With the school term drawing to a close and our last ESF class fast approaching, I've decided to do my project based on the text that has become the cornerstone for our whole semester, Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Pollan's insightful and engrossing book poses the omnivore's dilemma: what should we eat? As omnivores, humans have the biological and physiological means to consume a wide variety of food from meat, to plants, to fungi. Modern technology enables us to gather, pack and preserve food for longer periods of time while globalization allows us to sample food from all over the world. With all of these tools and possibilities at our disposal, it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what exactly we should eat. This is the problem Pollan tries to bring to light.
Everything from fad diets and government-issued food regulations, to animal advocacy groups and food marketing agencies attempt to tell us what we should and shouldn't eat.
Yay carbs! No carbs! Good vs. bad carbs. Yes to meat! No to meat! Only cage-free meat. Only cage-free, antibiotic-free meat. Only cage-free, antiobiotic-free, grain-fed meat. And the grandaddy of them all...organic.
What do all of these dietary restrictions and guidelines mean? It's all so confusing. For the modern consumer, we are faced with endless possibilities and with endless considerations. All of these catch phrases and buzz words have become important in the marketing of food. It has become a literary genre, according to Pollan.
"Supermarket Pastoral is a most seductive literary form, beguiling enough to survive the face of a great many discomfiting facts. I suspect that's because it gratifies some of our deepest, oldest longings not merely for safe food, but for a connection to the earth and to the handful of domesticated creatures we've long depended on" (Pollan, 137).
Pop quiz time! We should eat in a way that benefits:
If you are having trouble just picking one of those answers it is probably because there is no clear answer. It isn't uncommon to compromise some of them in pursuit of the others.
A walk down the aisle at Whole Foods is a perfect manifestation of the omnivore's dilemma. Let's assume that the Whole Foods Shopper looks for something in particular in his/her food. Quality? Organic? Seasonal? Regional? Perhaps. In pursuit of "higher quality" food that may be a little better for the environment, the Whole Foods Shopper pays quite a bit more out of pocket for the meal. Conversely a cheeseburger from McDonald's may seem a bargain at $1.00, but that does not account for the costs to the farmers, animals, ecosystem and environment. It seems like a no-win situation.
King Corn: America's Own Field of Dreams
What do we eat and where does it come from? Here's a hint: think 80s Kevin Costner movie, "If you build it, he will come." Yes, you got it. Corn from our very own midwestern farms! For anyone still scratching their heads, I suggest renting a VHS of Field of Dreams. It's a classic.
***And if you haven't seen it, I suggest skipping down to below the corn field picture. There's a spoiler in the next paragraph.***
Now, it turns out that building "it" doesn't mean building a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field and the "he" isn't exactly the ghost of anyone's ball-playing father. In this case, if you build an economy based on corn, the profits will come. I know it was a stretch, but the metaphor made perfect sense in my head.
Basically, corn goes from the field, to the elevator, to the feedlot (eaten by steer and poultry), to the meat processing plant, to the fast food place, and finally to the stomach of a hungry college student eating a Big Mac in his car.
Pollan, his wife and his son grabbed a quick dinner from a California McDonald's. He calculates 2 pounds of corn in his 4-ounce burger (based on the cow's feed conversion rate), about 1/2 pound of corn for his six piece chicken nuggets and 1 pound of corn for his 32-ounce soda which contains 86 grams of high fructose corn syrup. Grand total for a 3 person-meal: 6 pounds of corn.
The point is, corn has become a huge part of the American diet, and most of us don't even know it. Most of us cannot even imagine a world without fast food places and processed supermarket food. We would starve, for crying out loud. Or would we?
Alternatives to industrial
In the second part of his book, Pollan looks at the organic food alternative. What is organic? Organic, in terms of crops, means food grown without unnatural pesticides, insecticides and herbicides. Organic, in terms of livestock, means animals raised without the use of growth hormones and antibiotics.
