The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10
Eating is one of the most basic instincts of humankind, and serves as the foundation of entire cultures and religions. It is the common thread in complex tapestries of different cuisines around the world, and somehow, its art has been lost in perhaps the modern hyper-capitalistic pursuit of profit. When was the last time you dined at home with your entire family? When was the last time you ate alone without looking at your phone? For many people, I suspect the answer would be further in the past than they’d want it to be.
Michael Pollan artfully deconstructs the modern American culture of eating in a digestible (lol) manner. He sets out to really understand how the food he’s currently eating came to be on his plate and what it cost. The results of his journalistic investigation changed the way I think about food. I’ve always been very cognizant of the foods I’m putting in my body because my mom inculcated in me the importance of staying healthy. Although I would venture to say that I’m probably in the top couple percent of healthiest eaters in America, I predict that the next time I’m at a supermarket or a farmer’s market, I will nevertheless be a lot more thoughtful in procuring my food for the next week.
One thing I found extremely interesting was the fact that capitalism has irreversibly altered the natural food chain. We’ve created a monoculture of corn (and soy) because it is the most efficient crop in terms of converting sunlight into ingestible calories. But because of the monoculture, nitrates in the soil do not have time to regenerate, and thus, artificial fertilizers are used. These fertilizers are created by the Haber-Bosch process, which itself consumes enormous amounts of energy. Down the food chain, animals are being bred to live off of corn and corn products, even though they’ve lived for millennia on grass, or insects/small fish (in the case of salmon). These animals, cooped up in inhumane Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), where they’re injected with antibiotics and force fed in order to keep the economic wheels turning, are living a wholly unnatural, manufactured life for the sole purpose of human economic gain. Studies have shown that a grass-fed cow is more nutritious than a steer that’s spent its entire life in a CAFO. You are what you eat, or maybe, you are what the thing you ate ate.
So industrial foods are bad – but what about organic? Turns out, they’re not much better. The label “organic” doesn’t mean much, especially since the lawmakers who defined the term were influenced by farms and industries who opposed the organic movement.
Our last salvation is farmers markets (since we can’t hunt and forage every single meal). Local farms tend to treat animals more humanely, and the crops and animals on the farm work in harmony to provide for each other.
“Whenever I hear people say clean food is expensive, I tell them it’s actually the cheapest food you can buy. That always gets their attention. Then I explain that with our food all of the costs are figured into the price. Society is not bearing the cost of water pollution, of antibiotic resistance, of food-borne illnesses, of crop subsidies, of subsidized oil and water — of all the hidden costs to the environment and the taxpayer that make cheap food seem cheap.”
Joel Salatin, as quoted by Michael Pollan (pg 225)
Pollan also talks a little about the ethics of killing animals for food. I want to read Peter Singer’s Animal Rights to understand his arguments first hand, but according to Pollan, people either avoid confronting the issue (as do vegetarians and vegans) or defend their position (as do omnivores, usually unsuccessfully). My main motivation for becoming pescatarian was health, but the environmental and animal-rights aspects of switching also play a role. I never really thought too deeply on the issue of animal rights, but this book has encouraged me to do so, and I think through the process, I’ll gain a deeper appreciation for not only the animals, but their position in the food chain and their effect on the food I eat.
Overall, this was probably the most thought-provoking book I’ve read in a while, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about food (which should be everyone!!!). Nowadays we are so far removed from the entire industrial food chain that we’ve forgotten where food comes from, and, given that we eat 3+ times a day, it is an issue we ought to remedy.
Peter's Life 