Books |
The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2)
Michael Pollan
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Non Fiction
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Part 2)
Michael Pollan
Calling Al Gore: By Michael Pollan’s calculations, it takes a third of a gallon of oil to grow a bushel of industrial corn. That’s about 50 gallons of oil an acre. Want to help those terrorists who live off contributions from Arab oil producers? Keep yourself plugged in to the current nutritional hierarchy.
Calling Bobby Kennedy: Corn growers use 100 to 200 pounds of synthetic nitrogen per acre as fertilizer. Not all is absorbed by the plants. During the spring rains, synthetic nitrogen washes into streams and rivers. In Des Moines, this runoff is so serious that the city issues “blue baby alerts” so parents won’t let their kids drink tap water. Why? Here’s Pollan: “The nitrates in the water convert to nitrite, which binds to hemoglobin, compromising the blood’s ability to carry oxygen to the brain.”
Calling all thinking people: Who ever told you “corn-fed” beef was superior? By nature, cows are herbivores! But cows raised on grass need two or three years to reach slaughter weight; with corn and drugs, they can be big enough to kill in 14 months. Along the way, this diet kills some cows. The rest? “Between 15-35% of feedlot cows are found at slaughter to have abcessed livers.” Still hungry for a burger?
In part one of this review, I showed how Michael Pollan convincingly makes the case against “industrial food” built largely on a bed of corn. So what’s the right answer — organic fare? After all, between 2003 and 2006, FDA food safety inspections dropped 47 percent; the government clearly doesn’t give much of a damn about food safety. Better rush off to a caring, organic-only market like Whole Foods.
Not so fast.
In the second key section of the book, Pollan takes readers on a guided tour of “big organic.” He starts with the result — the product at Whole Foods — and works back to the farm. It should be a reassuring trip: “The story on offer in Whole Foods is a pastoral narrative in which farm animals live much as they did in the books we read as children.”
Whole Foods is a giant business. It can’t buy from small, local growers. Most of its produce comes from two organic growers in California — one of them, Earthbound, grows 80% of America’s organic lettuce. Yes, the produce is organic. But it’s hardly “pastoral.”
It’s in the meat department of “organic” markets that you discover how little that word can mean. Did you know that “organic” beef can be raised in an “organic feedlot” — and fed organic high-fructose corn syrup? Did you know that “free range” chicken may be raised in chicken houses? Oh, the birds have access to the great outdoors. It’s just that their shed doors are shut for the first five weeks of their lives. In the final two weeks of their existence, the chickens could venture outside, but force of habit generally keeps them in.
So, again, what’s the answer? The purist in Michael Pollan adores Joel Salatin, a brilliant Virginia farmer who uses nature to do what other farmers can’t achieve without chemicals. In a later chapter, Pollan goes even further and harvests — or kills — his own dinner. There aren’t many farmers like Salatin. There are even fewer of us inclined to “eat what you kill.”
I am a great believer that the intelligence of a smart community is greater than the intelligence of any one writer. And the e-mails I have received from you about this book prove it. Some of you are taking the trouble to find “grass farmers” like Joel Salatin. Others are trying to be vegetarians. And others see the food dilemma as an issue that forces you to examine how you live.
From one of your e-mails:
‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’ absolutely blew my mind, and completely changed the way I buy food. In the intervening two months, I’ve traded my SUV in for a used Honda Civic, purchased a backyard composter, and started shopping at my local farmer’s market, where I also found a wonderful source for grass-fed meat. Although I can’t imagine ever going the vegan route, it is worth the effort to find better things to put in my body and in that of my children.
I have come to view this book as deeply subversive. The more reasonable minds that are exposed to it, the better: the real reasons for the health crisis in this country are not a matter of willpower, but the result of a corn surplus perpetuated by the powerful machine of industrial agriculture.
“Subversive.” Yes. Exactly. Rejecting industrial food is a political and moral act. But beyond defiance lies affirmation. Every day we have more opportunities to buy wholesome food, locally grown by farmers we can meet and know; every day, we have a chance to choose foods that are more likely to nurture us than bring us weight problems, illness and early death.
This doesn’t feel like a political movement. But notice how trans-fats are leaving mass-produced food. Check out the label on Heinz organic ketchup — it uses real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.
Clearly, more and more Americans are rolling back the clock in their personal lives. They want less convenience. More choice. And, though they may not know it, less government involvement in what farmers grow.
It’s an interesting moment. You buy better food because you want to do a good thing for your loved ones. At the same time, you’re standing up for life as it was lived on this planet until the Nixon Administration. It’s a silent protest, a marketplace choice that won’t draw much attention. But by eating a diet that helps you stay smart and fit, you just might be helping to make the most important revolution of our time.
To buy “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” from Amazon.com, click here.
