// essays //
Fall 2006
You Are What You Eat
Eliane Stampfer
The Omnivore's Dilemma:
A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan
The Penguin Press, 464 pgs.
I was shocked when I read that the F.D.A. was issuing a health warning against bagged spinach because of E. coli. How would E. coli get in to spinach in the first place? Nina Planck, in a recent oped in The New York Times titled"Leafy Green Sewage," wrote that this new lethal form of E. coli grows in "the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms." The bacteria then travel through the cow's manure and the groundwater to some unsuspecting spinach. A lovely picture which is, unfortunately, no more rosy than the picture of our food Michael Pollan paints in The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Pollan traces four meals from the earth's soil to his stomach, discussing the social, economic, and environmental effects of the production of each meal, as well as the philosophical implications of eating them. He explores the true answers to the seemingly simple questions: What should I have for dinner? Where does my food come from? What am I eating anyway? His quest leads him to cow manure so toxic it would kill plants if used as fertilizer, free-range chickens that never step outside their barn, a farmer so confident in his treatment of animals that he invites customers to watch the slaughter, and finally to an account of the author hunting and gathering local California foods to make dinner. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan examines our relationship with food, focusing on the damage produced by industrial agribusinesses, disillusionment with organic foods, and the virtues of sustainable small-scale farming. He argues that we should know and understand what we're eating and shows us how we choose to support different economic, environmental, and political systems when we make the seemingly simple decision of what to have for dinner.
Pollan begins with a powerful case against industrial food, a term he uses for highly processed foods that bear little resemblance to the living plants and animals from which they come: gummy worms, chicken nuggets, Cheez Whiz, and thousands of similar products. Pollan finds that most industrial food traces back to a single cheap commodity: corn. Once processed, corn can be transformed into thousands of other products from high fructose corn syrup to maltodextrin and xanthan gum. I don't even know what these last two are, but apparently I eat them all the time. Pollan highlights the ignorance inherent in processed food—we can't tell what's in it just by looking at it, we don't know what the weird chemicals on the ingredient list are, and we have no idea where it comes from or how its production affects the environment.
It turns out that industrialized corn production affects the environment a whole lot; excess fertilizer intended for corn pollutes the Mississippi and then the Gulf of Mexico, creating an algae bloom that kills all other marine life by starving it of oxygen. Corn poses dangers not only to the environment, but to human health as well. When corn, a convenient source of carbohydrates, is used for cattle feed, cows often get sick (they evolved to eat grass, not corn). Pollan states, "most of the antibiotics sold in America today end up in animal feed, a practice that...is leading directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant superbugs." Since cows are given the same antibiotics as humans, humans are at risk from the development of these "superbugs." The chemical fertilizers used for corn and the transportation needed to ship it and its byproducts all over the United States rely on oil, contributing to Pollan's observation that "one fifth of America's petroleum consumption goes to producing and transporting our food." Pollan argues that, although the price of industrial food seems low at the checkout line, the true cost includes corn subsidies, environmental degradation, and dangers to human health.
Overall, his case against industrial food is convincing, well-researched, and clearly stated. He stays with a corn farmer in Iowa to learn about growing industrial food and buys a steer to illustrate the effects of corn on cows, following the steer from calf-hood on a pasture to adulthood in a cramped, smelly CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation). He closely examines the environmental effects of industrial food, US farm policies, and unique economics of food to give the reader a well-rounded picture of the industry. Yet, while he has done the leg work to determine the problems, Pollan tends to point fingers at the wrong people. Often, Pollan faults the food industry when realistically blame can be more usefully assigned to improper governmental regulations. For example, he briefly discusses mad cow disease, which is spread by feeding cows meat from infected cows. The F.D.A. banned this practice in 1997, but should have done so much earlier. Pollan uses mad cow disease as an example of when the logic of capitalism is at odds with evolutionary developments: to the CAFO, all protein, no matter where it came from, was equal, until millions of cows were killed in Britain in order to contain mad cow disease. Clearly the industry is responsible, but it is the nature of industry to make a profit where it can. It is the government's responsibility to prevent industry from causing harm to consumers, and Pollan generally sidesteps this issue. Pollan also repeats the idea that the corn industry is mostly supply driven: farmers produce a mountain of it and the rest of us are forced to find some way to use it. He writes, "Nature abhors a surplus, and the corn must be consumed." But this concept is flawed. People use corn because it is cheaper than the alternatives, not out of some inherent urge to let nothing go to waste.
