Finished: The Omnivore's Dilemma

Title: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Author: Michael Pollan

Start Date: 13 June 2010

End Date: 28 July 2010

What I Liked About It: Nearly everything. I think the most compelling thing about this book is that it is not a story book; it is primarily an information book. But the information is dispensed in a way that makes it feel like a story. Each of the four meals that were followed from beginning to end HAD a story, just like every person's life, and no detail of that meal's conception was spared.

The part of the book that absolutely blew my mind was the second half of the second part of the book; Pollan partitions the book into approximate thirds. The first part was about the industrial style of creating and consuming food. The second, perhaps longer than the first and third, tells about the organic movement -- more specifically, Big Organic earlier, and Small Organic later. The final section is the story of Pollan's brief foray into the world of Hunting and Gathering.

I was completely taken aback by the Small Organic part. Pollan visited Polyface Farm in Swoope, VA, which is run and maintained primarily by farmer Joel Salatin and his son Daniel. The farm is entirely self-sustaining. Every product that the farm creates (lots of produce, beef, pork, poultry, etc.) plays more parts on the farm than just its meat. For example, in the winter, the cows are kept inside a barn, and instead of cleaning up their manure, fresh hay and shavings are laid down so that the manure can become fertilizer. In addition, corn kernels are laid down with the shavings and allowed to ferment; pigs are later brought into the mix, being allowed to forage for the alcoholic corn kernels. Of course they don't know it, but their foraging aerates what has become a compost, making it healthy fertilizer which can be used to fertilize the Salatins' crops. Everything is as intertwined as this. Best of all, Polyface Farm has a transparency policy -- that is, potential customers are allowed, and encouraged, to tour the farm and see any part of the production of any of their foods, at any time. That includes the humane slaughter of the poultry chickens. (I am planning a trip down to Virginia with my mother to visit the farm.)

What I Didn't Like About It: Pollan uses the word "boon" about fifteen times throughout the book. I got sick of it after a while. Also, at least twice he used the phrase "comprised of," which is one of my biggest pet peeves in writing. That's all.

Would I Recommend It? That depends. Depends on who you are and what your opinions about food are. The way Pollan sees it, there are three types of food production -- industrial, organic, and hunter-gatherer. Believe it or not, most of what is sold in mainstream supermarkets is industrial. This essentially means that almost everything includes some corn product, because of the surplus in commodity corn. Often the corn is in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup, but there are plenty of other ingredients -- maltodextrin, fructose, ascorbic acid, citric acid, etc. -- that are found in almost all foods.

Organic, in its two categories, is Big and Small. Salatin's farm is an example of Small Organic, meaning grown without pesticides and synthetic growth hormones; his animals are fed what evolution determined they eat, not what the economy determined. Big Organic is what is sold in places like Whole Foods -- technically, by the FDA's standards, that food is considered to be organic. However, the FDA has very loose standards, and lots of that "organic" food is not what we imagine it to be.

So, would I recommend this book? If you are happy eating industrially and being ignorant of ingredient labels (not saying that is a bad thing), no, I would not recommend this book. It was the catalyst for a huge change in my own view of food; I was already trying to eat things that were, as I put it, "from the earth," with as few ingredients on the package as possible, and hopefully all of them natural. The Omnivore's Dilemma gave me the information I need to do that in a healthy and a socially beneficial way, supporting local farmers who grow organically and in season. So if you are of that mindset, looking for ways to be healthier and committed to doing it, absolutely. It is a slow read, but certainly not boring; slow only because it is so dense with information.

Fantastic book. Definitely top five.

Well, I guess that is all....

Accomplishedly,

Allie.

Thoughts.

Still working through The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's a great, informational book and is totally changing the way I think and feel about food. Here are some words that have provoked my thoughts:

"Harvey Levenstein, a Canadian historian who has written two fascinating social histories of American foodways, neatly sums up the beliefs that have guided the American way of eating since the heyday of John Harvey Kellog: 'that taste is not a true guide to what should be eaten; that one should not simply eat what one enjoys; that the important components of food cannot be seen or tasted, but are discernible only in scientific laboratories; and that experimental science has produced the rules of nutrition that will prevent illness and encourage longevity.' The power of any orthodoxy resides in its ability not to seem like one and, at least to a 1906 or 2006 American, these beliefs don't seem strange or controversial." (p. 300)

and

"...that orthodoxy regards certain tasty foods as poisons (carbs now, fats then), failing to appreciate that how we eat, and even how we feel about eating, may in the end be just as important as what we eat. THe French eat all sorts of supposedly unhealthy foods, but they do it according to a strict and stable set of rules: They eat small portions and don't go back for seconds; they don't snack; they seldom eat alone; and communal meals are long, leisurely affairs. In other words, the French culture of food successfully negotiates the omnivore's dilemma, allowing the FRench to enjoy their meals without ruining their health." (pp. 300-301)

That's all.

Thoughtfully,

-A.