I just finished reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It goes into great detail about what we eat, and why we eat what we eat in this country. It is disconcerting on some fronts, sad on others. It does not try to make one a vegetarian (he is not a vegetarian) although I can see how that may be an outcome of reading this book.
It is well written and compelling (He writes for the New York Times Magazine, and I have read one of his other books – The Botany of Desire, which is also very good.)
This book follows the food chain of three meals – one “industrial” one “organic” and one “perfect” (ie hunted and gathered) It is fascinating to see him follow the river of corn that this country produces and turns into any number of products (including, of course HFCS) and how our government encourages that industry (he lays a lot of the credit for that to Earl Butz. You youngsters may not remember him, but he was Sec of Agriculture who had to resign after a ribald and racist joke)
The “Big Organic” part is interesting too. DO you really think that it makes sense to eat “organic” food that was grown in Chile? Talk about energy intensive! And the “free range hens and eggs that I always buy to assuage my guilt are probably treated little better than battery hens.
There is relief in both his “grass farm” chapter, and oddly enough in the hunting and gathering part of the book. While neither are touted as solutions to the problems raised (hard to scale) it is nice to see that these things are possible.
An interesting statistic in our energy hungry world that he points out is that it takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to grow a calorie of corn. Think about that when you think about the energy efficiency of producing ethanol from corn.
Well worth the time invested in the read.
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