To investigate the organic trade further, Pollan visits Polyface Farm, an idyllic Shenandoah Valley family-run farm. The farm is run by an intelligent and practical man named Joel Salatin, who believes in farming integrity. He believes in giving his livestock the opportunity to express their inner natures. He wants his steer to be steer, his chickens to be chickens, etc. He makes sure that the grass-fed animals have plenty of fresh air and open space. In addition, he only sells his products to locals because FedExing food would be bad for the environment.
Put your money where your mouth is
Keeping in the spirit of slower food and animal rights, our last ESF field trip was to Zazie's in Cole Valley. The charming decor and friendly service ensured a great evening.
After reading Pollan's descriptions of horrible conditions in industrial CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) and slaughterhouses, I was glad to see that Zazie made a point to only serve animals treated humanely. On their menu, they claim that they only offer "happy, drug-free animals with an ocean view!" Wow. That's better than what I have in the dorms.
On their online menu, they also claim to serve "only organic milk, and free-range antibiotic and hormone-free eggs from local farms." Great for them! Their dedication to quality ingredients becomes apparent when you taste their food. I ordered the ravioli with bay shrimp. It was stuffed with cheese and lightly flavored with lemon juice. Delicious!
In contrast, we decided to have dessert at the McDonald's on Haight. It seemed like a good way to come full-circle at the end of the semester. We have visited gourmet restaurants from all corners of the city, it only seemed right to end the year with a visit to a familiar food chain in our own backyard. Plus, Pollan himself ate at McDonald's to show that we are all a part of the huge industrial web.
The McDonald's on Haight was way cleaner and less sketchy than we had anticipated. It was clean, well-lit and even had a few young families dining at 9pm on Wednesday. McFlurries, soft serve cones and chocolate sundaes ended up being a great way to conclude our field trip.
Conclusions
Is McDonald's evil? If so, are we evil by association or by the mere fact that we allow it to exist? What alternatives do we have? What do we compromise every time we decide to eat one food over another?
These are questions that don't have an easy answer. This is the omnivore's dilemma. And although Pollan doesn't directly tell us exactly what we should do, he offers many insightful facts and perspectives. If you kindly permit the pun, he gives us food for thought. The rest of it is up to us.
***In the final section of Pollan's book, he creates a meal made entirely of ingredients he hunted, gathered and grew himself. In an attempt to imitate the spirit in which he cooked the meal, I will try to cook a dish made of seasonal/regional ingredients. Stay tuned for the results and wish me luck!***
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Pollan's insightful and engrossing book poses the omnivore's dilemma: what should we eat? As omnivores, humans have the biological and physiological means to consume a wide variety of food from meat, to plants, to fungi. Modern technology enables us to gather, pack and preserve food for longer periods of time while globalization allows us to sample food from all over the world. With all of these tools and possibilities at our disposal, it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what exactly we should eat. This is the problem Pollan tries to bring to light.
Michael Pollan
Everything from fad diets and government-issued food regulations, to animal advocacy groups and food marketing agencies attempt to tell us what we should and shouldn't eat.
Yay carbs! No carbs! Good vs. bad carbs. Yes to meat! No to meat! Only cage-free meat. Only cage-free, antibiotic-free meat. Only cage-free, antiobiotic-free, grain-fed meat. And the grandaddy of them all...organic.
What do all of these dietary restrictions and guidelines mean? It's all so confusing. For the modern consumer, we are faced with endless possibilities and with endless considerations. All of these catch phrases and buzz words have become important in the marketing of food. It has become a literary genre, according to Pollan.
"Supermarket Pastoral is a most seductive literary form, beguiling enough to survive the face of a great many discomfiting facts. I suspect that's because it gratifies some of our deepest, oldest longings not merely for safe food, but for a connection to the earth and to the handful of domesticated creatures we've long depended on" (Pollan, 137).
Pop quiz time! We should eat in a way that benefits:
a) Our wallets
b) The economy (well, someone needs to take care of it)
c) International relations
d) Farmers
e) Migrant labor
f) Animal rights
f) The environment
h) The ecosystem
i) Our health
If you are having trouble just picking one of those answers it is probably because there is no clear answer. It isn't uncommon to compromise some of them in pursuit of the others.
