Fit Fare

Each day people make a choice about what they will eat, but most think little about where their food came from or the conditions under which it was produced. Consumers in the United States face a plethora of food items, each with it’s own particular backstory. However, for the most part, people are divorced from the reality of what they eat. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma Michael Pollan looks at the food we eat, where it comes from, it’s effect on our health, the environment, our future and the dilemma for the human omnivore in making a choice.

Many of the topics, such as industrial food production, have been covered before in other books, such as Fast Food Nation. However Pollan approaches his task with the scrutiny of a naturalist, following four different food chains - industrial food production, alternative farming, organic, and hunter/gathering - from beginning to end. The end of each chain he investigates is capped by a representative meal. Appropriately, his meal for the industrial food chain is at McDonald’s, eaten in his car. His meal after visiting an alternative farm where animals are fed on grass ends with him eating the foods produced by that farm. After looking at the organic food industry, he prepares his family a meal from Whole Foods. And finally, he hunts and gathers food in the wild for his dinner.

The most compelling section of the book deals with industrial food production versus alternative farming. He starts at the very beginning, looking at the soil itself and the crops produced to feed animals destined for slaughter, and the impact that has on the environment, the animals, and the consumer. Some of the information about feed lots and the chicken industry have been detailed in other books, but Pollan provides new information that is truly surprising. In particular, he shows how corn dominates the food industry. Basically, every person in the United states, and most of the world, consumes large amounts of corn each day, whether they want to or not. Corn is present in one out of every four items in the average grocery store. Blood samples of Americans show that we are, in Pollan’s words, “a corn chip with two legs”. And food engineers are working tirelessly to ensure that even more corn will be incorporated into our diet each day. Any person reading this book will surely come away viewing corn in an entirely new way.

The consequences of corn’s dominance are sweeping. Besides the health implications of eating food loaded with corn by-products, such as high fructose corn syrup, there is the high energy cost of growing corn. Pollan details how modern food production is powered by huge amounts of oil. One fifth of American petroleum consumption goes towards producing and transporting food. In one of the most fascinating parts of the book, Pollan buys a steer and follows its progress from a brief and idyllic beginning eating grass on a ranch, to the horror of feedlots, and its final destination, the slaughter house. That process, Pollan tells us, will require 35 gallons of oil, nearly a barrel, for a steer to provide meat for someone’s dinner. Multiply that by the huge number of cattle raised for slaughter and the cost of beef is actually much higher than we realize.

In contrast, he looks at a small farm where animals feed primarily on grass and are slaughtered on the premises. The difference from the big industrial farms is striking, from the absence of corn as feed for the animals, the use of natural fertilizers, and the meager amount of petroleum used to run the farm or distribute the products. Some would question if the animals are really better off on such a farm, but I came away feeling that a chicken on a farm like this, that can stretch its wings, walk around and peck at insects was luckier than laying hens imprisoned in battery cages, unable to move, slowly going insane. Reading about the treatment of most animals raised on big industrial farms is depressing, but they are facts that all consumers should know before they buy their meat, poultry or eggs.

But, lest you assume that Pollan wholly endorses alternatives to industrial food production, think again. The section of the book looking at the phenomena of the organic market, led by Whole Foods, raises questions of its own. As the organic market grows larger, it has undergone an industrial trend as well. Many people want organic food, and companies that supply it are not always bucolic farms with happy animals frolicking in the sun. But the organic image is as important to many consumers at a place like Whole Foods as cheap eggs are for a consumer at Safeway. Pollan talks about the image of “Supermarket Pastoral” presented to shoppers at organic grocery stores. As a Whole Foods marketing consultant explains to Pollan, shoppers there want to feel that they are “engaging in an authentic experience, enacting a return to a utopian past with the positive experiences of modernity intact”. Fancy words, but they refer to a person like me, who will only buy cage-free eggs, because the image in my head of hens in battery cages is unacceptable. Problem is, many cage free eggs are produced by hens in only marginally better circumstances, as Pollan discovers when he visits one. At least they can flap their wings and walk a few paces. It’s troubling, but one could always stop eating eggs and meat altogether. It’s the omnivore’s dilemma. And that is the point to this book. I doubt that anyone who reads this book will be able to think about their food choices in the same way.