Although Pollan portrays large-scale organic food as better than industrial food, he remains critical of it (perhaps because he is so disillusioned by it). The standards that govern organic food are vague and often not what a consumer would expect or assume. An organic chicken, for example, must have access to the outdoors, yet the five week old chickens permitted to roam outside their barn have already been conditioned to stay inside. Another example is Earthbound's organic baby salad mix which, despite its environmentally friendly image, requires almost as much fossil fuel energy to produce as a conventional salad bag. Pollan is disappointed that the organic movement, originally intended to foster a radical change from industrial food, is increasingly imitating the industrial model. He says, "sometimes the large-scale organic farmer looks like someone trying to practice industrial agriculture with one hand tied behind his back." Consumers buy organic food because they care about the environment and the treatment of animals, and for the organic food industry to deceive them is almost worse than the terrible things the industrial food industry does to the environment and to animals. At least it doesn't pretend otherwise. Especially since the organic movement started as an ideology and not a profit-seeking venture, there is a feeling in Pollan's discussion that he holds organic farmers to a higher standard than industrial farmers.
The alternative method that Pollan recommends is the small-scale sustainable grass-based farm. The one that he visits, Polyface farm, imitates nature, not industry. Polyface raises cows, chickens, pigs, and rabbits together, on a foundation of grass. Joel Salatin, the farmer, carefully manages his Beyond Organic paradise, coordinating all the animals so their manure fertilizes the grass, which is the base of their food chain. Salatin's animals are healthy and happy, and he creates a sustainable circle of life that relies on the sun, not oil. Salatin is so confident about the way he treats his animals that he invites customers to take a look at his farm before buying from him. Customers are welcomed to watch him slaughter his chickens, a practice that gives his clients confidence in his integrity. This is especially significant after Pollan describes the usual business of an industrial slaughterhouse. Some cringe at the thought of watching chickens die, but Pollan asks the reader to "imagine if the walls of every slaughterhouse and animal factory were as transparent as Polyface's—if not open to the air then at least made of glass. So much of what happens behind those walls—the cruelty, the carelessness, the filth—would simply have to stop." For Pollan, this is the farm in which all is as it should be. Pollan advocates for more of these farms, as they efficiently produce a large amount of food without the wastes and reliance on fossil fuels inherent to the industrial and large-scale organic systems. Additionally, grass based farms would help, not hurt, the environment. Pollan states, "if the sixteen million acres now being used to grow corn to feed cows in the United States became well-managed pasture, that would remove fourteen billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking four million cars off the road."
Although it is clear these farms would benefit society as a whole, Pollan does not sufficiently discuss the economic incentives that would motivate other farmers to leave the industrial system for this one. Salatin is overwhelmingly motivated by ideology. He turns a profit, but that is not his central goal. Pollan does not convincingly explain how Salatin's system can be expanded and practiced by farmers who are more concerned with profits than ideals.
Pollan's last chapter investigates the shortest and clearest journeys from soil to dinner table: food that he hunts and gathers himself. This is Pollan's most personal and philosophical chapter and, for me, his most uninteresting. The way Pollan feels when he shoots a pig or searches for mushrooms seems to have little meaning for the reader who has not shared those experiences. However, the last chapter complements the first in several ways and together they form nice bookends: the first chapter deals with the highly impersonal experience of eating foods with almost unintelligible provenance and a high impact on the environment, while the last chapter deals with food that is completely personal, with a provenance as clear as any food's can be, and a minimal impact on the environment. Discussing his "perfect meal," Pollan writes, "as a kind of ritual, a meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted." Still, the chapter didn't seem to fit within the context of the book since the overwhelming majority of Americans Pollan seeks to address don't hunt and gather their own food.
Overall, Pollan's discussions are compelling, ranging from the history of corn to the ethics of eating animals. For each food chain (industrial, organic, Beyond Organic, and hunter-gatherer), Pollan eats a meal that is the chain's end result, tying his research into a few bites. Getting to know his food helps him better understand his own place in the world, leaving us with a new appreciation for the old mantra: you are what you eat.
A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan
The Penguin Press, 464 pgs.
