull onto your nearby freeway, and you'll see for yourself. It's not hard to spot any nameless driver passing by, cheeseburger or breakfast burrito in one hand, steering wheel in the other. For most people, eating is not a ritual to be shared with the family and support local businesses. Eating is simply re-fueling; something workers or resources do on their way to or from work. Expressways as feedlots is by no means acceptable, but it is the state of our society, or at least a stratum and economic phenomenon that Pollan has decidedly left out.
Pollan means well and we certainly can't go on eating the same food in the same way. Lest we keep pumping money into a health and food system, which in turn pumps our television with commercials that in one minute entice us with grease-laden, over-processed meat to clog our hearts and arteries. Then the next minute another commercial urges us to get hooked on Lipitor or Lopressor, which we probably wouldn't need if we hadn't eaten those cheeseburgers in the first place. We also can't ignore that the cost of our appetites is speedily deteriorating the Elysian fields that made us a First World Super power.
Capitalism is here to stay, and consumers need to be informed--should be informed, about what we put in our bodies and how we feed our children. We need to start paying the real cost of food up front instead of getting hit with the hidden costs through doctor's bills and E Coli recalls. Still, Pollan's feast is difficult to swallow, much less nearly impossible to sit down to and really enjoy because he has an expense account and two years to scour the East and West Coasts for his meal. The Omnivore's Dilemma is perilous indeed. But I can't help wonder who exactly is this omnivore that Pollan's referring to? Poring over his book, I learn his omnivore has time to hunt for morels, knows how to make a souffle, and has two weeks to spare to arrange a dinner party for twelve guests among the bountiful gardens of Berkeley, California. Pollan's omnivore's dilemma comes down to what to eat and how to eat it when you have the time and means to contemplate. That's all very well and good, but the rest of us "omnivores" are still over-worked, under-nourished, and starving.
February 5, 2019
I am a little late to the table with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma but it is just as relevant now, if not more so, than when it was first published in 2006. The work deserves a permanent place on everybody's bookshelf.
Having been raised on a steady diet of good food as well as Diet For A Small Planet, (the original) Mother Earth News and Harrowsmith I felt confident that I was aware of the pitfalls of modern food production. But, as aware as I was, and as informed as I try to stay, my knowledge falls far short of the realities of the industrial food chain; my knowledge also benefited from an eye-wash when it came to the "organic" food industry -- industry being the operative word. If I had only sensed, before, that we were being ambushed by food producers, Pollan re-affirmed my belief that one has to go a step beyond due diligence in seeking out food that is both good for us, and for the planet.
I had not quite understood how an innocuous little grain like corn might well be one of the largest contributing factors to the end of civilization. Pollan doesn't express it in those terms specifically, but there is enough fact and implication about the uses and abuses of corn, that one can only draw such an inauspicious end to us all. Corn has infiltrated 95% of our consumptive needs [irony implied]-- from the breakfast cereal that we sprinkle in our bowls in the morning to the gas tanks that we fill at night, just before heading back to the 'burbs. It is prolific in the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the bags into which we stuff our garbage, the shoes in which we walk away, in our smugness to think we're somehow ahead of the industrial food game when we make "organic" choices.
"Corn's triumph is the direct result of its overproduction, and that has been a disaster for the people who grow it. Growing corn and nothing but corn has also exacted a toll on the farmer's soil, the quality of the local water and the overall health of the community, the biodiversity of his landscape, and the health of all the creatures living on or downstream from it. And not only those creatures, for cheap corn has also changed, and much for the worse, the lives of several billion food animals, animals that would not be living on factory farms if not for the ocean of corn on which these animal cities float. ... It's a good thing this plant can't form an impression of us, for how risible that impression would be: The farmers going broke cultivating it; the countless other species routed or emiserated by it; the humans eating and drinking it as fast as they can, some of them -- like me and my family -- in automobiles engineered to drink it, too."
We have not domesticated corn; it has domesticated us. The Day of the Triffids comes to mind in a not-so-ironic farce.
Pollan ploughs through the organic food industry just as deftly as he analyzes industrial farming. We are not as organic as we think when it costs more in energy and fuel to grow our contaminant-free lettuce. The lettuce itself may be relatively free from chemical additives, but everything else around it, sacrificed to its production, is a little worse for it, including ourselves because we bought into the lie in the first place.
With all the doom and gloom hovering just above our dinner plates, it leaves one to wonder what could possibly be left to eat. Pollan's thesis on the sustainable farms is a brilliant dissertation on what can be -- and should be -- possible to reclaim the true title of "sustainability" within our food culture. Ironically, this new, sustainable farm bears a striking resemblance to the old family farm, where everything that was eaten was grown or raised on the premises, and the rest was carefully sourced out. The irony is not lost on Pollan who has brought us full circle in our quest for a pure, unadulterated lettuce salad.
By no means does Pollan suggest we should all be gathering our pitchforks, hitching up our suspenders and heading out to the back 40 with a bale of hay to feed our ethically raised cattle; but he does give us the information on how to source out good food that is truly what it purports to be, and not just the over-processed pabulum pumped out by the giant food purveyors on either side of the "organic question".
To add balance, restore a certain light-hearted equanimity, Pollan undertakes a hunting-and-gathering project in an effort to evaluate and assess what it means to be one-hundred-percent responsible for our meal, from the stalking, killing and preparation of an animal, to the gathering of fruits and nuts, a la paleo. Even this food-choice becomes its own dilemma.
The brilliant synthesis of our omnivore's dilemma in this book is by no means reductive. It offers a choice, a balance, irony, humour -- and even a solution. What more could one ask for in our search to clean our plates, our consciousness, and our consciences.
