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The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Fetched: February 4th, 2010, 3:06am CET

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Author: rsapple
Forum: E-books
Date: 2010-02-03

The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

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464 pages | English | ISBN-10: 1594200823 | PDF | 19.3 MB

Introduction
Most us at great distance from our food. I don't mean that we live "twelve miles from lemon," English wit Sydney Smith said about home Yorkshire. I mean that our food bears little resemblance its natural substance. Hamburger never mooed; spaghetti grows on pasta tree; baby carrots come from pink blue nursery. Still, we worry about our meals -- from calories carbs, from heart-healthy brain food. And we prefer our food be "natural," long natural doesn't involve real.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan writes about how our food grown -- what it is, fact, that we eating. The book really three one: The first section discusses industrial farming; second, organic food, both big business on relatively small farm; and third, what it like hunt gather food oneself. And each section culminates in meal -- cheeseburger fries from McDonald's; roast chicken, vegetables and salad from Whole Foods; grilled chicken, corn and chocolate soufflé (made fresh eggs) from sustainable farm; and, finally, mushrooms pork, foraged from wild.
The first section is wake-up call anyone who has ever been hungry. In United States, Pollan makes clear, we're mostly fed by two things: corn oil. We may not sit down bowls yummy petroleum, but almost everything we eat has used enormous amounts fossil fuels get our tables. Oil products part of fertilizers that feed plants, pesticides that keep insects away from m, fuels used by trains trucks that transport m across country, and packaging which y're wrapped. We're addicted oil, we really like eat.
Oil underlines Pollan's story about agribusiness, but corn its focus. American cattle fatten corn. Corn also feeds poultry, pigs sheep, even farmed fish. But that's just beginning. In addition dairy products from corn-fed cows eggs from corn-fed chickens, corn starch, corn oil corn syrup make up key ingredients prepared foods. High-fructose corn syrup sweetens everything from juice toothpaste. Even alcohol beer corn-based. Corn is everything from frozen yogurt ketchup, from mayonnaise mustard hot dogs bologna, from salad dressings vitamin pills. "Tell me what you eat," said French gastronomist Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, "and I will tell you what you are." We're corn.
Each bushel industrial corn grown, Pollan notes, uses equivalent up to third a gallon oil. Some of oil products evaporate acidify rain; some seep into water table; some wash into rivers, affecting drinking water poisoning marine ecosystems. The industrial logic also means vast farms that grow only corn. When price corn drops, solution, farmer hopes, is plant more corn next year. The paradoxical result? While farmers earn less, re's an over-supply cheap corn, that means finding ever more ways use it up.
Is eating all this corn good us? Who knows? We think we've tamed nature, but we're just beginning learn about all that we don't yet know. Ships were once provided plenty food, but sailors got scurvy because y needed vitamin C. We're sailing on same sea, thinking we're eating well but still discovering nutrients our food that we hadn't known were re -- that we don't yet know we need.
We've lost touch with natural loops farming, which livestock crops connected mutually beneficial circles. Pollan discusses alternatives industrial farming, but se two long (and occasionally self-indulgent) sections lack focus intensity -- anger beneath surface -- of first. He spends week at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Shenandoah Valley, farm that works nature, rather than despite it. Salatin calls himself grass farmer, though his farm produces cows, chickens, eggs corn. But everything begins with grass: The cows nibble at it at precise moment when it's at its sweetest are moved from pasture pasture keep grass at its best height. Their droppings fertilize grass, and cycle under way. There's kind lyrical symmetry everything that happens this farm. Even final slaughtering chickens done quickly humanely, in open air. It isn't pleasant, but compared to way cattle fattened slaughtered meat industry feedlots slaughterhouses, it remarkably reasonable.
We needn't learn how shoot our own pigs, Pollan does; re's hope other ways -- farmers' markets, Slow Food movement, restaurants supplied by local farms. To Pollan, omnivore's dilemma twofold: what we choose eat ("What should we have dinner?" he asks in opening sentence his book) how we let that food be produced. His book an eater's manifesto, he touches on vast array subjects, from food fads taboos our avoidance not only our food's animality, but also our own. Along way, he alert his own emotions thoughts, see how y affect what he does what he eats, learn more and explain what he knows. His approach steeped honesty self-awareness. His cause just, his thinking clear, his writing compelling.
Be careful your dinner!

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