Book Review: The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Posted by Katie Elzer-Peters
September 24th, 2009
Filed in Organic Book Reviews
Tags: biodynamic, healthy living, industrial farming, Michael Pollan, organic gardening

I’ve been reading and reading and reading this summer, into fall.  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  Food Matters, by Mark Bittman.  In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.  I finally got to the big one:  The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.  (Full disclosure:  I listened to the first half of the book, unabridged, on CD, while driving through the very cornfields of the Midwest that Pollan describes.)  I finished reading the book, which I had purchased at Costco (how’s that for irony), when I got home from my trip.  Everyone who reviews this book says this, but I’ll say it again:  I’ll never look at a meal the same way again.

Four Hours of Corn

This book is not for the faint of heart.  In terms of its length, its subject matter and its sometimes wordy, but always thorough treatment of each subject, The Omnivore’s Dilemma isn’t just a book, it’s a project.  It was kind of fitting and kind of strange to listen to the first few chapters of the book while driving through the cornfields.  That’s because the first few chapters are all about corn:  how we grow it, why we grow so much of it, the way it is in almost everything we eat, and how it is ruining our lives.

The premise of The Omnivore’s Dilemma is this:  Michael Pollan, writer, thinker, plant-lover, food promoter, sets out to answer the question “What should we have for dinner?”  The answer to this question is complicated, today, by an almost infinite number of choices and/or obligations:  McDonald’s, the farmer’s market, Whole Foods, the farm down the street, Costco.  Organic or conventional?  Local or cheap? Local and cheap?  Food from people we know or food bought from a warehouse?  How on earth does anyone decide?  And, how on earth can anyone decide when most of us don’t understand exactly what is in a box of cheerios, versus a loaf of bread we make ourselves.  How do we choose what to eat if we can’t recognize a whole grain without a food label.  Why do whole grains need a label?

Three Modern Food Chains

In order to help answer the question “What should we eat for dinner?” Pollan traces three meals through three different food chains:  Industrial (largely centering on corn),  Pastoral (largely centering on grass), and Personal (foraging and hunting in the forest).  The meal at the end of the Industrial food chain is fast food, eaten in a moving vehicle.  At the end of Pastoral, Grass-fed or grass-derived ingredients.  At the end of Personal, what Pollan calls “The Perfect Meal.”  Hm.  During the course of the book, Pollan goes behind the scenes of the modern industrial agricultural food chain:  huge subsidized fields of corn and soybeans, giant feedlots and manure, and our drive-through nation.

Between the drive-through and the pasture-fed, Pollan takes a saunter through Big Organic, the large industrial organic farms-Cascadian and Earthbound Organic.  We learn that many of their processes aren’t so different from Big Ag.  The inputs are different (compost and manure instead of synthetic liquid fertilizer), but the process of farming is not.

The Pastoral section was my favorite part of the book.  During his research for that section, Pollan visited a biodynamic farm in Virginia.  This farm was almost a contained system of animals, plants and water.

The last section of the book, the Personal, was the least understandable to me, mainly because it didn’t involve much farming or growing, and I’m a horticulturist.  I grow stuff to eat.  I don’t go to the woods and dig it up.  That, quite frankly, scares the crap out of me.

Taste the Difference

Does food taste better if we know it was grown by fairly compensated workers toiling in safe conditions?  Does it taste better from our own garden, or the local farmer’s market, or from the big box warehouse?  Can you tell the difference between grain fed and grass fed beef?  After a summer of reading and thinking and tasting and growing and visiting, I believe that, yes, you can taste the difference between the far-flung industrial and the local sustainable harvest.  And, I think, local tastes better.  It also, I learned, or re-confirmed, is better for the economy and the environment.  If I want a nice place for my (eventual) kids to live, my neighbors and I need to make some changes.  We need to “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” as Pollan advised in his followup to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the book In Defense of Food.

Over the summer of salad days and hamburger days, I’ve found that I’m no more hungry on the days I eat a lot of fruits and veggies than on the days when I eat more meat and, well, fried crap.  I’ve thought about the C4 carbon form in corn, while I’m drinking a soda (made with corn syrup) or chewing gum (made with corn derivatives), or eating corn on the cob (corn).

The First Step is Awareness

Isn’t the first step in a 12 step program admitting that there’s something wrong?  Well, there is something wrong, I *personally* believe, with the industrial agricultural system.  The thing I’ve liked most about all four books I’ve read and reviewed this summer is that none of them are preachy.  They are all more interested in creating awareness, relying on the readers to analyze and take action.  Their message is easier to swallow that way.