Having been raised on a steady diet of good food as well as Diet For A Small Planet, (the original) Mother Earth News and Harrowsmith I felt confident that I was aware of the pitfalls of modern food production. But, as aware as I was, and as informed as I try to stay, my knowledge falls far short of the realities of the industrial food chain; my knowledge also benefited from an eye-wash when it came to the "organic" food industry -- industry being the operative word. If I had only sensed, before, that we were being ambushed by food producers, Pollan re-affirmed my belief that one has to go a step beyond due diligence in seeking out food that is both good for us, and for the planet.
I had not quite understood how an innocuous little grain like corn might well be one of the largest contributing factors to the end of civilization. Pollan doesn't express it in those terms specifically, but there is enough fact and implication about the uses and abuses of corn, that one can only draw such an inauspicious end to us all. Corn has infiltrated 95% of our consumptive needs [irony implied]-- from the breakfast cereal that we sprinkle in our bowls in the morning to the gas tanks that we fill at night, just before heading back to the 'burbs. It is prolific in the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the bags into which we stuff our garbage, the shoes in which we walk away, in our smugness to think we're somehow ahead of the industrial food game when we make "organic" choices.
"Corn's triumph is the direct result of its overproduction, and that has been a disaster for the people who grow it. Growing corn and nothing but corn has also exacted a toll on the farmer's soil, the quality of the local water and the overall health of the community, the biodiversity of his landscape, and the health of all the creatures living on or downstream from it. And not only those creatures, for cheap corn has also changed, and much for the worse, the lives of several billion food animals, animals that would not be living on factory farms if not for the ocean of corn on which these animal cities float. ... It's a good thing this plant can't form an impression of us, for how risible that impression would be: The farmers going broke cultivating it; the countless other species routed or emiserated by it; the humans eating and drinking it as fast as they can, some of them -- like me and my family -- in automobiles engineered to drink it, too."
We have not domesticated corn; it has domesticated us. The Day of the Triffids comes to mind in a not-so-ironic farce.
Pollan ploughs through the organic food industry just as deftly as he analyzes industrial farming. We are not as organic as we think when it costs more in energy and fuel to grow our contaminant-free lettuce. The lettuce itself may be relatively free from chemical additives, but everything else around it, sacrificed to its production, is a little worse for it, including ourselves because we bought into the lie in the first place.
With all the doom and gloom hovering just above our dinner plates, it leaves one to wonder what could possibly be left to eat. Pollan's thesis on the sustainable farms is a brilliant dissertation on what can be -- and should be -- possible to reclaim the true title of "sustainability" within our food culture. Ironically, this new, sustainable farm bears a striking resemblance to the old family farm, where everything that was eaten was grown or raised on the premises, and the rest was carefully sourced out. The irony is not lost on Pollan who has brought us full circle in our quest for a pure, unadulterated lettuce salad.
By no means does Pollan suggest we should all be gathering our pitchforks, hitching up our suspenders and heading out to the back 40 with a bale of hay to feed our ethically raised cattle; but he does give us the information on how to source out good food that is truly what it purports to be, and not just the over-processed pabulum pumped out by the giant food purveyors on either side of the "organic question".
To add balance, restore a certain light-hearted equanimity, Pollan undertakes a hunting-and-gathering project in an effort to evaluate and assess what it means to be one-hundred-percent responsible for our meal, from the stalking, killing and preparation of an animal, to the gathering of fruits and nuts, a la paleo. Even this food-choice becomes its own dilemma.
The brilliant synthesis of our omnivore's dilemma in this book is by no means reductive. It offers a choice, a balance, irony, humour -- and even a solution. What more could one ask for in our search to clean our plates, our consciousness, and our consciences.
August 5, 2021
I feel compelled to give this book top marks, not because it I loved every second of it, and not because I agreed with every one of Pollan’s many opinions, but simply because I cannot imagine a better book about food. For a book dedicated to such a seemingly banal subject as what to eat for dinner, The Omnivore’s Dilemma is remarkably ambitious—so ambitious, in fact, that I am inclined to view my dinner with even more reverence than I customarily do.
The titular dilemma refers to the difficulty omnivores have in choosing what to eat. A panda or a koala does not have to spare a moment’s thought in deciding that question. But for a human, capable of eating everything from fried beetles to foie gras, this choice can be dizzyingly open-ended. Traditionally, culture has cut through this infinitude of options by prescribing a typical diet. But in the United States—a place nearly bereft of culture—we have come to rely on government regulation, food science, and big industry to take the place of these traditional prescriptions. The problem, as our waistlines reveal, is that these make poor substitutes.
So Michael Pollan sets out to investigate the American diet, using four meals as focal points. The first is an order from McDonalds, which represents industrial food. Unsurprisingly, it is a depressing picture. Farmers grow acres upon acres of genetically modified corn, which is itself not fit for eating, but meant to be processed into any number of food products. Much of this corn (along with soybeans) is also fed to cattle, who are not really evolved to eat the stuff, but are fed it anyway because the corn makes them fatter, faster. One of the more memorable scenes of the book is Pollan’s visit to a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation)—which is equal parts horrifying and disgusting.
The next meal is a dinner cooked with ingredients from Whole Foods, which represents industrial organic. Pollan takes the reader through the history of the organic movement, revealing how the designation “organic” has come to be defined by bureaucrats in ways that are not necessarily meaningful. The truth, he concludes, is that many of these products are only marginally better than their non-organic industrial counterparts. After that, we get to the centerpiece of the book: Pollan’s portrait of Polyface Farm, run by Joel Salatin. Salatin uses what you might call deliberately old-fashioned, small-scale techniques to create an ultra-sustainable farm—where cows, chickens, and pigs are used to graze, clean, and fertilize the soil. He sells his products directly to customers.
