The Omnivore's Dilemma

By Michael Pollan

I'd read Pollan's Second Nature years ago, so when I saw this one on the Bestseller table at the library, I picked it up, and am grateful that I did.

Pollan does a natural history analysis of 4 meals that he eats: a McDonald's burger, fries, and soda; a chicken dinner complete with out of season white asparagus from Whole Foods; a chicken dinner from a sustainable farm in VA; and a meal that he hunted and foraged for himself.

The McDonald's meal comes from a monoculture of corn -- indeed, those who eat the typical american diet can be thought of as "processed corn, walking." Hybrid corn, which forms the basis of most animal feed (which makes the cattle ill and need anti-biotics), sweetners and myriad other ingredients in most processed foods. These hybrids need lots and lots of patroleum-based fertilizers to grow. It's a highly unsustainable system, which has led in many cases to the decline of the american farm.

As an afficionado(a?) of Whole Foods -- I love that the one and only WFM in my city is within a 5 minute drive from my house -- I had to laugh at the description of the story being told as fitting a genre of "Supermarket Pastoral." (They have lots of books about food, but you won't see this one.) He points out how big organic can have a lot of the same problems as conventional factory farming -- feeding cows corn, albeit organic corn, and even coming up with ingredients like organic high fructose corn syrup.

The most interesting section of the book deals with Pollan's experiences at Polyface farm, a varied, evironmentally sustainable farm, based on pature grasses rather than corn. The cows eat the grass, the chickens eat the bugs that grow in the cow manure, the people eat the chicken and the cows. Repeat. Nothing is wasted -- even the chicken guts are composted. Here Pollan comes face to face with the real omnivore's dilemma -- can he kill a chicken, and then eat it later. Indeed he can and does.

The end of the book deals with Pollan learning to hunt and hunting and eating wild pig -- a domestic animal that was let loose in CA years ago and is now an environmental nightmare. He also forages for wild mushrooms. This meal takes a long time and effort. It's not a way of eating that is realistic for long-term survival.

So what does it mean for this omnivore? Honestly, I don't think I'm going to change all that much. When we can, we buy seasonal produce, but that's only good for half a year. We buy locally raised chicken at the farmer's market. I'll never get my husband to buy less meat -- and more expensive meat at that. And, I have to admit to getting a taste for a Big Mac now and then.