HW 7 - Reading Response

The Omnivore’s Dilemma – A Natural History of Four Meals

By Michael Pollan

Introduction – Our National Eating Disorder:

Precis:

The question ‘What should we have for dinner?’ seems to be constantly circulating our minds. Do we know where our dinner is coming from? Probably not. Doesn’t that seem weird that we feel completely comfortable having anonymous food sources enter our body? Furthermore if we do happen to know where the food is coming from, do we know what is actually inside the food? Probably not. Having dinner is a much larger complex idea that most people don’t think twice about.

Gems:

“Many anthropologists believe that the reason we evolved such big and intricate brains was precisely to help us deal with the omnivore’s dilemma.” (Page 4)

“The cornucopia of the American supermarket has thrown us back on bewildering food landscape where we once again have to worry that some of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. (Perhaps not as quickly as a poisonous mushroom, but just as surely.)” (Page 4-5)

“…The three principal food chains that sustain us today: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. Different as they are, all three food chains are systems for doing more or less the same thing: linking us, through what we eat, to the fertility of the of the earth and the energy of the sun.” (Page 5)

“Eating is an agricultural act,” as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too.” (Page 11)

Thoughts & Questions:

What I find so strange about this world is in till there is a flashing sign say stop, we won’t. Why suddenly are people realizing maybe their eating habits are not beneficial for a long healthy life. Is it because obesity rates are off the charts? As much as I think it is important to be informed of what the inside scoop of your habits are, what I would really like to know is what else is causing us long term damage that we are completely unaware of?

The food pyramid in disguise is merely a separation of eaters. The cheerleader on top is getting all of her nutrients while all the cheerleaders holding her up are the ones getting the least amount of nutrients, and probably working to create her all around fulfilled diet.

If we all went back to being hunter-gathers would it make a difference or is the damage caused to our bodies permanent? Is this food dilemma going to escalate or become nation wide eliminated?

Chapter One: The Plant- Corn's Conquest

Precis:

"Old Mcdonald had a farm e i e i o and on that farm he had a cow e i e i o with corn corn here, corn corn there, corn corn everywhere. Old Mcdonald had a farm e i e i o." EVERYTHING has corn in it. We are all walking around corn filled, and completely oblivious. That magazine your reading on the subway, yeah that has corn in it too. It is like a corn nightmare you can't escape.

Gems:

"...at the very end of these food chains (which is to say, at the very beginning), I invariably found myself in almost exactly the same place a farm field in the American Corn Belt." (Page 18)

"(Yes, it's in the Twinkie, too.) There are forty-five thousand items in the average American Supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn." (Page 19)

"Corn was both currency traders used to pay for slaves in Africa and the food upon which slaves subsisted during their passage to America. Corn is the protocapitalist plant." (Page 26)

Thoughts & Questions:

I was aware that corn was in a lot of processed foods but didn't think it was in what it seems like everything else! I would be curious to know (and will look up) what doesn't have corn in it. From this chapter it seems like there is nothing. How do you reverse this?

All of the starch that our bodies are unknowingly over eating is making our fat levels rise, our cholesterol sore, and allowing us to say hello to early death and heart attacks. Why are we blaming ourselves? I mean it seems like the companies should be telling us with a side of corn every time....

Medicines aside how is it possible we are living for so much longer than we used to? Does the corn have something to do with it? Corn can reproduce itself, so does this mean that within our bodies due to the amount of corn we intake we are regenerating ourselves over and over again?

Chapter Two: The Farm

Precis:

Demand and supply make it impossible for farmers to be successful. It is physically impossible for such a small amount of people to feed everyone. However they must continue growing corn in order to make some money but regardless they are still in debt. The bigger corporations win this time.

Gems:

"This Iowa cornfield (and all the others just like it) is the place most of our food comes from." (Page 35)

"There's a good reason I met farmers in Iowa who don't respect corn, who will tell you in disgust that the plant has become a "welfare queen."" (Page 41)

"In corn's case, humans have labored mightily to free it from either constraint, even if that means going broke growing it, and consuming it just as fast as we possibly can." (Page 56)

Thoughts & Questions:

In production it seems like everything goes right back to the system. That it is impossible to escape the power of the system. If we tried to there is a good possibility we would starve. They have set everything up so we have the illusion that it is possible to live a alternative lifestyle but they know due to supply and demand we will give up once we see how little the alternative actually has.

