The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

It's always a good sign to me when I just can't stop talking about things I learn while reading a book. It's also a good sign when a book makes me want to change my life, or at least understand something about my life better. The Omnivore's Dilemma made my want to find a small, closed-loop farm where I could buy all my food from now on. Alas, I haven't quite gotten there, but I am much more aware of what I eat and where it comes from, even as someone who was very thoughtful about the environmental impact of my food before reading the book. The writing is thorough but approachable, and I enjoyed the structure of the book looking at three different food systems.

I did not like this book as much as I expected. The first section was almost unbearable - a long, depressing, science lesson about corn. The rest of the book was much better. I especially enjoyed the hunting/foraging section's vivid details and interesting discussion of animals rights. Basically the purpose of this book is to horrify and shame the American public, and in that regard it is pretty successful (it certainly worked on me). Is it a good read, though? Meh.

At least for me personally, this was a really, really important book to read. I've been thinking a lot lately about how I want to be in the world–what choices I want to make, where my priorities are. Pollan does a truly stellar job of exploring the complexities of the choices we are confronted with regarding food in this bountiful country, not to mention how to reconcile the industrial with the idealistic in a way that is practical yet honorable. The history of the evolution of humans and domesticated plants and animals was relatively new territory for me, but certainly much appreciated, his general conversational tone never allows the topic to be dumbed-down yet keeps it accessible, and his food writing is often sublime. I think it's rare to read a book and be conscious, after reading it, of having what you learned affect decisions in your day-to-day life. The Omnivore's Dilemma has certainly done that for me, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in thinking a little more deeply about food.

It's 2010. By now you know about CAFOs, Big Agriculture, and destructive government subsidies. You'll chug DDT before touching HFCS. You think about your food... or you think you do. Is there anything you can learn from Omnivore's Dilemma? Any reason to read it? Well, yes. Do you know the carbon-sequestering adaptation that makes corn so efficient? Why the “NPK mentality” is so (seductively) dangerous? What about alternatives: what does “organic” mean? There may be much in here that you already know, but I'm confident that there's much you don't. More importantly, this is stuff we need to be reminded of, stuff we need to think about regularly.

What a powerful tool the knowledge in this book is. How many of us have really ever considered where our food comes from, what is in it, and who we are allowing to determine what is “good” to eat and what isn't? I had just begun to explore these questions when I picked up a copy of this book. After reading it, I definitely have a better understanding of exactly what goes into (or doesn't go into) our “standard” fast food meal along with pretty much any processed food you find in every grocery store. I am very much moved towards the idea that being extremely conscious of anything we put into our bodies as nourishment is of the utmost importance.

I don't think I will ever be able to look at a supermarket, or fast food restaurant the same way every again. Which is definitely in my best interest, along with the interests of my family.

Here's to hoping that the information I've acquired from this book will help me change my ideas, and my family's ideas of what “good” food is, and what we all choose to eat.

Oh my goodness, this was one of the most interesting, best-written books I've ever read. Not best book about food, just best book. So smart. It really made me think about the food I eat and where it comes from. But it was also funny and human. Pollan's voice–as a interested person really trying to find out where his food comes from–is unique and helps navigate through statistics and (gross) anecdotes.

Food: one of the three most important things that human beings need to survive. It's usually the first thing mentioned in that all-important three-item list of what humans need in order to be able to live - the other two are clothing and shelter, in that order. The list is often amended to include water before food, but it was the original three-item list that was drilled into me since grade school (though sometimes religion classes will insist that God is more important than those three, since the teachers insisted that it was God that provides them). Animals need to eat, after all, and humanity is no different in this regard.

