Dangerous books part 9: The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

I don’t even remember how this book found its way on my reading list, but it has obviously snuck its way onto many lists, since I bought the very last copy at the bookstore. As a card-carrying omnivore, I figured the most pressing dilemma I faced was “what’s for dinner?” and wondered how that question could be stretched into a 400-page book.
That is, in fact, the question the book addresses, but the answer is so much more complex than I ever imagined that 400 pages just scratched the surface.
What inspired Pollan’s quest? One impetus was our country’s tendency to violently shift from one eating fad to another. One day, red meat and saturated fat are declared evil, then just as quickly (and to great relief of the beef industry), they are redeemed and pasta and bread are instead doomed to disgrace. It’s carbs! That’s what’s killing us! Pollan calls this a sign of a national eating disorder.
In the midst of these swings, what has been lost, Pollan contends, is pleasure and tradition at the dining room table. To uncover the root of this void, Pollan sets out on an Odyssey tracing our food chain to its source. Or rather, food chains, for there are several.
The first chain he unravels he calls the “industrial food chain,” and this chain begins at a cornfield in Iowa. Most of the corn grown in the United States is not edible for humans, and yet 25% of the items in a typical grocery store contain corn. Most animals we eat are fattened on corn, high fructose corn syrup is our sweetener of choice, corn starch our thickener of choice, and the list of corn derived additives goes on and on.
Why so much corn? Quite simply because it is cheap. Well, kind of. It is cheap as long as you don’t count the cost to the environment in the form of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, deteriorating soil quality due to only one or two types of plants grown on it, the cost in government subsidies to farmers when the price of corn drops below the cost of producing it, the cost to our health from consuming over-processed foods and meat from animals force fed what their bodies were not designed to ingest, the cost to our culture when food becomes merely a cheap commodity, and the cost to our very souls which we pay in a myriad of ways.
Following the second chain, the organic, actually reveals two chains. One is the industrial organic chain, an improvement over the first chain because it avoids harmful chemicals, but in many ways potentially disastrous, too, as its inhumane feedlots are eerily similar to conventional feedlots and because this chain can consume just as many fossil fuels in its production and distribution as the conventional industrial chain.
To explore another branch of this chain Pollan spends a week on a small family farm that is sustainable, imports no fertilizers and almost no animal feed, and practices a form of sustainable farming that is radically innovative in how it mimics nature’s preferences. Here, cows, chickens, and pigs live lives where, up to the very end, they live in ways that are natural. They eat, sleep, and move like cows, chickens, and pigs. Local families and restaurants buy their meat and eggs not only for the implications of its sustainability but because, as one person said, “the chicken tastes chickenier.” Not a surprise when the chicken spent its whole life as a chicken was meant to spend it.
His final food chain is hunter/gatherer, where he hunts his own wild pig for dinner, forages for wild mushrooms and fruit, and even tries his hand (unsuccessfully) at gathering his own salt. At the end of this venture, though he agrees it is not a realistic chain for most Americans, he says that, “as a sometimes thing, as a kind of ritual, 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.”
And that is the heart of the book. What is the true cost of what we eat? The cost of our cheap, industrial, food is in fact very steep. It costs us:

Broken Relationships
1. Between farmer and consumer. When Pollan asks one Iowan farmer for whom he produces corn the farmer replies, “for the military industrial complex.” Most of us couldn’t name the state (or states) from which our food originated, let alone which farm. Parents usually want to meet their children’s teachers, new home owners like to know the builder, why have we forfeited any kind of relationship with or knowledge of those who grow what we put into, and what becomes, our bodies?
2. Between us and the natural world. Our processed foods resemble nothing we find in nature. Can you even pronounce, let alone remember, all the ingredients in your protein bar or cereal? Even raw meat we so dissociate from the animal it used to be that we rarely think of it as a once living, breathing animal with blood coursing through its veins. With this dissociation comes not only ignorance but also apathy. We don’t know and no longer care where our food came from and what it went through to come to our plates. It is a product of industry, not a gift from the body of the earth.
3. Between one another. We strive not only for cheapness but also for convenience in our food. A microwavable cup of soup that fits in a car’s cup holder allows us to stay on the move without stopping to enjoy a moment of pleasure or shared experience with those around us. Shared experience, though, is at the heart of the sacrament of communion. It is a common meal shared by everyone present (at least in faiths that practice an open table) that is meant to remind us of every meal, just as every meal reminds us of communion. It reminds us of the sanctity and grace of mealtime.

Loss of humanity
Pollan’s detailed description of the condition and treatment of animals in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) is beyond disturbing. The cattle feedlots in Garden City, KS are bad enough, but the plight of egg-laying chickens, confined to cages so small and crowded that they can not walk, move their wings, or fully stand, is stomach-churning. But they’re only animals, right? Yes, they are animals, and part of the natural world of which we are a part. If a young child were to treat a pet dog in way similar to how we treat our meat providing animals, doctors may suspect psychopathological tendencies. There’s an inherent cruelty in someone who would subject a sentient being to such pain. What does that imply about a culture that allows millions of animals to undergo a life of pain so that it may enjoy cheap, efficient sustenance?

We are what we eat and how we eat. A food chain that is an industrial machine, that disregards the health and well-being of its links, that strives for ever-increasing profits with ever-decreasing pleasure and relationships, will produce consumers at the end of the chain that reflect these values. A food chain that requires cruelty and willful ignorance will create a cruel and ignorant society. It is time we asked ourselves, for the good of our bodies and souls, “What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table.”

A few alternative food sources in the Kansas City Area:
City Market (just because it’s at a farmer’s market doesn’t guarantee it’s locally, organically or sustainably grown. Talk to the farmer)
Overland Park Farmer’s market
Pisciotta  Farms
Shatto Dairy
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)