The Omnivore's Dilemma
Review by Lynea Newcomer
The Omnivore's Dilemma
by Michael Pollan
Penguin
$26.95
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Walking into the grocery store to buy a week’s worth of sustenance, I am presented with various alternatives in price and growth or processing methods. I usually opt for the more expensive organic items due to the info I’ve read on what pesticides and herbicides can do to a living organism’s health. The taste is better, and I consider it a health insurance payment of sorts.
More recently I’ve started looking at the place of production or distribution on the label. Amazing! Look yourself sometime. In fact, the more I think about the distance food travels to arrive in Hailey, ID, the more Michael Pollan’s new book makes me interested enough to really research exactly what it is I am eating.
The Omnivore’s Dilemma is Pollan’s attempt to uncover the origins of three different meals he consumes: a meal at McDonald’s, a meal eaten on a Virginian farm, and a meal made of items he gathered and hunted for himself in Northern California. During the course of his research, he made visits to the farmers who grew the Iowan corn that fed the beef that becomes the McDonald’s hamburger. He labors with the Virginian who later joins him in eating food all grown in that area. And third, Pollan tags along on numerous excursions, including mushroom and wild pig hunts, in his attempts to hunt and gather his food.
Rounding out his findings during these journeys, Pollan researches the impressive history of corn in U.S. agriculture. Corn’s enormous role in industrial production equals inclusion in over 45,000 items in our grocery stores. That includes not only all the food items you probably just thought of, but also things like toothpaste and the shine on magazine covers. He also gives us an incredible account of the production of grass-fed beef in a smaller-scaled farm environment which accommodates all elements of production in a closed circle of produce and waste. Another important topic Pollan covers is that of industrial organics, and that industry’s impact on the environment.
He concludes, “however we choose to feed ourselves, we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world’. Food for thought. What are you eating?
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