It's one thing, though, to say that one must eat; oftentimes, the more interesting - and more pressing - question is what one eats, especially in the context of everyday living. Does one go for cheap fast-food, or splurge a little for a salad? Does one order food to be delivered, or try to cook something instead? Vegetables or meat? Butter or margarine? Non-fat or full-cream milk? Sugar or no sugar? No fat, low fat, or regular fat content? The decisions to be made when considering the question “What to eat?” can be pretty confusing and overwhelming if one considers the full implication of the question. This issue is something Michael Pollan addresses in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, and is also what he calls the problem omnivorous humans have when confronted with the wide range of choices available to them when it comes to food.

In order to answer “What to eat?” Pollan realizes that before he can answer that question he needs first to find the answer to: “What am I eating?” In some ways the questions are similar, but at a fundamental level, they are not. The former is simply a question of choosing from a wide selection of possible foods; the latter requires a greater amount of involvement in one's food far beyond simply choosing what to have. In order to answer that question to the fullest, Pollan decided to structure his quest for answers around four meals: one from a drive-through fast-food joint; another by cooking a meal made from ingredients from Whole Foods; yet another by spending a week and then cooking and having a meal at a “beyond organic” place called Polyface Farm; and finally, by cooking a meal made up of food he either hunted or foraged himself. Pollan's plan was to trace the most important ingredients of each meal before they ended up on his plate, thus figuring out precisely what it was he was putting into his body. The answers, of course, were not as comfortable as they might seem on the surface.

Now, to be fair, not all of Pollan's book was revelatory: a lot of what he talks about regarding how animals are processed industrially I've already read about in Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. What I did find interesting, though, was how Pollan pointed out the predominance of corn in processed food, and not in a form that the average shopper in a grocery store would recognize, either. By untangling the mysterious ingredient lists on the labels of common foods like soda, Pollan reveals that almost all processed food contains corn in some way, shape, or form. He also points out that lots of animals are in some ways corn, too, since many animal feeds used in commercial animal production are corn-based. He then reveals what this dependence on corn is doing to the farmers that grow it, and from there the health of the animals that eat it and on to the people who consume all that corn-based food and drink. He concludes his meditation on the corn-based industrial food chain (and corn-based economy) of the US while eating a fast-food meal with his family, consumed in a car while driving.

Reading this portion - the first fourth of Pollan's book - is uncomfortable, to say the least, mostly because I know I consume quite a bit of that corn-based processed food Pollan describes. It also makes me look askance at the meat I've been eating. I used to imagine that animal feeds in the Philippines were rice-based - that's what's easily available, after all. But now that I think about it, the country still has to import rice, so I doubt any farmers are going to waste rice by giving it to animals. I now have the sinking feeling - more like a sinking certainty - that the animal feeds in this country are corn-based after all. And although it may have very little to do with the greater issue of what's going into the pork and beef and chicken I eat on a regular basis, I can't help but think of all the soda I used to drink, and wonder if the subsequent weight gain was in any way connected to the amount of corn (in the form of high fructose corn syrup) sweetening the drink. I haven't given up soda entirely, but I've stopped drinking so much of it, and I've actually managed to lose some of the weight I gained. After reading Pollan's book, I rather like to think the weight loss, however minimal, is because of the amount of corn I've cut out of my diet.

The second and third parts of The Omnivore's Dilemma are actually kind of linked, because they're both a response to the question of “organic food.” The first part of the book is about industrial processed food, and after reading that I think the obvious response is to say: “Well, all right, what if I were to go organic? Would that mean I can avoid all this high fructose corn syrup and mysterious preservatives in my food?” Pollan reveals, however, that the word “organic” is now fraught with complications, since the question of how it's defined is no longer what it used to be. In the sixties and seventies, “organic” had a very specific meaning: food produced without chemical pesticides or fertilizers, and with minimal processing. This is still the meaning that the average eater still has in his or her mind when he or she thinks of the word.