The final meal (after Pollan eats a chicken from Polyface) is one that he grows, gathers, or hunts himself. He shoots a wild pig, “hunts” some wild mushrooms, and gathers some vegetables from his garden to create what, for him, is the perfect meal. But why “perfect”? Because, Pollan says, this is the only meal he has ever had in which he knew exactly where everything came from, and what it took to get it to his table. In contrast to the meal from McDonalds, in other words—which is made out of who-knows-what from who-knows-where—the food is entirely transparent. This is Pollan’s ideal.
In the end, then, Pollan is advocating that we eat very much how Joel Salatin wants us to: old-fashioned, and small-scale. Perhaps it would be quickest to describe him as a modern-day Rousseauian—someone who thinks that the natural is always preferable to the artificial. He argues, for example, that scientists have not truly discovered what makes soil fertile or food nutritious, so traditional practices are possibly better guides. He thinks we should eat what we can get locally, and in-season, so that we can feel a connection to the land and understand where the food came from. He is, in a word, an anti-industrialist.
Now, that is quite an unfairly simplistic summary of Pollan’s positions. Even so, I cannot help but suspect that he is advocating something unworkable. I simply do not think that we could feed the world using farming practices like those in Polyface. And how could everyone in a major city eat locally? This is not to say that we cannot create more sustainable farms or attempt to reduce food transportation. But I don’t see this as a grand solution. Admittedly, Pollan was writing when the issue of global warming was not as omnipresent an issue as it is today. He has an entire chapter on the morality of meat-eating, for example, without mentioning what has become the primary reason for reducing meat consumption: greenhouse gas emissions.
It would be unfair to end this review without mentioning Pollans many virtues. For one, he is a great writer, able to both paint a scene and explain a concept with style. He is also intellectually broad. During the course of this book, he weaves a story together that includes chemistry, biology, government policy, history, philosophy, anthropology, and of course gastronomy. And he is thorough. He visits an industrial cornfield, buys a cow in a CAFO, spends a week at Polyface Farm, and learns to fire a rifle and identify wild mushrooms. I very much appreciated these eyewitness reports, as I often feel myself quite disconnected from my own personal food-chain.
In sum, if you want to think more deeply than ever before about what to have for dinner—so deeply that you accidentally start pondering the whole cosmos—then I can heartily recommend this book.
The titular dilemma refers to the difficulty omnivores have in choosing what to eat. A panda or a koala does not have to spare a moment’s thought in deciding that question. But for a human, capable of eating everything from fried beetles to foie gras, this choice can be dizzyingly open-ended. Traditionally, culture has cut through this infinitude of options by prescribing a typical diet. But in the United States—a place nearly bereft of culture—we have come to rely on government regulation, food science, and big industry to take the place of these traditional prescriptions. The problem, as our waistlines reveal, is that these make poor substitutes.
So Michael Pollan sets out to investigate the American diet, using four meals as focal points. The first is an order from McDonalds, which represents industrial food. Unsurprisingly, it is a depressing picture. Farmers grow acres upon acres of genetically modified corn, which is itself not fit for eating, but meant to be processed into any number of food products. Much of this corn (along with soybeans) is also fed to cattle, who are not really evolved to eat the stuff, but are fed it anyway because the corn makes them fatter, faster. One of the more memorable scenes of the book is Pollan’s visit to a CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation)—which is equal parts horrifying and disgusting.
The next meal is a dinner cooked with ingredients from Whole Foods, which represents industrial organic. Pollan takes the reader through the history of the organic movement, revealing how the designation “organic” has come to be defined by bureaucrats in ways that are not necessarily meaningful. The truth, he concludes, is that many of these products are only marginally better than their non-organic industrial counterparts. After that, we get to the centerpiece of the book: Pollan’s portrait of Polyface Farm, run by Joel Salatin. Salatin uses what you might call deliberately old-fashioned, small-scale techniques to create an ultra-sustainable farm—where cows, chickens, and pigs are used to graze, clean, and fertilize the soil. He sells his products directly to customers.
The final meal (after Pollan eats a chicken from Polyface) is one that he grows, gathers, or hunts himself. He shoots a wild pig, “hunts” some wild mushrooms, and gathers some vegetables from his garden to create what, for him, is the perfect meal. But why “perfect”? Because, Pollan says, this is the only meal he has ever had in which he knew exactly where everything came from, and what it took to get it to his table. In contrast to the meal from McDonalds, in other words—which is made out of who-knows-what from who-knows-where—the food is entirely transparent. This is Pollan’s ideal.
In the end, then, Pollan is advocating that we eat very much how Joel Salatin wants us to: old-fashioned, and small-scale. Perhaps it would be quickest to describe him as a modern-day Rousseauian—someone who thinks that the natural is always preferable to the artificial. He argues, for example, that scientists have not truly discovered what makes soil fertile or food nutritious, so traditional practices are possibly better guides. He thinks we should eat what we can get locally, and in-season, so that we can feel a connection to the land and understand where the food came from. He is, in a word, an anti-industrialist.
Now, that is quite an unfairly simplistic summary of Pollan’s positions. Even so, I cannot help but suspect that he is advocating something unworkable. I simply do not think that we could feed the world using farming practices like those in Polyface. And how could everyone in a major city eat locally? This is not to say that we cannot create more sustainable farms or attempt to reduce food transportation. But I don’t see this as a grand solution. Admittedly, Pollan was writing when the issue of global warming was not as omnipresent an issue as it is today. He has an entire chapter on the morality of meat-eating, for example, without mentioning what has become the primary reason for reducing meat consumption: greenhouse gas emissions.
