TLDR
If this book report seems too lengthy, but think you might be interested, watch the documentary Food, Inc. It is available for free streaming on Watch Documentaries. The documentary was released in 2008. Unfortunately, what it documents hasn’t changed substantially since its release. If Food, Inc. piques your interest, then reading Omnivore’s Dilemma should be your next step. Similar topics are covered, but both the depth and breadth of coverage are substantially expanded.
My Personal Experience
I must credit The Omnivore’s Dilemma for igniting my passion for farmers’ markets, understanding food production, and eating seasonally. Before reading the book, I was pretty good at taking care of my family’s nutritional needs. I incorporated lots of fruits and vegetables into our meals, most of them organic. We ate the rainbow: green spinach and broccoli, red tomatoes and bell peppers, orange butternut squash and sweet potatoes… But it was always the same familiar cast, with no thought about season or food miles. For animal protein, price was the primary selection criteria. The proteins that were on sale that week were often what we ate that week.
I had already watched Food, Inc. That started the gears turning in my head. But, being a book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma could go much deeper and cover more ground than a relatively short documentary. And the extended time it takes to read a book allows for more contemplation and assimilation. The book was first published in 2006, so one might think the material is dated. But, for the most part, things haven’t changed in our industrial food systems. I encourage everyone to read the book. There’s even a young reader’s edition for school kids.
The Organization
When I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I consumed it as a single stream of consciousness. I didn’t notice the title’s tagline: A Natural History of Four Meals. I was aware of the name of each chapter as I was reading the book, but I hadn’t noticed that those chapters were broken into three distinct parts. I found it quite consumable as a single stream of consciousness. I didn’t need the crutch of a roadmap to stay engaged or to organize my thoughts. But, in preparing this book report, I think they are both handy to convey the gist of the book.
Part 1 – Industrial, Corn
The first part of the book focuses on industrial food systems with a focus on corn. It covers much of the general history of the industrialization of our agriculture, which applies to wheat and soy as much as it does to corn. After World War II, the US had a huge surplus of ammonium nitrate, which was used to make explosives. It turns out it is also an effective synthetic nitrogen fertilizer for plants. Synthetic fertilizers negated the need for diversity to maintain soil fertility, which opened the door for monoculture. This opened the door to economies of scale provided by industrial agriculture – miles upon miles of corn or wheat or soy. Hybrid breeding practices made seed development profitable. This led to genetic engineering of crops and patenting of crops, and the ability of agrobusinesses developing fertilizers, pesticides and seed stock to drive the system. Various factors contributed to unstable farm profitability, which led to government subsidies. Economies of scale and more effective lobbying capacity favored the large corporations over the family farmer. The big get bigger and the little guys disappear.
Focusing on corn… With more corn than there was a market for, we needed to find more uses for corn. Using it as livestock feed came early in the process. Instead of allowing cows to forage grass on the pasture, which they are biologically evolved to do, we feed cows corn in CAFOs (concentrated animal feed operations). We learned how to process corn to pull out all sorts of molecular constituents. Corn starch and corn oil are relatively obvious. High fructose corn syrup was formulated to substitute for sugar, undetectable to the human palate. And then there’s the myriad other “natural” binders, fillers, emulsifiers and flavorings. If a beverage’s ingredient label lists “natural flavorings” without being more specific, most likely those flavorings are corn based.
Corn is unique among food plants in that it metabolizes the C-13 carbon isotope, where other crops only use the more common C-12. Measuring the ratio of C-13 to C-12 carbon in a person’s hair gives an estimate about the ratio of corn in their diet and their food’s diet. While the average Mexican gets about 40% of their calories directly from corn, mostly in the form of tortillas, the average American has a higher ratio of C-13 to C-12. This is due to all the hidden corn in the US diet. In Mexico they don’t feed corn to their cows, and they don’t sweeten their soda with high fructose corn syrup.
The First Meal
The first of the four meals closed out the first section. Pollan, along with his wife and their son, went to McDonald’s for lunch. As you might expect, corn was everywhere. Corn fed beef and chicken. High fructose corn syrup in the sodas and shakes and the burger buns. Corn products in the salad dressing, the burger’s special sauce and the nugget’s dipping sauce. Special attention was placed on the chicken nuggets. Reading a McDonald’s nutrition pamphlet, Pollan counted 13 corn sourced ingredients: corn fed chicken, chicken broth, corn starch, modified corn starch, monoglycerides, diglycerides, triglycerides, dextrose, lecithin, yellow corn flour, vegetable shortening, partially hydrogenated corn oil and citric acid. You are what you eat. Americans are walking corn chips.
Section 2 – Pastoral, Grass
Most of this section is focused on the happenings at Polyface Farm, run by Joel Salatin in Virginia. Salatin describes himself as a “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic-farmer.” He says “I’m a grass farmer.” The majority of the food produced at Polyface Farm comes from livestock: beef, chicken, eggs, turkey and pork. But grass is the basis of everything. Poultry feed is the only major external input to the farm operations. Grass is a simplification. There’s a great diversity of herbaceous plants which grow on the pastures. The animals are not only the product, but they also do much of the work. The pastures are divided into fenced paddocks. Cattle are allowed to graze in a particular paddock, mowing the grass. The cattle are moved into another mature paddock before they overgraze. Chickens are brought through the paddock a couple weeks later. The chickens break up the “cow pies” left behind by the cows. The do this to uncover the grubs that are growing in the nutritious manure, scattering the manure evenly over the pasture. The pig’s natural rooting instincts are used to clear the understory of the woods surrounding the fields. They also stir compost which strategically includes some ears of fermenting corn. Salatin says that pigs like nothing better than forty proof corn. Salatin harnesses biology and takes cues from natural ecosystems to make his farm work without the use fertilizers or chemicals. It’s all hormone free and antibiotic free.
