HW 7

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Introduction:

Precis: In American, a national eating disorder seems to have left us bewildered about what exactly we should eat - the more healthy we try to be, the less healthy we actually are. This is because we are omnivores (we can eat meat and plants),  and because we have such a variety of foods to choose from, we don't know what to choose - unlike other animals, we aren't hardwired to want a particular food. This book is about three main food chains that connect us to what we eat: the industrial food chain, the organic food chain, and the hunter-gatherer food chain.

Gems:

"...Such a culture would be shocked to find out that there are other countries, such as Italy and France, that decide their dinner questions on the basis of such quaint and unscientific criteria as pleasure and tradition, eat all manner of "unhealthy" foods, and, lo and behold, wind up actually being healthier and happier in their eating then we are."

"The Koala doesn't worry about what to eat: If it looks and smells like a eucalyptus leaf, it must be dinner. The Koala's culinary preferences are hardwired in it's genes. But for omnivores like us, a vast amount of brain space and time must be devoted to figuring out which of all the many potential dishes nature lays on are safe to eat."

Thoughts:

Throughout the introduction, he seems to be saying that food is important, and that Omnivores are supposed to put a lot of thought into it. However, he mentions that people in the US eat a lot of fast food, which would imply that they aren't thinking about the food that much, but then says that we put a lot of time into being healthy, which would imply we do think about what we eat. I think his point is simply that we don't think about food the right way - we either don't think about it at all or we think that we don't know what to eat and therefore need the help of experts.

Chapter 1:

Precis: Supermarkets in the United States have an astounding variety of different species in the produce department, and the meat department. However, almost everything else throughout these stores is composed of, made with, or contains some variation on a single plant - Corn. Throughout history, corn has been prevalent in people's diets, mostly because it is easy to grow (and genetically modify) and versatile. However, because of this, the main thing we eat (in various forms) is corn.

Gems:

"Not very long ago, an eater didn't need a journalist to answer theses questions ("what am I eating?"). The fact that today one so often does suggests a pretty good start on a working definition of industrial food: Any food whose provenance is so complex or obscure that it requires expert help to ascertain."

"For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and xanthan gum, read: corn." 

Thoughts:

The second quote (see above) surprised me - I didn't know that all those ingredients were made of corn. It also reminded me of a cartoon I saw in Mad magazine, in an issue from the eighties: A woman standing at the supermarket, looking at a shopping list. As opposed to the list reading "milk, eggs, bread", it listed maltodextrin, soy lecithin, and maltose.

This chapter also mentions how soft drinks that used to be made with sugar are now made with HFCS. I had heard about this before, and I did an "experiment" to see if Coke made with real sugar tasted any different then the regular kind made with corn syrup. The kind I got was in a glass bottle, and seemed fizzier then regular coke, but maybe that was just since there wasn't sweetness covering up the taste of the actual soda. The other thing I noticed was that once I swallowed it, I didn't taste it anymore. This was different then the regular soda, the taste of which seemed to linger, as if the corn syrup had coated my teeth and tongue.


Chapter 2:

Precis: George Naylor is a farmer in Iowa, where he can grows more corn every year (has a higher "yield," meaning he can plant more corn in the same amount of space), but can still barely make a living. Back in the fifties and sixties, a farm in Iowa would have been more diversified: aside from corn, there would have been cows, chickens, hay, oats, potatoes,  apples, pears, and more. However, by the eighties, it was cheaper to feed animals corn then grass, so more and more farmers started growing corn (which also became easier to grow because of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which eliminates the need for legumes), and now that is the only thing most of them grow. Because there is so much corn (which makes the price of it go down, year after year), new ways are found to use it (and the government subsidizes it), which creates the need for farmers to grow even more corn, even though they are selling it for less money then it costs to grow it.

Gems:

"...Naylor, raising nothing but corn and soybeans on a fairly typical farm, is so productive that he is, in effect, feeding some 129 Americans. Measured in terms of output per worker, American farmers like Naylor are the most productive humans who have ever lived."

"Beginning in the fifties and sixties, the flood tide of cheap corn made it profitable to fatten cattle on feedlots instead of on grass....Iowa livestock farmers couldn't compete with the factory-farmed animals...in their place, the farmers planted one crop: Corn."