It would be unfair to end this review without mentioning Pollans many virtues. For one, he is a great writer, able to both paint a scene and explain a concept with style. He is also intellectually broad. During the course of this book, he weaves a story together that includes chemistry, biology, government policy, history, philosophy, anthropology, and of course gastronomy. And he is thorough. He visits an industrial cornfield, buys a cow in a CAFO, spends a week at Polyface Farm, and learns to fire a rifle and identify wild mushrooms. I very much appreciated these eyewitness reports, as I often feel myself quite disconnected from my own personal food-chain.
In sum, if you want to think more deeply than ever before about what to have for dinner—so deeply that you accidentally start pondering the whole cosmos—then I can heartily recommend this book.
September 15, 2016
(3.5) I made the mistake of reading this a decade after its publication, which means I already knew most of its facts about industrialized farming and the insidiousness of processed foods, especially high-fructose corn syrup. I found Part I to be overly detailed and one-note, constantly harping on about corn. The book gets better as it goes on, though, with Pollan doing field research at Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm in Virginia to compare large-scale organic agriculture with more sustainable grassroots operations. As Salatin puts it, “You can buy honestly priced food or you can buy irresponsibly priced food.” A McDonald’s meal may be cheaper than an organic/local one, but that price tag doesn’t take into account the environmental toll of cheap beef and corn.
Pollan’s assessment of the ethics of eating meat is not quite as thorough as Jonathan Safran Foer’s (in Eating Animals), but he does a good job of showing all sides of the issue, and is honest about his own difficulty in killing for food – a chicken at Polyface, and a wild pig he shot in the forests of California to produce a mostly foraged local feast. My favorite section of the book was about foraging for this final, “perfect” meal. He captures how I’ve always felt about foraging: “this felt more like something for nothing, a wondrous and unaccountable gift.”
This would make an excellent, comprehensive introduction to where food comes from for people who have never given it much thought. But then again, the people who need it most would probably never pick up a dense 400+-page book by a liberal journalist.
Pollan’s assessment of the ethics of eating meat is not quite as thorough as Jonathan Safran Foer’s (in Eating Animals), but he does a good job of showing all sides of the issue, and is honest about his own difficulty in killing for food – a chicken at Polyface, and a wild pig he shot in the forests of California to produce a mostly foraged local feast. My favorite section of the book was about foraging for this final, “perfect” meal. He captures how I’ve always felt about foraging: “this felt more like something for nothing, a wondrous and unaccountable gift.”
This would make an excellent, comprehensive introduction to where food comes from for people who have never given it much thought. But then again, the people who need it most would probably never pick up a dense 400+-page book by a liberal journalist.
September 10, 2019
• • • • •
I thought when I started this book that a review would be superfluous—after all, it was published many years ago and has been reviewed thousands of times. But the material is provocative, and some reviews on this and similar books induce yet more thinking.
There’s certainly a lot to talk about when it comes to food. I suppose that has always been the case, but two relatively new topics have shoved their way onto the bestsellers list. Well, perhaps “two” is too limited, but it's a good if arbitrary start.
First, the health angle. There are quite a few books exploring how and why today’s food is so bad for us. Here the general idea is to examine how what-we-eat isn’t quite what-we-should-be-eating. This discussion goes in two directions: backwards, into our evolutionary development, to ask why is it we so enjoy food that isn’t good for us; and currently, looking at our consumer “preferences”: why is it our national (and, increasingly, global) diet is even less healthy than even our natural inclinations have historically made it?
The other hot topic examines the many ways in which feeding the human race has become very bad for the planet and its inhabitants, especially those we eat. Again, this can be split many ways: how simply feeding so many billions of humans taxes the planet’s resources and health; how the diets of the developed world exaggerate that effect; and how the industrial food production system further exacerbates the problem.
Threaded through both of these is the ethical problem: what should an enlightened human being be eating, anyway? And if that diet includes meat, how should we treat our meat?
Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma certainly fits within the scope of all of the above, but isn’t really central to any of them. In an important sense, Pollan has written a very different book, one that very gently deals with a deeper problem. One of his few failings is that he doesn’t make this distinction evident enough: most readers will notice the similarities to the avalanche of other food-reform books, and not the differences.
After all, Pollan does investigate the factory farm system, and its horrors are quite evident. And he shows that even “organic” farming can be captured and compromised by the industrial paradigm.
But the title of Pollan’s book hints at the difference: he isn’t delivering a polemic or jeremiad; he is troubled at how the original dilemma faced by everyone has changed and sharpened in our modern world. Carnivores and herbivores don’t have any options regarding what they eat. Our dilemma, in a nutshell, is that unlike many other creatures, we are forced to choose what to eat and what not to eat. We have the advantage over other omnivores that our decision can be informed by culture and education; but we also have the burden that our decision has ethical and cultural consequences.
Pollan divides his book into three meals.
The first is how the industrial “food system” gathers raw materials and manipulates them into “products”, such as a typical McDonald’s Value Meal, or a Weight Watcher’s frozen dinner. Corn, it turns out, plays an astonishingly larger role in this process than one might expect; so much that even a meal that notionally contains no corn might still actually draw the vast majority of its original caloric energy from that heavily domesticated tropical grass. He illuminates the effects of such a factory system on the welfare of cattle, for example, or political and economic distortions induced, or the amount of petroleum required, but he doesn’t come across as preaching — just informing.
(My favorite tidbit from this section was a reminder of the astonishing way corn becomes the source of so many of those other ingredients in processed food: “Natural raspberry flavor” doesn’t mean the flavor came from a raspberry; it may well have been derived from corn, just not from something synthetic. Only a tiny number of additives are actually derived from petroleum—so far...)
