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Title

The Omnivore's Dilemma:  A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

Review

I have loved animals my entire life- I was lucky to grow up with cats and dogs, riding horses, and playing with hamsters.  In my adult life I have become involved with the Central OK Humane Society as a volunteer and foster…but I have never considered vegetarianism.  I would often say that the only thing that prevented me from becoming a vegetarian were PETA videos I refused to watch- but herein lies the problem.  I decided, at some point in my life, not to look at what was happening to my food because I knew it would disturb me.  I knew that I would cry at the cruelty; I would cringe at the treatment of these food animals that are as sentient as my dog Ooli. 

This is the very attitude that Michael Pollan takes on in his seminal work, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  We live in an unprecedented time in food- we are disconnected from the farmers that grow it; we purchase food in packages that don’t resemble the original organism in any way.  Additionally, we actively live in a world of denial.  Most of us, like myself, live (or lived) there by choice. 

My husband read The Omnivore’s Dilemma years ago and began asking me to read it as well.  Because of him reading this book we began patronizing local farmers and joined the Oklahoma Food Cooperative for some of our food- but still, I didn’t read it.  Finally, after years avoiding it, I picked it up- and I am so glad that I did.  The Omnivore’s Dilemma is far from the gruesome depiction of abused animals I feared; it is a frank discussion of the state of food in our country today. 

Pollan first discusses the proliferation of corn- and how corn changed the way we (and our food animals) eat.  Cheap corn means cheap feed, and industrialized farms quickly adopted this grain to feed cows, chicken, and pigs.  As Pollan explains it, “Its chief advantage is that cows fed corn, a compact source of caloric energy, get fat quickly; their flesh also marbles well, giving it a taste and texture American consumers have come to like.  Yet this corn-fed meat is demonstrably less healthy for us, since it contains more saturated fat and less omega-3 fatty acids than the meat of animals fed grass.  A growing body of research suggests that many of the health problems associated with eating beef are really problems with corn-fed beef…In the same way ruminants are ill adapted to eating corn, humans in turn may be poorly adapted to eating ruminants that eat corn.” 

But the Omnivore’s Dilemma isn’t just a treatise on corn, it’s an examination of where our food comes from.  Michael Pollan takes us through a meal provided by animals living on a CAFO, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation.  He discusses the abuse animals suffer (chicken beaks cut with hot wire, pigs with docked tails to discourage biting; pigs in confined spaces will often bite at each other’s tails) and the conditions in which they live. While not explicitly graphic, Pollan is able to impart the types of lives these animals lead.

Pollan also explores “Big Organic” operations like Whole Foods, sustainable farms like Polyface Farm run by Joel Salatin, and hunting-and-gathering in order to be 100% responsible for his meal.  These explorations dig deeply into how we consume- that even the most conscious of us that choose Whole Foods are still contributing to a global trade in non-local food.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is, at its core, a call to arms.  Michael Pollan wants us to think about where our food comes from, and how the decision to shop where we do directly influences the world around us.  Do we really need to fly in asparagus in January from Chile just so we can have it?  Is that ethical?  Before the industrialization of our food systems getting out-of-season food was just unheard of.  The convenience and on-demand eating we’ve become used to has led us to think it’s okay to eat asparagus in January.

I hope that you read this book and enjoy it.  I now have a better understanding of food and how to consume it in a manner that I am comfortable with.  We have started to get all of our meat from local farmers as well as a majority of our vegetables.  This life isn’t easy, it can be very difficult, especially when you’ve become accustomed to having anything you want any time that you want it.

I would like to leave this review with a passage from The Omnivore’s Dilemma. 

“The industrialization – and brutalization – of animals in America is a relatively new, evitable, and local phenomenon: No other country raises and slaughters its food animals quite as intensively or as brutally as we do.  No other people in history has lived at quite so great a remove from the animals they eat.  Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do.  Tail docking and sow crates and beak clipping would disappear overnight, and the days of slaughtering four hundred head of cattle an hour would promptly come to an end- for who could stand the sight? Yes, meat would get more expensive. We’d probably eat a lot less of it, too, but maybe when we did eat animals we’d eat them with the consciousness, ceremony, and respect they deserve.”  ~ Emily Z. Brown

Review Date

Reviewed November 2012