Unfortunately, this is no longer what “organic” means, especially if one sees it on the label of a can of soup or a box of cereal in a grocery store. In fact, the so-called “organic” soup or cereal in a grocery store might be made from “organic” ingredients in the sense that the wheat or carrots were not sprayed with chemical pesticides or given chemical fertilizers while they were being grown, but the subsequent processing they undergo is really no different from their industrially-grown cousins undergo. To be sure, not using chemical pesticides and fertilizers is a good thing, especially for the environment, but only marginally, and the health gains are actually minimal compared to what one would get from industrially-grown raw materials. As for so-called “organic meat,” well, it's really not that different from industrially-raised meat, with the exception that the cows and the pigs and the chickens are given feed based on organically grown corn. In the culminating meal, involving a home-cooked meal made from produce and meat bought from Whole Foods, Pollan comments that, while there was something to be said about the taste factor when it comes to what he calls “industrial organic,” the gains are in fact minimal: the industrial-organic food system actually costs more in terms of petrochemical usage than the industrial food system that he first tackled.

So where, then, should one go if one is looking for the original meaning of organic? The answer to this question leads Pollan to a farm all the way out in Swoope, Virginia, called Polyface Farm, which practices something called “beyond organic:” a term adopted by the owner of the farm, Joel Salatin, and other like-minded folks in order to distinguish themselves from the industrial-organic movement currently embraced by the mainstream. At Polyface Farm, Pollan discovers food grown and raised according to the original spirit of the word “organic:” a farm that operates like an ecosystem, with the plants reliant on the animals, who are in their turn reliant on the plants, and as minimal input in terms of animal feed as the farmer can possibly get. Pollan also confronts the reality of having to kill an animal before eating it when he has to slaughter a chicken.

This is the first time Pollan has to confront the mortality of his food. In the US this is very common: most people never give a second thought to the fact that their pork chop used to belong on a live pig. This is the same problem a growing number of Filipinos have, though there's still a large part of the population that's very aware of the fact that in order for one to eat barbecued pork ribs or deep-fried chicken thighs, someone had to kill a pig or a chicken first. I belong to that section of people: I've witnessed a chicken go from walking around to having its throat slit and its feathers plucked and its innards cleaned in preparation for the cooking pot, so seeing an animal die so it can feed me does not bother me in the least. As long as it wasn't someone's precious pet; it's not going to go extinct any time soon; it was killed humanely; and it was raised well, I will cheerfully consume a chicken - or any animal, for that matter - with very little to no weight on my conscience.

It is at this point that Pollan addresses the issue of animal rights and veganism and vegetarianism - and does so admirably well, defending the position of that large section of humanity that likes meat a little too much to want to give it up. It's a rather involved portion of the book, since Pollan addresses this issue in light of killing the chicken, and it takes reading that portion to really understand it. I will say this, though: Pollan does a good job reminding his readers that a single example of a species is not the entirety of the species itself (a single chicken as opposed to the entire species of Domesticated Chicken, or Gallus gallus, to use the scientific name), and that domesticated species would actually go extinct without humans (except the pig, and he explains why). He pretty much takes the same stand I do: as long as it was raised and killed humanely, and is not about to go extinct, there really shouldn't be any guilt at all in consuming an animal - especially if one has already seen an animal killed for just this reason and so knows exactly what it means to take an animal's life to feed oneself. If one does feel this guilt, however, then one is free to go ahead and go vegan or vegetarian - just don't force the entirety of humanity to adopt the same practice (and don't do it to your cats, for heaven's sake!).

