HW 7c

The Omnivore's Dilemma - Micheal Pollan

Chapter 11:


Precis: The way Polyface farm (Joel Salatin's farm) works, is biological as opposed to industrial, and ecosystem as opposed to a machine, a circle as opposed to a straight arrow. Every species grown benefits and is benefited by another in some way - each is a holon, both a whole and a part of something. Polyface farm also has a forest: while this would not immediately configure into a typical person's idea of a farm, it helps each species on the farm in some way (for instance, providing shade to animals).

Gems:

"It's all connected. This farm is more like an organism then a machine, and like any organism it has it's proper scale. A mouse is the size of a mouse for a good reason, and a mouse that was the size of an elephant wouldn't do very well."

"Farming is not adapted to large-scale operations because of the following reasons: Farming is concerned with plants and animals that live, grow, and die."

Thoughts:

The way all the organisms benefit from each other creates a system where no animal is solely a product or a material - it is both. The fact that doing this makes it so that the farm basically produces no waste is amazing.

I was wondering if a farm like this would employ more people then an industrial farm (After all, they would need people to move all those animals around, along with everything else), or if it would be about even, or it it would be less because the scale of the farm is so much smaller then a huge cornfield would be.

Chapter 12:

Precis:

The USDA has standards for how chickens must be slaughtered, but the same rules apply to both huge slaughterhouses and the ones on small farms. For instance, one rule is that all slaughterhouses must have impermeable walls. Polyface farm's slaughterhouse does not have walls, and anyone who buys chickens there can walk in and watch their dinner being killed. The parts of the chicken that are removed before it is sold (otherwise known as chicken guts) are used to make compost, which is then spread on grass to help it grow.

Gems:

"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity"(Emerson). In other words, no matter how far away your food was killed, and no matter how little you had to do with it, you are still an accomplice in it's murder.

"In a way, the most morally troubling thing about killing chickens is that after a while it is no longer morally troubling."

Thoughts:

 I don't really see this whole thing (killing chickens) as that bad, because everyone used to have to do it. Humans are omnivores because they can eat plants and meat, and part of eating meat is having to kill it first (Although technically, someone eating a plant would be killing it as well, in a way).

I like how the author will do something a few times, and think he knows the effect it has on people who do it all the time.


Chapter 13:

Precis: The food on Polyface farm is only sold to the surrounding community, because Joel Salatin believes in keeping it local.  Although it is sold to a variety of people and places (restaurants, "buying clubs"), everyone who buys their food from Polyface buys it there for the same reason: quality. Anything Polyface sells would cost less at a supermarket, but price isn't the only thing guiding people's decisions. However, people who buy their meat locally must also buy it seasonally - certain foods are only available at certain times of year (ex. chicken is available in the summer). 

Gems:

"Joel recited the slogan of his local supermarket chain: "We pile it high and sell it cheap." What other business would ever sell it's products that way?"

"...The promise of global capitalism, much like the promise of capitalism before it, ultimately demands an act of faith: that if we permit the destruction of certain things we value here and now we will achieve a greater happiness and prosperity at some unspecified future time."

"It's all very Italian (and decidedly un-American) to insist that doing the right thing is the most pleasurable thing, and that the act of consumption might be an act of addition rather then subtraction."

Thoughts:

He seems to be saying that when food can be bought more cheaply from other countries, it will no longer be grown here. This seems rather problematic, considering the United States already depends on other countries for almost everything, and while we can live without Nikes and iPods, we can't live without food - what would we eat if other countries then decide they don't want to sell food to us?


"People will eventually get more pleasure from actual food then a box of McNuggets." This actually seems to be true, at least for people who regularly eat healthy food - they really do enjoy eating a salad more then anything (how, I have no idea).

Chapter 14

Precis: The making and consuming of a meal are just important as the individual plants and animals that are being consumed. Grain fed animals are generally less healthy than grass fed animals, because they have more omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, a balance of which is necessary for basic health. However,  industrialized food generally doesn't have as many of these acids, which may be the cause of many modern illnesses. Plants and animals grown the way they are supposed to be grown taste better and are healthier for the people who eat them, and cooking one's own food is sacred in a way that buying food that has already been cooked isn't.

Gems:

"Research in this area [of modern dietary habits] promises to turn a lot of conventional thinking on it's head."

"The chicken smelled and tasted exactly like chicken.....what accounted for it?

Thoughts:

The first quote (above) reminds me of Freakonomics - the whole point of which was to turn conventional thinking on it's head.

As opposed to going on and on about Omega 3s and 6s, couldn't he have just said there were more of them in grass fed meat, (which is what makes grass fed meat healthier) and left it at that? It's not like anyone will ever want to know the precise amount of fatty acids in their food.

Chapter 15:

Precis: It made more sense for humans to be hunter gatherers then to be agriculturists - they were healthier, and they actually spent less time per week foraging for food. I don't feel like I should be eating other animals if I have never been responsible for the killing of one, so I will be doing so. Angelo Garro, who grows, kills, and cooks most of his food (and drinks), will be helping me. Forests have begun to look different, now that I am going to be foraging in one: I notice all the different species of plants and animals, and I try to figure out if they are safe to consume.

Gems:

"Being a somewhat accident-prone individual, (childhood mishaps include getting bitten in the cheek by a seagull and breaking my nose falling out of bed), I have always thought it wise to maintain a healthy distance between me and firearms."

"And this, I suppose, points to what I was really after in taking up hunting and gathering: to see what it'd be like to prepare and eat a meal in full consciousness of what was involved."

Thoughts:

This reminded me of an article I read about some people who tried to live the way hunter-gatherers would have- exercising strenuously before a meal to emulate the way a hunter gatherer would have had to in order to catch their prey, and sometimes not eating all day, the way hunter gatherers (apparently) would have if they had trouble finding food for a while.

It seems odd that he would have a gun - this seems relatively modern, something that people who gathered all their own food wouldn't have had.

Chapter 16:

Precis: Part of the Omnivore's dilemma is whether a seemingly safe food item will turn out to be harmful or deadly. Natural selection has equipped humans with tools to eat various types of foods, and senses to help identify a food that may be unsafe to eat. Humans make up their own rules for how to eat (rituals and manners). Because Americans don't have a traditional diet that defines the way we each, we succumb to fad diets, unsure of what to eat without the help of a food scientist.

Gems:

"The beliefs that have guided the American way of eating: taste is not a true guide to what should be eaten, one should not simply eat what one enjoys, the important components of food cannot be seem or tasted, but are discernible only in scientific laboratories, and experimental science has produced rules of nutrition that will prevent illness and encourage longevity."

"Such has been the genius of capitalism, to re-create something akin to a state of nature in the modern supermarket or fast-food outlet, throwing us back on a perplexing, nutritionally perilous landscape deeply shadowed again by the omnivore's dilemma."

Thoughts:

The French paradox doesn't only seem to apply to food. In France, people have more vacation time, not only each year but each week (they work shorter weeks and have longer vacations), and yet are just as (slightly more, actually) productive as people in the U.S. It seems like people there just enjoy life more.