Thoughts:

Cows aren't really supposed to eat corn. How does eating it have an effect on their health, and the health of the people that eat them?

Corn can't be everything we eat - what about other vegetables? Are they not produced in the US, and instead imported from other countries? Or are they simply not produced on such a large scale?

Chapter 3:

Precis: In the 1850s, the invention of the grain elevator changed the way corn was sent out across the country: as opposed to each sack bearing the name of the state it was grown in, all corn grown is essentially the same, which means that the only thing farmers now have to focus on is making more and more of it (as opposed to being careful of it's quality). Farmers are paid by both the USDA and the US government, which means that the price of the corn gets lower and lower, meaning more and more needs to be planted to make up for the reduced price. This corn goes straight to the companies that use it (Cargill, ADM), where it is used to feed animals.

Gems:

''Before the1850's, corn was bought and sold in burlap sacks. More often then not the sacks bore the name of the farm where the corn had been grown. You could follow a sack from a farm in Iowa to the mill in Manhattan where it was ground into meal, or to the dairy in Brooklyn where it was fed to a cow....for better or for worse that burlap sack linked a corn buyer anywhere in America with a particular farmer cultivating a particular patch of the earth.''

''The place where most of these corn kernels end up - about three of every five - is on the American factory farm, a place that could not exist without them.'

Thoughts:

I thought it was odd that the two farmers in chapter 2 both had different ways of growing corn (one kind was genetically modified, one kind wasn't) and both thought their way was superior, but in the end, all of the corn ends up in the exact same place.

Again - how does eating corn affect the animals that wouldn't normally eat it?

Chapter 4:


Precis:

Cows used to be raised on farms and fed grass, but now they live on CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) and eat corn (which is mixed with lots of antibiotics to keep the cows from getting sick from the corn, and with "beef tallow", which is basically cow fat). This has many environmental implications, the most pressing of which is that the manure the cows make doesn't have anywhere to go (it used to be used to fertilize crops, which are now fertilized with petroleum). There are also many health implications, both for the cows (whose stomachs are meant to process grass, not corn - doing so can cause illness) and for humans (who eat the unhealthy cows).

Gems:

"How much petroleum it takes to grow my steer to slaughter weight: Assuming he continues to eat 25 pounds of corn per day and reaches a weight of twelve hundred pounds, he will have consumed in his lifetime the equivalent of thirty-five gallons of oil - nearly a barrel."

"I was curious to know what feedlot beef would taste like now, if I could taste the corn, or even, since taste is as much a matter of what's in the head as much as it is about molecules dancing on the tongue, some hint of the petroleum."

Thoughts:

This makes me glad I don't eat that much beef, as it seems illogical and somewhat dangerous to eat an animal that has been fed something it isn't supposed to eat, and that has stood in it's own manure for a significant part of it's life.

Why is it so important that the cows get fat quickly, and thus need to be fed corn as opposed to grass? Considering the impact that this has on the environment and our health, wouldn't it benefit everyone to just wait a few more months?

Chapter 5:

Precis:

Today, Americans consume a huge amount of corn each year, but little of it is consumed in the form of an actual ear of corn - most is consumed in the form of corn syrup, xanthan gum, dextrose, fructose, maltose, corn starch, and more (not to mention, the animals we eat also eat corn). Each part of a corn kernel is used, and the entire thing is broken down until it is nothing more then a sum of it's nutrients: a gram of sugar, or a carbohydrate. It is then built into processed foods, which have vitamins and minerals added to give an illusion of health. However, this has made it cheaper for food companies to make processed food then to sell actual food, because processed food can be sold for a much higher price then the ingredients that are in it, and it has a much longer shelf life.

Gems:

"Natural ingredients, the company pointed out, are a "mixture of substances created by plants and animals for completely non-food purposes- their survival and reproduction." These dubious substances can be consumed by humans "at their own risk.""

"The dream of liberating food from nature is as old as eating....in the third age of food processing, merely preserving the fruits of nature was deemed to modest: the goal was now to improve on nature."

Thoughts:

They're making it seem like eating food (actual food) is in some way dangerous, because it exists for more reasons then for humans to eat it. I guess they're ignoring the fact that humans have, in fact, eaten it for hundreds of years, and for the most part, we have been fine.

(After reading the cereal thing) I will never look at cheerios the same way again.