Twelve Black Code Monkeys

In The Omnivore’s Dilemm a, journalist and author Michael Pollan takes us on a journey through four of the main kinds of meals that are generally get eaten here in the U.S.: a fast food meal; an “industrial organic” meal; a meal from a non-industrial, sustainable, local farm (self-labeled “beyond organic”); and finally a meal for which Pollan provides the majority of the ingredients himself - by hunting and gathering. The book is not only about the meals and their ingredients and preparation, however. Rather, Pollan tries to take us from the very beginning of how the components of each meal, to the end product. Thus he traces the cow, chicken, or pig from its origins and life on the farm (or forest) to its slaughter, preparation for sale or cooking, and final preparation by the Pollan himself or McDonalds. He also traces other parts of the meal, most notably corn (for the fast-food meal) and mushrooms (for the hunter-gatherer meal). Along the way, we Pollan gives us the history of various kinds of agriculture, discusses much of our historical and prehistoric relationship to food through the anthropological record, and even how animal and plant species have evolved to defend against predation but also to survive with the help of humans or other animals. The book is not purely one of information, though, but also a very personal account of Pollan’s own journey as he immerses himself in the details of what most of us take for granted as simply the food we buy and eat every day.The title of the book refers to the fact that humans, like some other primates, rats, pigs, chickens, bears, and a bunch of other species, are “omnivores,” meaning that they (we) are generalized feeders that can eat both animal meats as well as plant foods for our nourishment. Other species have a more specialized diet, and can only survive by either eating meat (carnivores) or plant foods (herbivores). While being an omnivore gives distinct advantages, allowing for a wider assortment of nourishment, the flip side of this increased number of choices is the problem or dilemma of what to eat. Koala bears know they can eat eucalyptus leaves, and that’s it. Omnivores have to figure out what they can eat, making sure not to eat something poisonous, and also trying to determine the most nutritious animals or plants (or parts of these) so that they don’t waste their limited capacity to consume and fill up on ones that aren’t as very nourishing. Also, since we’ve developed culture, language, philosophy, and religion, we also need to deal with the decision of what we should eat. Should we eat meat, for example, or is that “immoral.” Should we eat by the rules of kosher or halal? Should we eat organic or conventional? Should we eat something that authorities tell us will eventually be detrimental to our health despite no immediate or obvious danger? These questions, although they perhaps only infrequently come up for most of us, are ones where we differ from other species, and Pollan demonstrates throughout the book that these decisions can be at times very difficult ones if one really chooses to contemplate them seriously.

The first section of the book details industrial agriculture. Specifically, it describes everything about the biggest single crop that the U.S. produces - corn, or more accurately the species zea mays. The history of corn is a fascinating one as Pollan tells it. He describes how in the last fifty or so years it has become part of an absurdist spiral that has bankrupted huge numbers of farmers, made the U.S. one of the most obese countries on the planet, and has usurped the vast majority of our arable land. Most of this, Pollan writes, is due to government subsidies that compel farmers to grow corn over anything else. Government regulations also favor corn, industrial methods of farming, and the largest of operations. These regulations are no doubt affected by the lobbying dollars spent, and campaign contributions given, to government officials on behalf of the manufacturers of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and huge industrial farms.

Corn has become such a cheap commodity, Pollan tells us, that new ways are constantly being devised to deal with the ever-increasing yields and surpluses that would otherwise rot on the silo floor. So corn goes into all processed foods for various purposes - bulking, sweetening, preserving, or adding this or that quality. Sweetening, of course, is one of its main functions, as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) found in soft drinks and desert foods and in many other non-desert foods that one wouldn’t expect it to be in. The escalating consumption of soft drinks with HFCS has been proposed by many as a major causal factor in the U.S. epidemic of obesity and diabetes - especially childhood diabetes.

In addition to corn, Pollan also tracks a steer he purchases that will eventually be slaughtered in a factory farm, or has the industry calls it, a Confined Area Feeding Operation, of CAFO. The steer gets to have a happy few weeks with his mother, eating a natural diet of grass, after which he is shipped to the CAFO and subsequently made to eat a completely unnatural diet of corn, soy protein, and the fat from fellow slaughtered cows. Corn is the carbohydrate of choice, of course, because it is so cheap, but also because it fattens the cow very quickly (not unlike how it fattens us), and produces the marbling affect that the USDA uses one of its two main variables in how it rates rate cuts of meat. Such cows are routinely given antibiotics as part of their regular diet due to the unsanitary conditions of the industrial feed lot as well as their unnatural diet. They are also pumped full of hormones to speed their growth even more.