One chapter diverts from Polyface farm to discuss “big organic.” Here we learn a lot about the history of “organic.” Organic is what we did for almost all human history. It wasn’t until the rise of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in the 2nd half of the 20th century that modern “conventional” farming became the norm. Organic was a counterculture protest to what our agricultural systems had become. When it became popular, it became regulated with the “USDA Organic” label. Big agriculture lobbyists were heavily involved in the development of those regulations. USDA Organic forbids the use of synthetic chemicals, but it is OK with mining mineral salts to use as fertilizers. It is also OK with indiscriminate pesticides as long as they are derived from natural sources. Reductionist science had shown that NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium) were the three elements that plants need to grow. This science didn’t look at nutritional content of those plants or the health of the microbial ecosystem in the soil. Big organic was able to keep all of the conventional industrial practices, including monoculture and the use of NPK fertilizers and the scheduled application of pesticides. They just switched the inputs to ones that are compliant with USDA organic regulations.
The Second Meal
This led to the second meal of the book. An organic meal consisting of ingredients purchased from Whole Foods. There is a lot of discussion of the marketing descriptions placed on product labels. For example, “natural” is almost meaningless and “free-range” probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. The meal was prepared in January and included roast chicken, roasted vegetables, steamed asparagus and a spring salad mix. Dessert was ice cream topped with blackberries. This meal was prepared in California, where many of the food miles would have been relatively small. But if you shop at a Whole Foods location on the East Coast, the sources (such as Cal-Organics and Earthbound Farm) would likely be the same. And, even in California, the asparagus had to be imported from Argentina and the blackberries from Mexico. There was lots of discussion, including a couple conclusions. First, (lower-case) whole foods are better than processed foods, both in flavor and nutrition. Second, big organic is a big step in the right direction, environmentally speaking. But there is still plenty of room for improvement.
The Third Meal
There’s a lot more detail about the operations of Polyface Farm. The day-to-day tasks and how they change in different seasons of the year. The family meals. The harvesting (slaughter and processing) of the livestock. The marketing and sales challenges presented to independent farmers. The chapter ends with the third meal of the book-a meal focused on local and seasonal. Pollan took chicken, eggs and sweet corn from Polyface farms. He picked up some local arugula and a Virginia wine from the grocery. And he picked up some chocolate from Belgium. The idea is it’s OK for “foodsheds” to trade between each other for things that they can’t produce locally. Coffee, tea, sugar and chocolate are common examples. He took these ingredients to the home of a family that were old friends of his and cooked up the meal. Roast chicken and arugula salad for dinner. Chocolate soufflé, using the Polyface eggs, for dessert. The dinner was successful. The children were interested in hearing about the farm. The chicken was declared to be the most chickeny chicken. “Everything tasted completely in character.”
Section 3 – Personal, The Forest
In this section, Pollan sets off to create a meal out of ingredients that he has either hunted, gathered or grown on his own. He has little experience as an outdoorsman, so he enlists the help of Angelo Garro. Garro, originally from Sicily, has spent his life immersed in foraging, hunting, preserving, and preparing foods. Garro teaches Pollan about hunting and ultimately takes him on a successful hunt for wild boar. Pollan also enlists help from a few other people to learn about and attempt foraging for mushrooms. Ultimately, Garro lead Pollan on a successful hunt for chantarelles.
As with other sections, there’s contemplation that happens in this section. One chapter is titled “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Here he discusses the biology driving human food requirements and the anthropology that led to the evolution of human tastes and diets. He also revisits the idea of America’s “national eating disorder.” He reasons that America hasn’t been around enough to develop a strong food culture. We are a melting pot, which brought an amazing variety of small scale food cultures. But there is no unifying theme, which makes America susceptible to “national eating disorders.” There’s a full chapter examining the ethics of eating animals. Pollan considers all sides of the argument, spending much time reflecting on Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation, including correspondence with Singer. He takes up vegetarianism for a time while considering whether he can, in good conscience, continue to eat meat. Eventually he formulates a theory for the ethical consumption of meat which informs his future choices.
The Fourth Meal
The final chapter of the book is all about the fourth meal. It includes wild boar, mushrooms, bread, fava beans, salad greens and a cherry galette for dessert. The boar came from his hunting trip. The mushrooms he foraged. He cultivated wild yeast for the bread. The fava beans and salad greens came from his garden. The cherries grew on his neighbor’s tree, plucked from branches that overhung the fence between yards. Admittedly it is unpractical for people in modern society to eat only what the hunt, gather and grow for themselves, but the exercise for this meal was meaningful. Compared to the McDonald’s meal, “the pleasures of one are based on a nearly perfect knowledge; the pleasures of the other on an equally perfect ignorance.”
