Omnivore's Dilemma

I picked up Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivores Dilemma” in the Minneapolis airport last week. I passed it on the Mrs Vache Folle because I knew she was between books and would like it, so I haven’t been able to finish it yet. I only got halfway through it and loved it, and Mrs VF gives it a rave review.

The book is a fascinating in depth look at our food supply. Pollan starts with the industrial food chain and follows corn from the field to the hoof or foot or what have you to the consumer. The biggest lesson I learned was that when we eat corn, we are pretty much eating petroleum. It takes a lot of oil to make corn. In fact, it costs more to grow corn than farmers can get when they sell it. Even the federal subsidy doesn’t cover it, so farmers strive to get more yield and drive the prices down even further. They lose money on every bushel but make up for it in volume. Federal policy in corn is to promote cheap food. The obesity epidemic is one outcome.

Another lesson I learned was that cattle in feedlots get very sick because they aren’t designed to gorge on corn all day. The corn makes them ill, so they have to have massive doses of antibiotics. They wallow around in their own shit much of the time, and the shit becomes a pollutant rather than a fertilizer. E coli abounds in the feedlot environment, and the cattle’s rumen is unable to deal with it because of changes in the pH arising from the corn diet.

The second part of the book deals with the organic industry and sustainable farming. It turns out that the “organic” label is no guarantee that the food is not the product of an enormous factory farm. Also, the terms “free range” or “cage free” don’t necessarily entail green pastures and wide open spaces. Even Whole Foods buys from the bigger farms, and I’m looking for products that are raised in a sustainable manner, even if the farmer uses some chemicals. It’s the structure and organization of farming that I’m most interested in, not the fact that the food meets certain rather loosy goosy federal standards so as to get the “organic” label. Anyway, I didn’t finish that part yet so I’ll probably learn some more lessons.

The last part concerns foraging.

I heartily recommend this book and aim to finish it.