A walk down the aisle at Whole Foods is a perfect manifestation of the omnivore's dilemma. Let's assume that the Whole Foods Shopper looks for something in particular in his/her food. Quality? Organic? Seasonal? Regional? Perhaps. In pursuit of "higher quality" food that may be a little better for the environment, the Whole Foods Shopper pays quite a bit more out of pocket for the meal. Conversely a cheeseburger from McDonald's may seem a bargain at $1.00, but that does not account for the costs to the farmers, animals, ecosystem and environment. It seems like a no-win situation.
Pollan argues that the reason Americans in particular face the omnivore's dilemma is that we have no singular history/tradition of food. We are a relatively young nation-- and a nation of immigrants. With so many cultures and cuisines, it is easy to be swayed by fad diets and marketing ploys. For example, it would probably be harder to convince the people of China to give up eating rice than it is to convince Californians to give up carbs. This is because the Chinese have a millenia-old tradition of eating rice and incorporating it into their everyday meals. We, on the other hand, are a little more willing to negotiate. This of course is NOT to say that we, as a nation, are gullible. It is only to say that we are still trying to find our culinary identity.
King Corn: America's Own Field of Dreams
What do we eat and where does it come from? Here's a hint: think 80s Kevin Costner movie, "If you build it, he will come." Yes, you got it. Corn from our very own midwestern farms! For anyone still scratching their heads, I suggest renting a VHS of Field of Dreams. It's a classic.
***And if you haven't seen it, I suggest skipping down to below the corn field picture. There's a spoiler in the next paragraph.***
Now, it turns out that building "it" doesn't mean building a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field and the "he" isn't exactly the ghost of anyone's ball-playing father. In this case, if you build an economy based on corn, the profits will come. I know it was a stretch, but the metaphor made perfect sense in my head.
Anyway, in Part I of the book, Pollan shows us the current state of the food industry in the United States. Forget cotton. Corn is king! Pollan traveled to a corn farm in Iowa to follow the ubiquitous commodity from husk to its ultimate destination at a McDonalds in Marin.
Here are some things we learn about corn:- Corn has a symbiotic relationship with humans. Unlike other plants that germinate on their own, corn needs us to plant it. Otherwise, it will die out.
- Farmers need to buy new corn seed every season.
- Corn took over our food industry because it is cheap, hardy, versatile and storable.
- American livestock that don't naturally eat corn are chemically conditioned to tolerate it because it is supposedly cheaper/more efficient than grass.
- Farmers and companies are always trying to come up with new ways to hybrid corn.
- Farms that used to require several hands to sustain a variety of crops and livestock are now solely producing corn. This has resulted in the abuse of soil and the occurrence of pastoral ghost towns (fewer workers are needed, so they move away).
- Although corn is in high demand, corn farmers are barely making enough money to stay afloat. Most of the money goes to the processing plants.
Basically, corn goes from the field, to the elevator, to the feedlot (eaten by steer and poultry), to the meat processing plant, to the fast food place, and finally to the stomach of a hungry college student eating a Big Mac in his car.
Pollan, his wife and his son grabbed a quick dinner from a California McDonald's. He calculates 2 pounds of corn in his 4-ounce burger (based on the cow's feed conversion rate), about 1/2 pound of corn for his six piece chicken nuggets and 1 pound of corn for his 32-ounce soda which contains 86 grams of high fructose corn syrup. Grand total for a 3 person-meal: 6 pounds of corn.
The point is, corn has become a huge part of the American diet, and most of us don't even know it. Most of us cannot even imagine a world without fast food places and processed supermarket food. We would starve, for crying out loud. Or would we?
Alternatives to industrial
In the second part of his book, Pollan looks at the organic food alternative. What is organic? Organic, in terms of crops, means food grown without unnatural pesticides, insecticides and herbicides. Organic, in terms of livestock, means animals raised without the use of growth hormones and antibiotics.