I was shocked when I read that the F.D.A. was issuing a health warning against bagged spinach because of E. coli. How would E. coli get in to spinach in the first place? Nina Planck, in a recent oped in The New York Times titled"Leafy Green Sewage," wrote that this new lethal form of E. coli grows in "the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms." The bacteria then travel through the cow's manure and the groundwater to some unsuspecting spinach. A lovely picture which is, unfortunately, no more rosy than the picture of our food Michael Pollan paints in The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Pollan traces four meals from the earth's soil to his stomach, discussing the social, economic, and environmental effects of the production of each meal, as well as the philosophical implications of eating them. He explores the true answers to the seemingly simple questions: What should I have for dinner? Where does my food come from? What am I eating anyway? His quest leads him to cow manure so toxic it would kill plants if used as fertilizer, free-range chickens that never step outside their barn, a farmer so confident in his treatment of animals that he invites customers to watch the slaughter, and finally to an account of the author hunting and gathering local California foods to make dinner. In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan examines our relationship with food, focusing on the damage produced by industrial agribusinesses, disillusionment with organic foods, and the virtues of sustainable small-scale farming. He argues that we should know and understand what we're eating and shows us how we choose to support different economic, environmental, and political systems when we make the seemingly simple decision of what to have for dinner.
Pollan begins with a powerful case against industrial food, a term he uses for highly processed foods that bear little resemblance to the living plants and animals from which they come: gummy worms, chicken nuggets, Cheez Whiz, and thousands of similar products. Pollan finds that most industrial food traces back to a single cheap commodity: corn. Once processed, corn can be transformed into thousands of other products from high fructose corn syrup to maltodextrin and xanthan gum. I don't even know what these last two are, but apparently I eat them all the time. Pollan highlights the ignorance inherent in processed food—we can't tell what's in it just by looking at it, we don't know what the weird chemicals on the ingredient list are, and we have no idea where it comes from or how its production affects the environment.
It turns out that industrialized corn production affects the environment a whole lot; excess fertilizer intended for corn pollutes the Mississippi and then the Gulf of Mexico, creating an algae bloom that kills all other marine life by starving it of oxygen. Corn poses dangers not only to the environment, but to human health as well. When corn, a convenient source of carbohydrates, is used for cattle feed, cows often get sick (they evolved to eat grass, not corn). Pollan states, "most of the antibiotics sold in America today end up in animal feed, a practice that...is leading directly to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant superbugs." Since cows are given the same antibiotics as humans, humans are at risk from the development of these "superbugs." The chemical fertilizers used for corn and the transportation needed to ship it and its byproducts all over the United States rely on oil, contributing to Pollan's observation that "one fifth of America's petroleum consumption goes to producing and transporting our food." Pollan argues that, although the price of industrial food seems low at the checkout line, the true cost includes corn subsidies, environmental degradation, and dangers to human health.
Overall, his case against industrial food is convincing, well-researched, and clearly stated. He stays with a corn farmer in Iowa to learn about growing industrial food and buys a steer to illustrate the effects of corn on cows, following the steer from calf-hood on a pasture to adulthood in a cramped, smelly CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation). He closely examines the environmental effects of industrial food, US farm policies, and unique economics of food to give the reader a well-rounded picture of the industry. Yet, while he has done the leg work to determine the problems, Pollan tends to point fingers at the wrong people. Often, Pollan faults the food industry when realistically blame can be more usefully assigned to improper governmental regulations. For example, he briefly discusses mad cow disease, which is spread by feeding cows meat from infected cows. The F.D.A. banned this practice in 1997, but should have done so much earlier. Pollan uses mad cow disease as an example of when the logic of capitalism is at odds with evolutionary developments: to the CAFO, all protein, no matter where it came from, was equal, until millions of cows were killed in Britain in order to contain mad cow disease. Clearly the industry is responsible, but it is the nature of industry to make a profit where it can. It is the government's responsibility to prevent industry from causing harm to consumers, and Pollan generally sidesteps this issue. Pollan also repeats the idea that the corn industry is mostly supply driven: farmers produce a mountain of it and the rest of us are forced to find some way to use it. He writes, "Nature abhors a surplus, and the corn must be consumed." But this concept is flawed. People use corn because it is cheaper than the alternatives, not out of some inherent urge to let nothing go to waste.
