Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
In Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, the opening sentence is a question millions of people ask every day: "What should we have for dinner?" Apparently the answer is corn and soybeans, which Pollan seems to explain throughout his book, because apparently that's the main ingredient in everyone's food these days. Gone are the days where farms grew vegetables and livestock for food, where farms and farmers were self sufficient enough to not only produce food for themselves, but for a few others as well. Today things have drastically changed on the farm front. Today, our cultural eating habits have gone through a violent change. We constantly change our food pyramid to fit our needs, not the other way around. This change occurs every few years or so when another fad comes along that tells us what we should be eating. We as a people wonder about the French paradox ( eating very rich foods yet are still healthy), when what we should be worried about is the American paradox- "notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthy." Herein lies the dilemma. As omnivores we can pretty much eat anything, but what should we actually be eating for beneficial health? There are so many choices of food to choose from that now we are overwhelmed with the plethora of choices and are filled with anxiety, thus creating the omnivore's dilemma. And the government likes it this way! The biggest offender is the supermarket with its gleaming aisles and multitudes of choices for the omnivore. The "abundance of choices seems to deepen the omnivore's dilemma, giving us all sorts of new problems and things to worry about." This is their way of controlling the people, not the people's way of controlling the food industry. There are three principle food chains that sustain us today, the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. These three chains link us together to the earth and sun.
In the chapter called The Farm, Pollan explains to us how corn and farming in general have changed things forever. Most of the farms in Iowa produce corn and soybeans. Only 2% of the land produces the original tall grass prairie.It's now corn..row after row after row. Pollan describes planting corn "like covering a page with the same sentence over and over again." Hybrid corn is the only corn to plant. It withstands winds and doesn't fall over, has thick, sturdy stalks, and one can over plant without any worries since each hybrid kernel is exactly the same, taking in the same amounts of water and sunlight. Pollan says "this is the truest form of socialism. The corn grows everywhere." Due to the corn industry, the farmers and the land has also changed. With all the corn growth, other plants and animals have fallen to the wayside, as well as the people themselves. Farmers can't sustain their lifestyle anymore with only corn being produced. Now the animals can't flourish due to the lack of land, and neither can the people because there's no food to eat. All the corn crops are grown for the government. It's just corn and soybeans, miracle crops that go into just about all foods cross America. Farmland isn't even fertilized with animal's manure anymore. It's fertilized with ammonium nitrate, a leftover product from World War II days. The government had a surplus and needed to do something with it, so they tried it on the crops, and they intensified and flourished. The creation of synthetic nitrogen changed farming forever. Now farmers were guaranteed prosperous crops to sell for money. But now farmers use extra to have added protection for their crops. But what's happening now is the surplus synthetic fertilizer is washing off the plants, running into the soil and evaporating, producing acid rain, contributing to global warming. The rest finds its way into city's drinking water. That's real unhealthy! In the end it doesn't matter. What's important to the big companies and government is the yield. It's all about how many bushels can be produced. The more the merrier, and the more money in big government's pockets.
Long gone are farmers farming to help sustain the food chain. Over time that food chain has consistently been restructured, retooled, and redesigned to fit what we want it to fit, not what's healthy. We now have designer food pyramids, not food pyramids designed for a long life and healthy lifestyle. These farms are similar to the ones we saw in the movie Food, Inc. Farms aren't growing crops and livestock anymore. It's all about the science of food production. As the Tyson chicken farmer said in the Food, Inc. movie..."We produce food not chickens." I believe we don't have "real" farms anymore. I believe we now only have food factories on land that make their way into people's lives, creating the omnivore dilemma with too many choices. If there weren't so many choices, maybe we'd have a country full of healthier citizens. What do I know, I'm still trying to figure out what we're having for dinner tonight
In Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, the opening sentence is a question millions of people ask every day: "What should we have for dinner?" Apparently the answer is corn and soybeans, which Pollan seems to explain throughout his book, because apparently that's the main ingredient in everyone's food these days. Gone are the days where farms grew vegetables and livestock for food, where farms and farmers were self sufficient enough to not only produce food for themselves, but for a few others as well. Today things have drastically changed on the farm front. Today, our cultural eating habits have gone through a violent change. We constantly change our food pyramid to fit our needs, not the other way around. This change occurs every few years or so when another fad comes along that tells us what we should be eating. We as a people wonder about the French paradox ( eating very rich foods yet are still healthy), when what we should be worried about is the American paradox- "notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthy." Herein lies the dilemma. As omnivores we can pretty much eat anything, but what should we actually be eating for beneficial health? There are so many choices of food to choose from that now we are overwhelmed with the plethora of choices and are filled with anxiety, thus creating the omnivore's dilemma. And the government likes it this way! The biggest offender is the supermarket with its gleaming aisles and multitudes of choices for the omnivore. The "abundance of choices seems to deepen the omnivore's dilemma, giving us all sorts of new problems and things to worry about." This is their way of controlling the people, not the people's way of controlling the food industry. There are three principle food chains that sustain us today, the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. These three chains link us together to the earth and sun.
In the chapter called The Farm, Pollan explains to us how corn and farming in general have changed things forever. Most of the farms in Iowa produce corn and soybeans. Only 2% of the land produces the original tall grass prairie.It's now corn..row after row after row. Pollan describes planting corn "like covering a page with the same sentence over and over again." Hybrid corn is the only corn to plant. It withstands winds and doesn't fall over, has thick, sturdy stalks, and one can over plant without any worries since each hybrid kernel is exactly the same, taking in the same amounts of water and sunlight. Pollan says "this is the truest form of socialism. The corn grows everywhere." Due to the corn industry, the farmers and the land has also changed. With all the corn growth, other plants and animals have fallen to the wayside, as well as the people themselves. Farmers can't sustain their lifestyle anymore with only corn being produced. Now the animals can't flourish due to the lack of land, and neither can the people because there's no food to eat. All the corn crops are grown for the government. It's just corn and soybeans, miracle crops that go into just about all foods cross America. Farmland isn't even fertilized with animal's manure anymore. It's fertilized with ammonium nitrate, a leftover product from World War II days. The government had a surplus and needed to do something with it, so they tried it on the crops, and they intensified and flourished. The creation of synthetic nitrogen changed farming forever. Now farmers were guaranteed prosperous crops to sell for money. But now farmers use extra to have added protection for their crops. But what's happening now is the surplus synthetic fertilizer is washing off the plants, running into the soil and evaporating, producing acid rain, contributing to global warming. The rest finds its way into city's drinking water. That's real unhealthy! In the end it doesn't matter. What's important to the big companies and government is the yield. It's all about how many bushels can be produced. The more the merrier, and the more money in big government's pockets.
Long gone are farmers farming to help sustain the food chain. Over time that food chain has consistently been restructured, retooled, and redesigned to fit what we want it to fit, not what's healthy. We now have designer food pyramids, not food pyramids designed for a long life and healthy lifestyle. These farms are similar to the ones we saw in the movie Food, Inc. Farms aren't growing crops and livestock anymore. It's all about the science of food production. As the Tyson chicken farmer said in the Food, Inc. movie..."We produce food not chickens." I believe we don't have "real" farms anymore. I believe we now only have food factories on land that make their way into people's lives, creating the omnivore dilemma with too many choices. If there weren't so many choices, maybe we'd have a country full of healthier citizens. What do I know, I'm still trying to figure out what we're having for dinner tonight
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