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“What should we have for dinner?,” the book begins. No, this is not a diet book, filled with new taboos and panaceas. Michael Pollan’s engrossing book Omnivore’s Dilemma tackles the question of what to eat in a more philosophical, but eminently practical, way. The title of the book is taken from psychologist Paul Rozin’s work on food selection in humans and animals. The “omnivore’s dilemma” is that, while omnivores can take advantage of many varied food sources, this also means that they must make choices about which things to eat, some of which could harm or kill them. Enter the contemporary American omnivore. With food fads revolutionizing the way Americans eat every few years, Pollan asks what we should be eating. To answer this question, he decides that he first must learn what we are eating, which he does by tracing the food chains of a small number of meals from their original sources to the table. Why ask what we should be eating, or even what we are eating? Pollan says, “How and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world- and what is to become of it.”
The book provides a compelling “natural history” of four meals: the “industrial,” “industrial organic,” “beyond organic,” and “neo-Paleolithic.” Pollan begins his inquiry with the largest and most prevalent food chain in America, the industrial, represented at mealtime by a McDonald’s lunch consumed in the car. Working from the source, Pollan reveals how corn has permeated every corner of the standard contemporary food supply: It is processed into myriad forms of food product (like most of the McDonald’s meal), fed to meat and dairy animals on industrial feedlots, and burned as ethanol in fuel tanks. After exposing many sordid details about the industrial food chain, Pollan asks if organic food provides a way around this petroleum-guzzling, environment-depleting, animal-torturing, obesity-inducing nightmare. In researching and preparing an organic meal from ingredients purchased at Whole Foods, Pollan discovers that “organic” has been co-opted to a great extent by the industrial logic of modern society, producing the oxymoronic “industrial organic” business that suffers from many of the same problems as the industrial food chain. He finds some hope, however, on Joel Salatin’s “beyond organic” farm, which raises animals in a symbiotic relationship based on their natural predilections, allowing the enterprise to function almost as a closed loop. The underlying message of Polyface Farm is “think local,” and even as Pollan sings its praise he wonders how “beyond organic” could serve the needs of urban society. Finally, Pollan makes “the perfect meal,” in a “neo-Paleolithic” endeavor of hunting, gathering, and growing everything on the table. He calls the meal “perfect” because it is made in full consciousness of and with full responsibility for everything that went into producing it. This final exercise allowed Pollan to grapple with many ethical questions of the way we eat, including the morality of killing animals. While he recognizes that hunting/ gathering is not a viable way to feed ourselves in the contemporary world, he thinks the lessons of the experience can lead us to more ethically conscious food selection.Overall, Omnivore’s Dilemma is compelling and well written. Pollan is familiar with classical texts in a range of fields and is up-to-date on current articles on food and food politics. As a journalist, he does not cite individual assertions with academic rigor, but, as the book is written for a general audience, the choice of narrative flow over scholarly citation is understandable. The strength of the book lies in Pollan’s considered reflection on each new piece of information he unearths. The reader feels that she is taking the journey toward deeper understanding, right along with the author.
While the book provides an excellent account of many facets of food production today, it neglects certain important aspects of the problem. Although Pollan addresses the impacts on environment, animals, and human health in general, he talks very little about the social injustices inflicted by the industrial agricultural system. As David Harvey points out, the effects of environmental hazards are differentially experienced by the poor and the well-off.[i] Pollan makes a nod to this when he says that those “on one of the lower rungs of America’s economic ladder” who enjoy the advantages of “cheap calories in a variety of attractive forms” provided by the industrial food chain end up paying “a high price for these cheap calories: obesity, Type II diabetes, heart disease.” However, Pollan is dismissive later, asserting, “It isn’t only the elite who in recent years have found an extra fifty or one hundred dollars each a month to spend on cell phones or television… so is the unwillingness to pay more for food really a matter of affordability or priority?” Whereas Margaret Fitzsimmons and David Goodman, who address many of the same issues as Pollan, see environmental harm and social inequality as mutually constitutive[ii], Pollan seems to locate the problem in the willful ignorance of consumers, encouraged by industry interests. He does not give enough attention to the socioeconomic class dimensions of either the problem or the possible solutions. It is important that those who are looking for alternative methods of feeding the population understand the systemic nature of class-based and racial oppression so that they don’t fall into the trap of blaming the people (or a section of the people) they are trying to help. As far as solutions, Pollan spends his time looking for solutions almost exclusively in rural settings. He mentions his concern that the Polyface farm model may not be able to feed New York City, but he never travels to a big city to investigate the urban agricultural movement of community and rooftop gardens, which could have added another important dimension to his work.
Pollan also could have made a more explicit connection between the industrial food system and broader environmental degradation and climate change. Pollan recognizes the disastrous nature of industrial agriculture and enumerates the present environmental and health problems created by the system, but he does not extend his vision into the future, or even into the world at large. Carole Crumley describes how Europe returned to the “Dark Ages” once the “Roman Climate Optimum” had passed.[iii] Pollan might do well to ask if the world is headed for another “Dark Ages” as we disrupt our own climate optimum through the global climate-changing effects of industrial agriculture.
Although Pollan could have delved deeper into the class and global implications of the problems he outlines, these criticisms should only highlight what a valuable jumping-off point he has given us. The book ends rather abruptly after Pollan’s hunting/ gathering experience and never offers a conclusion as to what we should be eating, but the well-researched descriptions and thoughtful reflections in The Omnivore’s Dilemma make it superb “food” for thought. The structure of the book, narrative flow, and clarity of expression lend it to a pleasure read and the classroom alike. Everyone should read this book, which can’t help but make even the most passive consumer ruminate on change.
[i] Harvey, David. Justice Nature and the Geography of Difference. Malden: MA: Blackwell. 1996.
[ii] Fitzsimmons, Margaret and David Goodman. “Incorporating Nature.” Remaking Reality, Ed. Bruce Braun and Noel Castree. P. 215.
[iii] Crumley, Carole L. “The Ecology of Conquest: Contrasting Agropastrol and Agricultural Societies’ Adaptation to Climatic Change.” Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing Landscapes, Ed. Crumley.
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