The second meal is derived from a small farm that depends, as far as can be managed, solely on solar energy via plants. Specifically, grass plays the central and foundational role in an integrated and carefully orchestrated ecosystem of farm animals. Every “output” is transformed into an “input” elsewhere; cow manure left in a field, for instance, becomes the growth medium for insect larvae (yeah, fly maggots) that are eaten by chickens, whose droppings then become fertilizer for yet more grass.
The bucolic atmosphere and almost complete lack of industrial inputs makes us consider this form of pastoral farming pre-modern, but the ecological management is so information-intensive that it is also post-industrial. This is clearly an approach that is better for people, for animals, and for the environment... but had its own share of problems. This kind of farm is called a “Management-Intensive Grazing” operation, and the orchestration is almost overwhelming, and requires such a high degree of daily commitment that it is difficult to imagine this becoming more than a niche player in the globe’s food production. Furthermore, getting the food to consumers is another task that has found no easy solutions. Direct farm-to-consumer connections can be found in some areas, but not many. Farmers markets, CSA and the like are exciting developments, but don’t easily scale up to support large and widely distributed populations.
The final meal described is definitely pre-modern; in fact it is an attempt to recapture a pre-industrial mode of eating. Pollan did his best to personal gather all of the ingredients for a meal, including gathering wild mushrooms, harvesting produce and fruit, and hunting wild boar. That last effort brought the omnivore’s dilemma back to the fore again, as he struggled to consciously reconcile his meat eating with his liberal culture and modern critiques of the ethical treatment of animals. He reluctantly abstained from eating meat while he dealt with this, even going so far as to discuss the issue via email with Peter Singer, the contemporary philosopher most associated with animal rights and veganism. In the end, he concluded “What’s wrong with eating animals is the practice, not the principle.”
In examining the vegan choice, he points out that even there the practice can get in the way of the principle. Harvesting grain — even organic wheat — is typically done with a combine: a large machine that will frequently shred field mice and other small critters that get in the way. Modern agriculture is problematic for everyone, not just liberal omnivores.
Pollan never solves the dilemma for us. None of these three approaches will solve the problems we face in our attempt to both feed billions of people and keep the planet and our consciences happy. What differentiates The Omnivore’s Dilemma is how Pollan personalizes the problem. We can eat better—we almost can not eat worse—and we must eat better. But our personal choices create our food culture, and none of these choices are simple. Unfortunately, almost all of us prefer to avert our gaze and let “the market” decide for us.
Read
January 6, 2022Not to sound too corny, but this book changed my life and how I view food and the agricultural industry. Of course, I was already aware of some parts of it – namely, the pesticides, the environmental destruction, the green-washing in Whole Foods aisles, the migrant labor, the animal cruelty. But I heavily enjoyed the chapters on corn and grass, which are arguably two of the most important members of our agricultural ecosystem that I hardly spared a thought towards.
This book is information dense, particularly the first two parts, but important when written and still important today. There's something about Michael Pollan's writing that felt very objective, yet very sincere and opinionated. He may have convinced me to start eating seasonally and locally.
This book is information dense, particularly the first two parts, but important when written and still important today. There's something about Michael Pollan's writing that felt very objective, yet very sincere and opinionated. He may have convinced me to start eating seasonally and locally.
June 26, 2007
I'll never look at corn the same way again.
This book provokes a lot of thought about the origins of our food and the biological, political, social and economic implications of those origins. I liked that Pollan approached the topic journalistically, with admirably little in the way of political agenda. To structure his book, he uses the format of following the path of four finished meals from origin to plate - one McDonald's meal, one comprised of supermarket organic products, one from a "beyond-organic" self-sustaining farm in Virgina, and one he forages almost entirely on his own.
Pollan goes into food science labs and discovers how ubiquitous the use of corn has become in modern diets, and how corn-derived food systems are synthesized and refined into ever more variations to increase our usage and meet industrial demands for market growth. The McDonald's meal he and his family share, for example, ends up being comprised of over 70% corn or corn-fed product (from beef and milk cows fed corn silage and loaded with antibiotics when it sickens them, to corn starches used in buns and chicken nugget fillers, to the high-fructose corn syrup used to sweeten soda and milkshakes). Pollan makes a strong case for how corn and its refined offspring have contributed to the ever-expending girths of Americans in recent decades.
Next he looks at the organic market, examining the compromises that many organic producers have had to make to support the demands of national chains like Whole Foods, and what "organic" does and does not necessarily mean. He contrasts corporate organic production with a week he spends working on a farm in Virginia run by a maverick Christian/libertarian farmer who carefully manages a "beyond organic" operation of interdependent, high-yielding crops and livestock on his land. The story of how this farmer guides his farm in a sustainable, symbiotic cycle is absolutely amazing.
Lastly, Pollan goes off the grid completely in growing and foraging the means for an entire omnivorous meal - not only growing vegetables/herbs and learning how to scout for edible mushrooms, but actually learning how to hunt and shoot a wild pig in N. California (something my own husband recently did, much to our culinary benefit). The vast majority of people who eat meat will never even lay eyes on the living body of an animal they eat, let alone take responsibility for its demise; so I find a lot of honesty in Pollan's having taken that step in his exploration of the food chain.
Overall, this book rocked my world in terms of understanding our modern food chain and its impact on all of us both individually and as a society. As a result, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how I can improve both my diet and my contribution to local/organic food sources. I'm determined to find more ways to eat locally and organically, and I feel lucky to live in one of the best places to do so.
