The Omnivore's Dilemma

The Omnivore's Dilemma
by Michael Pollan

Have you ever read a book that gave you new knowledge of a sort that you sometimes wish you had never even read the book in the first place? That's a portion of my experience with The Omnivore's Dilemma. The other portion of my experience being is grateful for the new knowledge, though I'm still trying to sort out exactly what I'll do with it and how or whether I will change my life because of it.

I'm not quite sure how I encountered The Omnivore's Dilemma. It runs somewhat outside my regular reading patterns which largely consist of business books sprinkled with a bit of fiction or biography. I'm glad I encountered it, though. This is a book that made me think for days afterward. I felt like I was finding ways to insert mini-reviews into all my conversations with people--I think I was really just trying to digest the massive amount of information presented in the book. And I know I was searching for ways to see how this information fit into my life (or how I would let it).

This is a book about food. Specifically, where food in America comes from. The author looks at four meals and he tracks their ingredients back to the source. This seems innocuous enough on the surface of things, but sitting on the top of the food chain and tracking your food back down through that chain can get a little tricky. The author doesn't make his investigation easy on himself. He was determined to track corn from a specific cornfield through all it's various points of processing. He was unsuccessful, but found good proxies and did sufficient research to describe what he wasn't allowed to view with his own eyes. He was determined to purchase a steer at auction and track it's (short) life cycle clear through "processing." Again, he wasn't allowed to witness his steer's death and dismemberment but was able to sufficiently document what went unseen.

The first meal comes from corn, and it is a "fast food" meal purchased for his family in a drive-thru and eaten in a car on the way elsewhere. It contains the standard ingredients: chicken nuggets, soda pop, burgers with all the fixings. You might be wondering how it is that a burger or chicken nuggets come from corn. The answer is in the processing, and it is not pretty. The abbreviated version of this meal goes like this: farmers are given incentives to grow corn; these incentives (government subsidies) are enticing enough that many farmers don't find it cost effective to raise other crops and turn their fields into corn "monocultures"; an overabundance of corn results, so we learn to use corn in new ways; one way is to feed it to beef cattle; beef cattle get real fat, real quick when fed corn; cattle by nature can't eat corn (insert long biological answer here) unless they are also pumped full of medicine to keep them alive; skip to fat cows dying ugly deaths in slaugherhouses; skip to your local fast food burger. Enjoy, if you can. Additionally, corn byproducts create most of what's in your soda pop, the coating on your chicken nuggets (not to mention the "glue" that holds the eviscerated chicken pulp together in a pretty nugget shape) and the oil that fries the fries. One biologist quoted in the book calls North American people "corn chips with legs" and it's easy to see why.

The second and third meals come from alternative sources. One comes from Whole Foods Market (see the exchange between the author and Whole Foods here, then here, then here.) And the other comes from a small pastoral (and "postindustrial") farm in Virginia called Polyface. I won't belabor the Whole Foods controversy which you can read for yourself at the above links. The Polyface farm, however, is utterly fascinating. The author relates that he was initially offput by the denial of his request that the Polyface farmer send him some food from the farm via FexEx. When he visited the farm and spent time working there alongside the farmhands, he came to realize just how morally inconsistent such a request would be for these farmers. The farm's owner, Joel Salatin, describes himself as a grass farmer. He buys no fertilizers and no pesticides. He spends much of his time rotating cattle through pastures, and then rotating chickens behind the cattle. The cattle eat just enough grass before being rotated. The chicken come behind the cattle and spread the cow dung around and sprinkle a bit of their own dung. This makes the grass grow better and along come the cattle again. That's a grossly simplified version of what they do, of course, but hopefully you get the gist.

The fourth meal is as fascinating as the first three. The author determines that he will hunt and forage all the ingredients for the meal. He learns to gather mushrooms (without dying). He hunts and kills a wild boar. He tries (unsuccessfully) to make his own salt. He gathers fruit from neighborhood trees. He makes his own sourdough from scratch, using flour water and the various microbes floating in the air around his house. It is a remarkable effort and the end result sounded delicious. Beyond that, the end result was also an increase in friendship and collaboration as the author had to rely on the knowledge of others to help him along his quest to gather his ingredients.

Taken as a whole, the book is a thought provoking treatise on the source of our food. I can't drink a soda pop now without remembering the phrase, "corn chips with legs." It often stops me from drinking the soda, actually. This new knowledge makes me much more likely to buy locally, even if it isn't "organic" (which, as you'll learn in the book, isn't what you probably think it is anymore). I also think twice before pulling over for a fast food burger (fortunately, we have Burgerville in the Pacific Northwest, which features grass fed beef although the cattle are fattened on corn for the last three months of their lives.) Our family just bought a freezer load of grass fed beef from some friends who recently butchered one of their "happy cows." Guilt-free meat. (As an aside, that cow was four years old and only ate grass. Compare that to your typical McBurger which features corn-fed beef from cattle that was about 18 months old at the time of slaughter. Grass fed beef take longer to get fat, which is another industrially compelling reason to feed cows corn. If you can stomach it.).