Although Pollan portrays large-scale organic food as better than industrial food, he remains critical of it (perhaps because he is so disillusioned by it). The standards that govern organic food are vague and often not what a consumer would expect or assume. An organic chicken, for example, must have access to the outdoors, yet the five week old chickens permitted to roam outside their barn have already been conditioned to stay inside. Another example is Earthbound's organic baby salad mix which, despite its environmentally friendly image, requires almost as much fossil fuel energy to produce as a conventional salad bag. Pollan is disappointed that the organic movement, originally intended to foster a radical change from industrial food, is increasingly imitating the industrial model. He says, "sometimes the large-scale organic farmer looks like someone trying to practice industrial agriculture with one hand tied behind his back." Consumers buy organic food because they care about the environment and the treatment of animals, and for the organic food industry to deceive them is almost worse than the terrible things the industrial food industry does to the environment and to animals. At least it doesn't pretend otherwise. Especially since the organic movement started as an ideology and not a profit-seeking venture, there is a feeling in Pollan's discussion that he holds organic farmers to a higher standard than industrial farmers.
The alternative method that Pollan recommends is the small-scale sustainable grass-based farm. The one that he visits, Polyface farm, imitates nature, not industry. Polyface raises cows, chickens, pigs, and rabbits together, on a foundation of grass. Joel Salatin, the farmer, carefully manages his Beyond Organic paradise, coordinating all the animals so their manure fertilizes the grass, which is the base of their food chain. Salatin's animals are healthy and happy, and he creates a sustainable circle of life that relies on the sun, not oil. Salatin is so confident about the way he treats his animals that he invites customers to take a look at his farm before buying from him. Customers are welcomed to watch him slaughter his chickens, a practice that gives his clients confidence in his integrity. This is especially significant after Pollan describes the usual business of an industrial slaughterhouse. Some cringe at the thought of watching chickens die, but Pollan asks the reader to "imagine if the walls of every slaughterhouse and animal factory were as transparent as Polyface's—if not open to the air then at least made of glass. So much of what happens behind those walls—the cruelty, the carelessness, the filth—would simply have to stop." For Pollan, this is the farm in which all is as it should be. Pollan advocates for more of these farms, as they efficiently produce a large amount of food without the wastes and reliance on fossil fuels inherent to the industrial and large-scale organic systems. Additionally, grass based farms would help, not hurt, the environment. Pollan states, "if the sixteen million acres now being used to grow corn to feed cows in the United States became well-managed pasture, that would remove fourteen billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking four million cars off the road."
Although it is clear these farms would benefit society as a whole, Pollan does not sufficiently discuss the economic incentives that would motivate other farmers to leave the industrial system for this one. Salatin is overwhelmingly motivated by ideology. He turns a profit, but that is not his central goal. Pollan does not convincingly explain how Salatin's system can be expanded and practiced by farmers who are more concerned with profits than ideals.
Pollan's last chapter investigates the shortest and clearest journeys from soil to dinner table: food that he hunts and gathers himself. This is Pollan's most personal and philosophical chapter and, for me, his most uninteresting. The way Pollan feels when he shoots a pig or searches for mushrooms seems to have little meaning for the reader who has not shared those experiences. However, the last chapter complements the first in several ways and together they form nice bookends: the first chapter deals with the highly impersonal experience of eating foods with almost unintelligible provenance and a high impact on the environment, while the last chapter deals with food that is completely personal, with a provenance as clear as any food's can be, and a minimal impact on the environment. Discussing his "perfect meal," Pollan writes, "as a kind of ritual, a meal that is eaten in full consciousness of what it took to make it is worth preparing every now and again, if only as a way to remind us of the true costs of the things we take for granted." Still, the chapter didn't seem to fit within the context of the book since the overwhelming majority of Americans Pollan seeks to address don't hunt and gather their own food.
Overall, Pollan's discussions are compelling, ranging from the history of corn to the ethics of eating animals. For each food chain (industrial, organic, Beyond Organic, and hunter-gatherer), Pollan eats a meal that is the chain's end result, tying his research into a few bites. Getting to know his food helps him better understand his own place in the world, leaving us with a new appreciation for the old mantra: you are what you eat.
// ELIANE STAMPFER is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in Computer Science. She is the head copy editor for The Current.