Aside from the humanitarian, health, and economic issues involved, there is even one of geopolitics. This is because industrial farming is based around petroleum, and according to Pollan accounts for 20% of the United States energy expenditure! Not only does this industrial system involve shipping food products across the vast distances of our country, but the fertilizer itself requires a great deal of petroleum to produce. While technology like genetically modified organisms and new farming methods have made the yield per acre of corn very high indeed, the efficiency of producing it in terms of resources needed is still low. According to Pollan, it takes something like 50 calories of energy (mostly from oil) to produce a single food calorie from corn. Of course, all this government subsidizing, and hence cheapening of corn, means that corn and the animals raised on it have become much cheaper to eat. But, Pollan argues, there is a tremendous hidden cost, or costs, the two major ones being public health and our increased dependency on foreign oil.

The second part of the book is devoted to “industrial organic.” This might seem like a contradiction in terms and Pollan argues that this may be the case. He describes the origins of the organic movement in the 60’s and 70’s and how part of the tenets of the movement was about “sustainability” - the ability for a farm to sustain itself without a significant amount of outside “inputs” - chemical fertilizer, pesticides, etc.) The first farms of this movement grew haltingly, but eventually took off, mainly in the 1980’s, after which their products were in such high demand by national chains like Costco that their demand could not be bet via the original ideals of organic movement. So a more “industrial” approach was adopted. Still, neither the animal feed nor the crops grown for human consumption via industrial organic can use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Antibiotics can only be used in case of an illness rather than as a preventative, and hormones cannot be used at all. While this takes care of many of the problems of pure industrial farming, it does not deal with the problem of sustainability that was a major part of the movement’s initial focus.

The third part of the book centers around the self-labeled “beyond organic,” movement, which aims to reinvent the original movement’s ideals, although some of its origins hark back even further to the 1940’s, when industrial farming was really starting to get started, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides were starting to be used. The movement preaches sustainability and imitating nature in the closest way possible within the confines of a managed system. The practice is exemplified by the colorful farmer Joel Salatin in his 100-acre farm in Swoope, Virginia, about two and a half hours west of me here in the Washington DC suburbs. Salatin has been a tireless crusader for the rights of small farmers like himself, who are often given the short end of the stick because they do not have the lobbying dollars of the industrial organic sector, let alone the non-organic industrial. Pollan actually spends a week working at Salatin’s farm, “Polyface ,” for a week, involved in many of the aspects of farming, even including the slaughtering of chickens. As Pollan describes it, just about everything at Polyface is sustainable. The Cows graze on a given pasture and fertilize it with their manure, then they are moved to another pasture and chickens are brought in as a “clean up crew” eating the larva that has been growing in the manure. The chickens in turn deposit their own waste, and in another day or two the grass has grown back to the point where another group of cows can be brought in to feed. This cycle where different plants and animals participate in a system that helps all involved without the need for external materials or forces (except the farmer to move the animals) is such a huge savings in terms of fuel, raw materials, etc., that one can really see how incredibly wasteful the industrial systems are in comparison.

The final part of the book concerns itself with Pollan’s efforts to make a meal that he has hunted and gathered himself. A friend mentors him both in hunting feral pigs as well as finding wild mushrooms. Much of this portion of the book is devoted to Pollan’s own philosophical and moral meanderings about whether he can justify killing an animal and eating it. Pollan corresponds with Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation , and has debate both with Singer and with himself about whether eating meat is justifiable. He does end up going on his hunt, and we get to experience the exhilaration that this brings, as well as the disgust when it comes time to dress his kill. Foraging for mushrooms, does not elicit any moral dilemmas, but does provide some interesting information about an organism completely separate from both that of the animal and plant kingdoms, and one which we apparently know comparatively little about.

On the whole, The Omivore’s Dilemma is a fascinating book that will make many people rethink their entire relationship with food. The vast majority of us think little about food other than perhaps the cost, the calorie content, the taste, and occasionally the number of grams of fat or carbohydrate contained in it. This book provides some great insights into aspects of the food chain that most of us know little about, perhaps enough to prompt those who read it to start thinking and caring how the food on their plate got there enough to ask more questions about that food, be it from a grocery store or a restaurant. Perhaps some will even start to demand more from the restaurants and food shops they patronize. And perhaps some will even ask themselves more about what they are willing to sacrifice in an effort to eat what they think will be healthy for them, the country, and the planet.