I decided to look on the nutrition facts of some of the food in my house... no where does it mention the corn... It seems like the way we eat is a don't ask don't tell kind of conversation. The food tastes so why worry about the root of it.

If we were all farmers and supermarkets didn't exist would we live longer?

Instead of e-mails people used to send telegrams. George Naylor's system of getting the corn to the people isn't the same style that his neighbor Billy uses. Billy has new machines and is also in debt. While George has old machines and has no debt at all... will George eventually have to conform to fit in with the social norm of farming and producing food? Or is it possible for him to keep sending telegrams and not catch on to the generation of "you've got mail" ....?

Chapter 3: The Elevator

Precis:

The corn business is a factory whose end point is most likely being digested by animals and then by us. There are standards but at a certain point it all tastes the same. And for the farmers there is no stopping since a world without corn would be a world of nothing...

Gems:

"...the only way a farmer like George Naylor can keep his income from declining is producing still more corn." (Page 62)

"The military-industrial complex." (Page 61)

"What is much harder to see is that all this corn is also the product of government policies, which have done more than anything else to raise that mountain and shrink the price of each bushel in it." (Page 61)

Thoughts & Questions:

Can we put corn and oil on the same level of significance to our lives?

Do the animals become forced to be dependent on their feeding of corn? Would they immediately die if they were fed their normal food?

Who was the person who realized that corn was a great way to feed the farm animals?

Chapter 4: The Feedlot

Precis:

The cycle of life doesn't stop with just death. For we are what we eat, and whatever may happen to be in our food effects us. If the cows we eat are captive and lined up one after another, living a life of corn only, it effects us. It effects us, the people around us, our future generations.

Gems:

"We've come to think of "corn-fed" as some kind of old-fashioned virtue, which it may well be when you're referring to Midwestern children, but feeding large quantities of corn to cows for the greater part of their lives is a practice neither particularly old nor virtuous." (Page 75)

"As cannibal tribes have discovered, eating the flesh of one's own species carries special risks of infection." (Page 76)

"...but we do know something about the bacteria, which can find their way from the manure on the ground to his hide and from there into our hamburgers." (Page 81)

Thoughts & Questions:

Imagine spending your entire life locked up being force fed and then killed.

Although we live longer than people used to we expose our bodies to much more room for illness. The difference is we have cures for quite a number of these sicknesses but is it worth it?

After discussing this chapter with my group we realized how much the government was the main cause of this problem. The government is paying for the corn - corn is produced - fed to animals - used in large corporations - Illnesses occur - We pay the government for drugs - the cycle repeats.

The crazy thing about it is people don't even question the number of times we get sick in a life time. Generally most people assume since life doesn't go on forever we are bound to get sick from time to time but what if these times of illnesses are direct links to choices we make?

Chapter 5: The Processing Plant

Precis:

Corn is a multi-purpose source. Fortunately or Unfortunately depending on how you look at it us humans have pretty much covered all the bases of using corn to its ending limit. This process however is not in such a elaborate disguise such as the cow but still among our french fries and salad dressing.

Gems:

"For the west mill does a bushel of corn is to turn into the building blocks from which companies like General Mills, McDonald's, and Coca-Cola asemble our processed foods." (Page 86)

"The dream of liberating food from nature is as old as eating. People began processing food to keep nature from taking back..." (Page 90)

"The meal of the future would be fabricated "in the laboratory out of a wide variety of materials."" (Page 98)

Thoughts & Questions:

Eating corn is quite unavodiable, we don't think or question that it might be within other products. For instance if we are drinking a coke, we won't consider corn because it doesn't seem like a direct link. Further more these companies have hidden the evidence of corn by using strange names that we don't think we understand.

It seems like the big guys or what I think is behind them the government is purposly trying to make us sick by overloading us with corn products. Right under our noses we are cosuming far more than the normal amount is. I googled "food that doesn't have corn in it" and nothing showed up... Seems slightly strange... doesn't it?