The final fourth of the book is, quite possibly, the most intriguing. In it, Pollan decides to go take the shortest route to his food, which also happens to be the oldest: to hunt his own meat and gather his own vegetables - or mushrooms, rather. He shoots a wild pig (which causes an even greater emotional crisis than his slaughter of the chicken did), and goes mushroom-hunting with a few friends (this part is particularly interesting, if only for the insight into the culture of mushroom hunters), using everything to cook a pretty spectacular meal. The conclusion he comes to is this: the last meal, by and far, was the most difficult in terms of time and skill to create, and yet it was the most satisfying, mostly because he knew where everything had come from, and what each part of the meal had undergone before it got to the table. On the opposite end of the scale, the fast-food meal, Pollan finds that while it was, hands-down, the easiest to obtain, and also the cheapest, it was the least satisfying of all four meals. This leads him to his conclusion that eating a meal is not just about the taste of the food: it's about everything else that brought that food to the table, and having a true awareness of where each part of the meal came from adds a certain special dimension to the food, and to the act of consuming that food, as well. And this, Pollan says, more than any fancy diets or medical studies, is what people should really take into consideration when eating and preparing food.

Overall, The Omnivore's Dilemma is an incredible, fascinating attempt to answer the question “What am I eating?” which then answers the question “What to eat?” Pollan's language is clear and lucid, and the narration of the book is entertaining even when it tackles some of the more scientific aspects of Pollan's search for answers. The last fourth of the book is, in my opinion, the most entertaining, and if it elicits cravings for wild mushrooms or fresh berries, then that's only a sign of the effectiveness of Pollan's prose. Most important, however, is that this book makes the reader ask questions, and that, I think, is precisely what Pollan hopes to do - and in writing the book, offer some possible interesting answers.

Oh wow! I was searching for a book on ecological land use and the price of agriculture on our land and for the environment and boy did I find it!

A book I certainly would recommend everyone to read, though, I do give permission to skip over some of the passages. Pollan deftly deeps into the details of the Industrial, Organic and Pastoral food chains, with “fun” facts about each system that almost had me underlining a passage each page.
One example; corn has become such a cheap commodity, we are putting it in everything, most importantly in animal feed. But did you know that cows are not made to eat corn, and that their rumen (the organ which turns the cow's food into protein/gains) will become slimy, causing bloat and the suffocation of the cow, as well as turning it acidic, which makes the E. Coli bacteria (that are present in 80% of cows), resistant to acidic environments so that our digestive system is no longer acidic enough to get rid of these bacteria?

Pollan interweaves his personal story in between these facts, going to visit feed lots, pastoral farmers and going on a hunting&gathering mission. At the beginning of the book I enjoyed these in between passages, to take a break from information overload. However the entire last chapter is on the ethical dilemma of killing & eating animals and the experience of eating food and was a bit to dreamy/spiritual for my liking. So, I really encourage everyone to at least read the first part, I really enjoyed the Pastoral part, but only read the last part if you're more focused on the spiritual/ethical dilemma.

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

An absolute must-read. I was already a fan of Michael from How to Change Your Mind, but this book highlights his style even more. He goes deep as a research journalist would and then makes a great story out of it.

The chapter about corn was absolutely eye-opening. I had no clue that all these things could be made from corn And not only can they be, but it's now the most cost-efficient way of doing it. That alone broke my mind.

It also makes abundantly clear that labels like “organic” mean almost absolutely nothing. It's a slightly different way of industrial production. But there are practical ways to produce food as they do on Polyface Farm. They raise cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and even rabbits in harmony with the animals' natural instincts and rotational grazing techniques.

Then there was this:
>A one-pound box of prewashed lettuce contains 80 calories of food energy. Growing, chilling, washing, packaging, and transporting that box of organic salad to a plate on the East Coast takes more than 4,600 calories of fossil fuel energy, or 57 calories of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food. These figures would be about 4 percent higher if the salad were not grown organically.

Pollan also spends a lot of time thinking about whether we should eat meat or not. While the topic is (and will be for the foreseeable future) controversial, he outlines some great points why we should indeed eat it. But not in the quantities and techniques we mostly do now. CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) must go.

>People who care about animals should be working to ensure that the ones they eat don't suffer, and that their deaths are swift and painless—for animal welfare, in others words, rather than rights.

I'd categorize this book as “slow read” apropos “slow food”. Take your time, and you'll enjoy it more and learn a lot.