Read this book at your own risk. It may very well change the way you eat and live.

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Brendon Connelly writes a business blog called Slacker Manager, and produces a local video blog called Yamhill.TV. He lives in Oregon and toils as a university administrator.

Comments

[Steve Sherlock]

Wonderful. The book is already on my shelf. I had previously read Michael's 'Botany of Desire' where he did a similar exploration of the apple, potato, tulip and marijuana. very interesting reading.

Brendon, your review confirms for me the feeling that Michael writes like an impressionist painter. Very detailed, deliberate little pieces of info building the story, such that and when you step back after completing the book, you say wow!

[tim]

Bren...

Just finished reading your review while in the drive through of McDonald's...am getting out of line now.

Actually, after reading your review, I'm wondering if there is anything good for a person to eat anymore? Are you tempted to become an "organic vegan" after you finish the pages of this book?

[Bren]

@Steve: yeah, that's a great description of Pollan's writing.

@Tim: the net result of this book on me is to try to eat locally as best I can. Also, I try to avoid "industrial meat", particularly beef, but every now and then I succumb. Organic is fine, as far as it goes, but if you're at all in question about food production on an industrial scale, then "organic", as found in the major supermarkets, is largely a marketing ploy. Take a look at the ingredient labels. You'll often find that various preservatives need to be added to the "organic" whatever, which just makes me question what organic means on an industrial scale.

[Dwayne Melancon]

Great review, Bren. I've been to slaughterhouses and seen the process, as well as the process they use on chickens. Not for the squeamish, but I'm still comfortable with my omnivore-ness. I think it's important to understand what goes into our daily food (no pun intended).

[Caryl Elzinga]

The Omnivore's Dilemma is an important book because not since "The Jungle" have so many people read a book that asked them to think intelligently about their food choices and what the agribusiness system does to the pastoral art that should be farming and ranching.
We've admired Joel Salatin for years, have read his books, and even spoken with him on the phone (he was very gracious with his time). I want to make one comment, however, about Joel's refusal to send his products by FedEx. His farm is surrounded by several million potential customers within a couple hour's drive. But I wonder, really, how environmentally effective it is to ask people to drive their gas-guzzlers to get their products from the farm.
We've thought long and hard about this--whether it is right to ship products from our farm to customers. In part, we are driven by necessity- the nearest large town to our ranch is over two hours away, and there are fewer customers in our whole state than are "local" for Joel. But in addition, we see shipping via FedEx or UPS as the opportunity for small farmers and ranchers to actually begin to compete with the "big boys" and their huge distribution system by taking advantage of the tax-payer funded road system and efficient commercial carriers of small packages. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could buy all your food direct from farmers and ranchers (whom you could call on the phone or email, and actually get to know) and never have to set foot in a big box grocery store again? Farmers could think again about growing food for people rather than commodities for the processor.
One other comment: Burgerville sounds like a great alternative to the mickeydoodoos, but technically, beef fattened on corn for the last 3 months of their lives really isn't any different from typical feedlot fare. Here's why: the corn fed commodity offerings in the grocery store today get fed grain for anywhere from 60 to 180 days. Indeed, they too are grass fed beef up until their feedlot residence. Most of the nutritional value of grass fed beef is lost within a few weeks of adding grain to the diet. The USDA proposed label would require only grass and forages for 99% of the beef's lifetime feed; if the rule is passed the Burgerville beef could no longer be called "grass fed."

[Beth Robinson]

One of the things we love about living on the Big Island is how easy it is to "eat local". Often we'll fix meals 100% of ingredients grown or raised on the Island and my Swiss husband exclaims "this actually tastes like FOOD." Sometimes when I don't eat this way I feel a bit like those cattle eating corn and hormones must feel. This book has been on my wish list for a while and now I'm making it a real priority to read it. Thanks for the review!

[Karen Wallace]

Bren, after reading your review yesterday I mentioned it at the dinner table last night (and yes, we were eating prime beef t-bones... grown and slaughtered right on my husband's cousin's property - no corn in sight:) and the conversation it generated was amazing - especially between my would-be-cattle-farmer husband and our 17 yo son... And that was just the book review!

It's now mandated that I get hold of the book so we can read and digest this as a family who cares about what we eat.

Although we live in Australia and are very lucky with the quality of our produce (our organic fruit and veg are delivered fresh to our door direct from the markets each week) we cannot stick our heads in the sand and say that will never happen here. Because, inevitably, we follow worldwide trends and it is up to each one of us to make a stand.

Bravo for bringing this book to our attention - I'd never heard of it before. Thanks.