To investigate the organic trade further, Pollan visits Polyface Farm, an idyllic Shenandoah Valley family-run farm. The farm is run by an intelligent and practical man named Joel Salatin, who believes in farming integrity. He believes in giving his livestock the opportunity to express their inner natures. He wants his steer to be steer, his chickens to be chickens, etc. He makes sure that the grass-fed animals have plenty of fresh air and open space. In addition, he only sells his products to locals because FedExing food would be bad for the environment.
Owner, Joel Salatin at Polyface Farms
It turns out that the category of organic food is further subdivided into Small Organic and Big (or Industrial) Organic. Small Organic is Polyface Farms. It is growing/raising food naturally and on a relatively smaller scale. Small organic farms produce and sell locally. The customers know exactly where their food comes from, and they may even personally know the growers.
Big Organic is Whole Foods and Trader Joes, in a sense. In order to supply their many outlets, these stores tend to buy produce from bigger organic farms. Also, these organic farms may add preservatives to the food in order to ship it over longer distances. Customers who buy big organic are usually aware that they are buying organic, but are unaware of exactly where the food came from. They may look at the cute little cartoon farm house on the packaging and read that it was produced on a 100 year-old family-run farm. Although the customer probably has no idea where that farm is or what life is actually like on the farm, just believing the marketing on the package may be enough for them. If it says it's organic, then it must be good, right?
Actually, beware that what companies advertise and how they actually operate may be different from what you expected. According to Pollan, some large-scale egg producers claim to have "free range" chickens. In reality, the thousands of chickens are stuffed into crowded holding rooms. The law only requires 15 feet of grass extending outwards from the sides of the walls in order to qualify as "free range." The truth is that chickens hardly ever venture out onto the grass. They must be over 5 weeks old to go out and even when they reach that age, they are too scared to venture away from the tight quarters they have known their whole lives. Moral of the story: the food industry is really good at telling consumers what they want to hear.
Put your money where your mouth is
Keeping in the spirit of slower food and animal rights, our last ESF field trip was to Zazie's in Cole Valley. The charming decor and friendly service ensured a great evening.
After reading Pollan's descriptions of horrible conditions in industrial CAFO's (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) and slaughterhouses, I was glad to see that Zazie made a point to only serve animals treated humanely. On their menu, they claim that they only offer "happy, drug-free animals with an ocean view!" Wow. That's better than what I have in the dorms.
On their online menu, they also claim to serve "only organic milk, and free-range antibiotic and hormone-free eggs from local farms." Great for them! Their dedication to quality ingredients becomes apparent when you taste their food. I ordered the ravioli with bay shrimp. It was stuffed with cheese and lightly flavored with lemon juice. Delicious!
In contrast, we decided to have dessert at the McDonald's on Haight. It seemed like a good way to come full-circle at the end of the semester. We have visited gourmet restaurants from all corners of the city, it only seemed right to end the year with a visit to a familiar food chain in our own backyard. Plus, Pollan himself ate at McDonald's to show that we are all a part of the huge industrial web.
The McDonald's on Haight was way cleaner and less sketchy than we had anticipated. It was clean, well-lit and even had a few young families dining at 9pm on Wednesday. McFlurries, soft serve cones and chocolate sundaes ended up being a great way to conclude our field trip.
Conclusions
Is McDonald's evil? If so, are we evil by association or by the mere fact that we allow it to exist? What alternatives do we have? What do we compromise every time we decide to eat one food over another?
These are questions that don't have an easy answer. This is the omnivore's dilemma. And although Pollan doesn't directly tell us exactly what we should do, he offers many insightful facts and perspectives. If you kindly permit the pun, he gives us food for thought. The rest of it is up to us.
***In the final section of Pollan's book, he creates a meal made entirely of ingredients he hunted, gathered and grew himself. In an attempt to imitate the spirit in which he cooked the meal, I will try to cook a dish made of seasonal/regional ingredients. Stay tuned for the results and wish me luck!***