As much as I enjoyed The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I did have a couple of problems with the book, and I’m apparently not alone, given some of the reviews on Amazon.com . Let me first mention that I listened to this book as an audio book downloaded from Audible.com , so my experience is, I’m sure. slightly different from those reading the book in paper form. Nonetheless, one of the main complaints about the book I would have to agree with - I think Pollan could have gotten his point across within 3/4 of the pages it actually took, perhaps even less. The first parts about industrial non-organic, and industrial organic, are very informational. In the third part, Pollan puts himself into the story, which in itself is fine and gives us some of his personal insights by letting us experience what he did on the farm, but at a certain point, especially around the issues of killing, Pollan becomes so entangled in his own conflicting emotions and tortured thinking about it, that eventually gets repetitive and you feel like you are reading the diary of a tortured soul. This continues and perhaps even worsens in the final part of the book, where Pollan debates vegetarianism with himself and with Singer, tries to deal with the guilt over having fun while hunting and killing his pig and his revulsion during the dressing of the animal. Although these moral musings aren’t prevalent in the chapters on hunting for mushrooms, Pollan seems to find other things to wax philosophic about, fluffing the pages out way beyond what they should be, especially at the end of a long book.

Aside from the length issue and some inaccuracies and inconsistencies pointed out by other reviewers on Amazon, my other major issue with Pollan’s book is one that might not be an issue for most. It relates to Pollan’s ridicule of restricted carbohydrate diets - Atkins in particular - and disdain for fat in general and saturated fat in particular. I find it disappointing that Pollan can debunk so much of the standard line about food, even about the “organic” label that marketers would have you believe is the healthiest food there can be, yet he seems to accept all the old dogma about low-carb and saturated fats despite there being tremendous evidence that supports the healthfulness of that way of eating. Instead he more or less calls Atkins a “quack” and bases this, it seems, on the oft-repeated erroneous claim that Atkins eliminates an “entire food group” - by which he means carbohydrates. This of course is incorrect, but Pollan, like many, seem to have a bias against diets, and specifically towards Atkins that clouds objectivity and careful research. This bias seems to infect other ideas of Pollan’s. The most blatant example of this bias (perhaps also combined with some sloppiness that Pollan shows elsewhere when dealing with other technical subjects) is when he claims that the human brain can get glucose only from carbohydrates. Any first-year biochemist will tell you that this is false, and that protein can easily be converted to glucose as well - Eskimos have survived for hundreds of years on a diet of pure protein and fat (from seal and caribou) for hundreds of years.

Finally, as at least one Amazon reviewer points out, Pollan doesn’t really fully deal with the issue of the price of doing things in an organic and sustainable way. Organic, and “beyond organic” foods are generally much higher in price than their conventional competition. That’s not to say they aren’t worth that price for those who can afford them, but Wholefoods, CSA’s, and Farmers Markets are often more patronized by those on the upper end of the income scale. Those who make minimum wage, or even a bit more, would probably have to spend a huge portion of their paycheck in order to buy most of their food as organic. They simply don’t have much choice in the matter. Pollan suggests that Pollyface’s customers didn’t seem like the well-healed customers of Wholefoods. Still, Swoope is a pretty rural part of Virginia, and so those more well-to-do people just aren’t there in large numbers, and those who are probably are not trying to stand out as such.

Theoretically if the government would stop subsidizing corn and instead used that money to support small sustainable farmers so that their food could be sold less expensively and locally(but without the regulatory requirements that often come with such funding), the food supply might be turned on its head. This of course, is a pipe dream. I’d love for it to happen, but how practical is it in a country as large as ours? Can all the farmland be reconverted into lots of Polyfaces that could serve the entire country? Even if it could be done, the monumental market forces needed for getting this change to occur just aren’t there. It would take a huge rethinking on the part of most of citizens of this country about the food they eat. Even if everyone read Pollan’s book (which I don’t think is a bad idea), there would still be plenty of hold outs who simply don’t care about their own health, let alone the health of others, the environment, or the health and well-being of the animals they eat. I think the best we can hope for, at least for the foreseeable future, is just a level playing field, where small farmers are given the same rights and opportunities as the giant industrial ones and still get to produce their crops and livestock in the way they choose with as little regulation from the government as possible. This is all that Joel Salatin wants, according to Pollan, and I don’t think it’s something unreasonable to ask for, even from those who couldn’t care less about “organic,” “beyond organic,” or any other fancy label we might choose to give our food in the future.