This book provokes a lot of thought about the origins of our food and the biological, political, social and economic implications of those origins. I liked that Pollan approached the topic journalistically, with admirably little in the way of political agenda. To structure his book, he uses the format of following the path of four finished meals from origin to plate - one McDonald's meal, one comprised of supermarket organic products, one from a "beyond-organic" self-sustaining farm in Virgina, and one he forages almost entirely on his own.
Pollan goes into food science labs and discovers how ubiquitous the use of corn has become in modern diets, and how corn-derived food systems are synthesized and refined into ever more variations to increase our usage and meet industrial demands for market growth. The McDonald's meal he and his family share, for example, ends up being comprised of over 70% corn or corn-fed product (from beef and milk cows fed corn silage and loaded with antibiotics when it sickens them, to corn starches used in buns and chicken nugget fillers, to the high-fructose corn syrup used to sweeten soda and milkshakes). Pollan makes a strong case for how corn and its refined offspring have contributed to the ever-expending girths of Americans in recent decades.
Next he looks at the organic market, examining the compromises that many organic producers have had to make to support the demands of national chains like Whole Foods, and what "organic" does and does not necessarily mean. He contrasts corporate organic production with a week he spends working on a farm in Virginia run by a maverick Christian/libertarian farmer who carefully manages a "beyond organic" operation of interdependent, high-yielding crops and livestock on his land. The story of how this farmer guides his farm in a sustainable, symbiotic cycle is absolutely amazing.
Lastly, Pollan goes off the grid completely in growing and foraging the means for an entire omnivorous meal - not only growing vegetables/herbs and learning how to scout for edible mushrooms, but actually learning how to hunt and shoot a wild pig in N. California (something my own husband recently did, much to our culinary benefit). The vast majority of people who eat meat will never even lay eyes on the living body of an animal they eat, let alone take responsibility for its demise; so I find a lot of honesty in Pollan's having taken that step in his exploration of the food chain.
Overall, this book rocked my world in terms of understanding our modern food chain and its impact on all of us both individually and as a society. As a result, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how I can improve both my diet and my contribution to local/organic food sources. I'm determined to find more ways to eat locally and organically, and I feel lucky to live in one of the best places to do so.
July 14, 2011
From the very beginning, Omnivore’s Dilemma, it had me thinking a lot about my childhood. I grew up on my grandparents’ farm in MN, where we had draft horses, cows, chickens, a garden filled with vegetables, apple trees and rows upon rows of corn. I learned how to take an ear off the stalk at a very young age – probably around the same time that I learned how to bale hay – because across the farm from the rows of corn, we also had a field of alfalfa and wheat. While my grandpa grew corn to sell to buyers like Blaney and Stauffer, we didn’t feed the corn to our animals – they received baled hay of alfalfa and wheat, or at the grass in the pasture they roamed every day. I always figured it was because my grandpa didn’t want our animals eating his potential profits, but after reading OD, I wonder. Unfortunately my grandparents are no longer around to ask.
What I sometimes think is ironic, is that while there are over 60 of us, not one of us stayed on the farm, even though the farm never really left us.
In my family, we are gardeners – whether we are tending a flower garden or a vegetable garden – we are growing some of the food that will be presented at our tables. Hunting was always a big thing in my family as well. My grandfather taught his children and grandchildren at an early age how to shoot a gun, but never expected anyone (I am not a hunter, but know how to shoot a gun) to hunt if they didn’t want to. What he did teach us was that you ate what you killed. Hunting and fishing (another thing we did a lot of) was not a sport, it was a way of life – it was a way to feed our family.
While I liked this book for the memories of childhood lessons it conjured for me, it also helped to remind me of my ideals around food. Ideals that have become lax of late. One example: I made all of my daughter’s food when she was a baby. She did not partake in any pre-made food, and was a vegetarian until she was about two years old. I am not sure when my desire to feed her naturally ended, but now she eats processed food when I feel busy – processed food that I sometimes cannot pronounce the ingredients much less figure out where it came from. With many things (I am looking at your Twinkies) we have a rule that if you can’t pronounce it you don’t eat it, but this goes out the window when I am too busy to make a homemade meal.
Pollan, without ever preaching, without ever scolding, reminds the reader that we owe it to ourselves and to our families to know where are food is coming from. I felt this was a very well written book – both in its content and writing. It is a book that will make you stop and think about what you are putting in your mouth.
If you eat, you should read this book.
What I sometimes think is ironic, is that while there are over 60 of us, not one of us stayed on the farm, even though the farm never really left us.
In my family, we are gardeners – whether we are tending a flower garden or a vegetable garden – we are growing some of the food that will be presented at our tables. Hunting was always a big thing in my family as well. My grandfather taught his children and grandchildren at an early age how to shoot a gun, but never expected anyone (I am not a hunter, but know how to shoot a gun) to hunt if they didn’t want to. What he did teach us was that you ate what you killed. Hunting and fishing (another thing we did a lot of) was not a sport, it was a way of life – it was a way to feed our family.
While I liked this book for the memories of childhood lessons it conjured for me, it also helped to remind me of my ideals around food. Ideals that have become lax of late. One example: I made all of my daughter’s food when she was a baby. She did not partake in any pre-made food, and was a vegetarian until she was about two years old. I am not sure when my desire to feed her naturally ended, but now she eats processed food when I feel busy – processed food that I sometimes cannot pronounce the ingredients much less figure out where it came from. With many things (I am looking at your Twinkies) we have a rule that if you can’t pronounce it you don’t eat it, but this goes out the window when I am too busy to make a homemade meal.
Pollan, without ever preaching, without ever scolding, reminds the reader that we owe it to ourselves and to our families to know where are food is coming from. I felt this was a very well written book – both in its content and writing. It is a book that will make you stop and think about what you are putting in your mouth.
