The Omnivore's Dilemma: Michael Pollan

Read this book.

Good enough review? Ok, to build my original premise, which, if you have already forgotten: Read this book. (I'm warning you now, though, I'm about climb up onto my soapbox and not get down for a few hundred words...)

The Omnivore's Dilemma is Michael Pollan's 400 some odd pages on how we Americans find, grow, process and eat our food. The dilemma in question is something unique mostly to humans, who are equipped to eat a diaspora of food types, and presented with more culinary choices than we know really what to do with. What do we eat? What should we eat? How do we decide?

He splits the story, or the answer, into three chewable morsels: 1. The agriculture and processing machine that stocks our supermarkets 2. The organic movement, it's original intentions, the still successful possibilities, and the the machine that it is becoming, and 3. Hunting and foraging for yourself.

To put his basic summations into my own summations for each section: 1. The way we feed ourselves is not only unhealthy, but irresponsible, doesn't even actually taste all that great, is completely unnatural, and is killing the environment. 2. While initially a well intentioned movement, organic has given way to Big Organic, and also most if not all of the environmental and economic compromises that goes with a corporate monoculture farming system. (He also spends an inordinate amount of time on an organic farm in Virginia called Polyface Farm, one that is the ultimate model of land use and natural production in the form of chickens, beef, eggs, and even bunnies. This section of the of entire book was easily the most fascinating, just as an illustration of how a farm can operate if only it follows the natural order of the soil, animal tendencies and seasons. Follow this link and read more about it.) 3. While the 3rd section contains a very fascinating treatise on the ethics of eating meat or not eating meat and hunting, it generally concludes that while foraging makes for a wonderful meal, it is not the solution to our national eating disorder nor environmentally sustainable for all of us to pick up a gun and head for the hills for Sunday dinner.

To simply astound you in the some of the stats from this countries utter dependence on corn, to cite from the first section of the book: Corn is used and is present in more than a quarter of every single item in your 45,000 items at the supermarket, including many many non food items. Nearly 50% of all of the nitrogen in the world nowadays is synthetic, that is, made in a lab and much of it used for fertilizer and other agriculture pursuits. So much that massive amounts of nitrogen rich runoff is smothering rivers and deltas, killing fish and only allowing certain types of algae to grow for miles off the Mississippi. The government pays half of the paycheck of an Iowa corn farmer, in order to balance their lack of income from selling their corn at such low prices.. because there is so much corn being grown. The answer to not making enough money in a season? Plant more corn next season, which only leads to the price dropping further and continuing the farmers dependence on government subsidies. The demand for ethanol in the last year has stymied this trend slightly, but will ultimately only be another branch on the processing line that we already wring from our mountains of corn. 60% of a McDonalds Chicken McNugget is corn, between the corn fed chicken, the frying batter and 'glue' that holds the constituents of the nugget together and even the container it comes in. 100% of your bottle of coke is corn, in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup.

60% of all corn grown goes to feed cattle in feed lots, where the old life of a grass fed Holstein that is fattened for slaughter has gone from 4-5 years to 14-16 months. Cattle aren't supposed to eat corn at all, they have specifically evolved rumen's to deal with grass in ways that we can't, but corn is 1. much cheaper and conveyable and 2. contains many more calories. My favorite overall stat, though, of the industrial agriculture that so many Americans depend upon is that on average it takes more than 1o calories of energy in the form of fossil fuel to generate a single calorie of food. This, to me, spells doom unless we look at some different ways to feed ourselves. And once you read the actual list of details, I promise you won't eat at McDonalds again, at all.

The ultimate answer, i suppose, is that this country's peoples need to decide to take responsibility for the how and where our food comes from. We can do that by patronizing food vendors in the supermarket that are doing their best to lessen their environmental footprint or are nearby, and simply understanding that while these products cost more upfront, they cost much less on the hidden back end of processing energy spent, oil consumed, and earth destroyed.

Go to your local farmers market for your fruits and veggies. Yes, you will spend literally twice as much, but, you have to realize that the loudest way you make a statement in this country is with your dollars. And really, double the price of 75 cent per pound apples is not going to cause an utter economic pandemic. (Also, please realize that this is not an endorsement of Whole Foods, either. While the food they sell is indeed probably better for you, the system you advance by buying their extremely expensive food is really only slightly better for your karma than by going to Safeway, Meijer or Kroger. I know that they have big posters and signs about the little farms around the world on their walls, but, they certainly don't get their lettuce from them. That comes from a single giant lettuce farm in California.)

Also, to comment on something completely unintentional that is written into the pages of this expose, is that it was hard for me to miss the lack of words and place of thanks for Pollan, as he, a straight up and down man of reason and science can't find the place where his feelings of connected-ness and thanks should go.

As Pollan squats next to his freshly killed boar in the forests of Northern Marin County, and rests his palm on it's still warm ribcage, he experienced this "Wholly unexpected feeling of gratitude. But for what, exactly, and to whom? .... The animal was a gift - from whom or what I couldn't say - but gratitude felt in order, and gratitude is what I felt." And then, lastly, as the meal that he prepared from ingredients completely hunted or foraged himself, he finds himself at the head of a table of family and friends that all helped in some way make the meal possible. And before eating he rises from his seat to thank each guest individually, but seats himself before too long, though he "had wanted to say something more, to express a wider gratitude for the meal we were about to eat, but I was afraid that to offer words of thanks for the pig and the mushrooms would come off sounding corny, and worse, might ruin some appetites."

At this point, I personally felt a building mix of emotions as I navigated past all of these pages of his experience: His explaining of exactly how we treat our soil matters to the animals that eat the feed that comes from it, and then matters to us humans who eat the animals, the overall connectedness of nature, the basic instincts of eating, providing and even hunting, and the beauty of sharing a meal with loved ones... I suppose if I had to settle on a prevalent emotion, I guess it would be only a pleasant, quiet confirming of the fact that i do believe in a greater force at hand that causes all of the above things to be true, and I know with a great conviction where my gratitude lies when I share a meal with family and friends. I believe in a creator so wise as to come up with something as neat as the creation we live in, and felt only more awe at his cleverness as I discovered more and more about how the natural world can work in harmony.

Not that I feel condescension for Pollan or other folks in this boat, but almost a form of, I don't know, light sadness. To put it as plainly as my genius wife: "It's the basic problem of being a Unitarian; having an absolute and core feeling of gratitude for being blessed, and having no idea who to thank."

But, in case you have forgotten, the real message of this novella of a post is that you need to read this book, regardless of your ethereal leanings. It is in paperback now, so you really have no excuse. Go. Shoo. Read!