If you eat, you should read this book.
January 31, 2019
I became vegetarian when I was 6 or 7, though I was thrilled while reading the hunting part! The author narrated his experience in hunting so marvellously that I got shocked and questioned myself: do I enjoy it, seriously?! I was also amazed by how quirky can be a mushroom forager! Want to meet one of them!
June 8, 2024
Human beings are omnivores. But because we are omnivores, we have very little built in instinct that tells us which foods are good for us and which aren’t. That’s the dilemma; we can eat anything, but how do we know what to eat?
So that’s the dilemma. And while some cultures have long standing traditional diets to help them solve this problem, Pollan notes that modern Americans don’t have any strong food traditions. We are surrounded in supermarkets and restaurants with a staggering number of food choices without any clear directions what foods are best for a healthy life.
Here Michael Pollan takes on this dilemma by identifying, investigating and informing on four separate food chains available to us. For each of this groups, he prepares and serves a representative meal — the industrial food meal, the industrial organic meal, the beyond organic meal, and the hunter gatherer meal.
Though we are all familiar with the products of the industrial food industry, its sources and methods are purposely kept in the shadows. Pollan rather uncomfortably illuminates those shadows. He identifies corn as the foundation block of industry food — present in almost everything we eat, including our meat (cows, chickens, hogs, farm raised fish all are fed corn) and he explains why this is a problem, and how it hurts farmers, the environment, our health — almost everyone and everything other than the couple of industrial food giant corporations who profit from it.
Pollan serves a meal purchase at McDonalds and eaten in his car to illustrate the industrial food chain.
See those chicken nuggets in the freezer case? They’re really corn wrapped up in more corn. The chicken was fed corn, the batter is made from corn flower, the starch that holds it together is corn starch, the oil it was fried in was corn oil.
Pollan next examines what he calls industrial organic food. He explains how organic food evolved from the hippy back to the land movement into the profitable and industry controlled market it is today. The organics that you buy in your Whole Foods Market mostly come from the same major food conglomerates as does the rest of our food. Regulations on what is considered organic is so lax that TV dinners can be called organic. Pollan does acknowledge that these foods are grown without the use of harmful chemicals, which is a good thing, but otherwise the picture he paints of Big Organic is rather grim. The meal he makes to illustrate this food chain is sourced from Whole Foods.
The final food chains Pollan examines are far more encouraging, but also far less available to most of us. He takes us to a farm in Virginia that calls itself beyond organic, and that represents the picture most of us have of what organic food ideally should be. Unfortunately, this farm’s philosophy of keeping food local prevents it from shipping its food, so unless you are lucky enough to live close to it (or one like it), well, too bad for you.
Pollan ends with the least practical food source — hunting and gathering. He acknowledges its impracticality for most of us, but includes it mostly as a base line of how most of our ancestors fed themselves. He actually hunts a wild boar in Norther California for the hunter gatherer meal he serves.
He finishes the book with useful tips on how to eat best in this culture dominated by industrial food:
Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or with ingredients you don’t recognize or can’t pronounce.
Don’t eat anything containing high fructose corn syrup.
Buy real food. To make sure you’re buying real food, get your food from the outside perimeter of the supermarket, and try to avoid the middle isles.
Don’t buy or eat anything that doesn’t eventually rot
So that’s the dilemma. And while some cultures have long standing traditional diets to help them solve this problem, Pollan notes that modern Americans don’t have any strong food traditions. We are surrounded in supermarkets and restaurants with a staggering number of food choices without any clear directions what foods are best for a healthy life.
Here Michael Pollan takes on this dilemma by identifying, investigating and informing on four separate food chains available to us. For each of this groups, he prepares and serves a representative meal — the industrial food meal, the industrial organic meal, the beyond organic meal, and the hunter gatherer meal.
Though we are all familiar with the products of the industrial food industry, its sources and methods are purposely kept in the shadows. Pollan rather uncomfortably illuminates those shadows. He identifies corn as the foundation block of industry food — present in almost everything we eat, including our meat (cows, chickens, hogs, farm raised fish all are fed corn) and he explains why this is a problem, and how it hurts farmers, the environment, our health — almost everyone and everything other than the couple of industrial food giant corporations who profit from it.
Pollan serves a meal purchase at McDonalds and eaten in his car to illustrate the industrial food chain.
See those chicken nuggets in the freezer case? They’re really corn wrapped up in more corn. The chicken was fed corn, the batter is made from corn flower, the starch that holds it together is corn starch, the oil it was fried in was corn oil.
Pollan next examines what he calls industrial organic food. He explains how organic food evolved from the hippy back to the land movement into the profitable and industry controlled market it is today. The organics that you buy in your Whole Foods Market mostly come from the same major food conglomerates as does the rest of our food. Regulations on what is considered organic is so lax that TV dinners can be called organic. Pollan does acknowledge that these foods are grown without the use of harmful chemicals, which is a good thing, but otherwise the picture he paints of Big Organic is rather grim. The meal he makes to illustrate this food chain is sourced from Whole Foods.
The final food chains Pollan examines are far more encouraging, but also far less available to most of us. He takes us to a farm in Virginia that calls itself beyond organic, and that represents the picture most of us have of what organic food ideally should be. Unfortunately, this farm’s philosophy of keeping food local prevents it from shipping its food, so unless you are lucky enough to live close to it (or one like it), well, too bad for you.
Pollan ends with the least practical food source — hunting and gathering. He acknowledges its impracticality for most of us, but includes it mostly as a base line of how most of our ancestors fed themselves. He actually hunts a wild boar in Norther California for the hunter gatherer meal he serves.
He finishes the book with useful tips on how to eat best in this culture dominated by industrial food:
Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
Don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients, or with ingredients you don’t recognize or can’t pronounce.
Don’t eat anything containing high fructose corn syrup.
Buy real food. To make sure you’re buying real food, get your food from the outside perimeter of the supermarket, and try to avoid the middle isles.
Don’t buy or eat anything that doesn’t eventually rot
April 24, 2007
I can't remember the last time I read a book I learned so much from. This is highly recommended for anyone who wonders about food, obesity, organic, local, vegetarian, etc. Quotes if you're interested (but I could have quoted the entire book!). I know I will never look at corn the same way, nor will I ever buy the "cheap eggs."
(On obesity)"Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest."
"Nature never puts all her eggs in one basket."
"One day Frank Purdue and Don Tyson are going to wake up and find that their world has changed. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen, just as it did for those Catholic priests who came to church one Sunday morning only to find that, my goodness, there aren't as many people in the pews today. Where in the world has everybody gone?"
(About his temporary trial of vegetarianism)"What troubles me most about my vegetarianism is the subtle way it alienates me from other people."
(About mushroom hunting, just because it made me laugh) "I found myself, idiotically, taunting the morels whenever a bunch of them suddenly popper out. 'Gotcha!' I would cry, as if this were a game we were playing, the mushrooms and I, and I'd just won a round. This is not something I can ever imagine saying to an apple in the garden; there, it just wouldn't be news."
(On obesity)"Very simply, we subsidize high-fructose corn syrup in this country, but not carrots. While the surgeon general is raising alarms over the epidemic of obesity, the president is signing farm bills designed to keep the river of cheap corn flowing, guaranteeing that the cheapest calories in the supermarket will continue to be the unhealthiest."
"Nature never puts all her eggs in one basket."
"One day Frank Purdue and Don Tyson are going to wake up and find that their world has changed. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen, just as it did for those Catholic priests who came to church one Sunday morning only to find that, my goodness, there aren't as many people in the pews today. Where in the world has everybody gone?"
(About his temporary trial of vegetarianism)"What troubles me most about my vegetarianism is the subtle way it alienates me from other people."
(About mushroom hunting, just because it made me laugh) "I found myself, idiotically, taunting the morels whenever a bunch of them suddenly popper out. 'Gotcha!' I would cry, as if this were a game we were playing, the mushrooms and I, and I'd just won a round. This is not something I can ever imagine saying to an apple in the garden; there, it just wouldn't be news."
March 23, 2018
Michael Pollan is a food activist, trying to get people to dump fast food and industrial food, and eat healthier. I first came across him in a documentary called Cooked, and I loved the way he talked about fresh food. Eating (and cooking, to some extent) is a passion with me, so I was hooked. I loved the documentary, and I expected to love this book. And I did!
The main subject of the book is how maize (or corn) displaced all other crops in the US. Because it offers a better return for money for the big agrobusinesses, this plant is often preferred by farmers, who find out only too late that this choice has led them down the path of poverty. Industrial farming also leads to environmental disasters, ruining the land, as well as the surrounding water bodies, for future generations.
Pollan also goes into the meat processing industry, and we get to see the sorry state of the cows. Their feed is unhealthy and unnatural, and does not allow them to grow organically. They are kept in overcrowded conditions, standing in their own shit for days on end. The animals are not even allowed a glimpse of the outside world, and even have to engage in forced cannibalism, something not natural for cows. All this is not only terrible for the animals, but their meat also ends up being very unhealthy for consumers. Pollan also talks about the chicken industry, which faces similar issues. Pollan even has issues with industrial organic products, because of the fact that the criteria for labelling anything organic is kept low to help big companies make money.
As an alternative, Pollan describes family-run farm businesses, which incorporate a healthy and full life for the animals before they are slaughtered for meat. The vegetables and fruits are also fresh. The variety of crops and meat means that these farms are also better for the environment overall. The extra money spent would be well-worth the benefits. How accessible such food is for everyone in the US is however not explained.
I think this is a pretty comprehensive look at the food industry in the US, and the impact it has on Americans and the rest of the world. But the best part of the book is when Pollen himself goes out to hunt, gather, and cook his own food! I don't think I will be doing that any time soon, though!
The main subject of the book is how maize (or corn) displaced all other crops in the US. Because it offers a better return for money for the big agrobusinesses, this plant is often preferred by farmers, who find out only too late that this choice has led them down the path of poverty. Industrial farming also leads to environmental disasters, ruining the land, as well as the surrounding water bodies, for future generations.
Pollan also goes into the meat processing industry, and we get to see the sorry state of the cows. Their feed is unhealthy and unnatural, and does not allow them to grow organically. They are kept in overcrowded conditions, standing in their own shit for days on end. The animals are not even allowed a glimpse of the outside world, and even have to engage in forced cannibalism, something not natural for cows. All this is not only terrible for the animals, but their meat also ends up being very unhealthy for consumers. Pollan also talks about the chicken industry, which faces similar issues. Pollan even has issues with industrial organic products, because of the fact that the criteria for labelling anything organic is kept low to help big companies make money.
As an alternative, Pollan describes family-run farm businesses, which incorporate a healthy and full life for the animals before they are slaughtered for meat. The vegetables and fruits are also fresh. The variety of crops and meat means that these farms are also better for the environment overall. The extra money spent would be well-worth the benefits. How accessible such food is for everyone in the US is however not explained.
I think this is a pretty comprehensive look at the food industry in the US, and the impact it has on Americans and the rest of the world. But the best part of the book is when Pollen himself goes out to hunt, gather, and cook his own food! I don't think I will be doing that any time soon, though!
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