Rian’s Book Club

Move over, Oprah.

I’ve recently been reading:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

One of the last books that I read was Pollan’s Botany of Desire. In both, I appreciated Pollan’s generally successful attempts to remain accessible as a character. Often authors get carried away with their damn selves while providing scientific or historical perspective. “Look at me, I have a Ph.D. in cross-disciplinary ethnonutrition! LOOK AT ME!” Pollan’s pretty good about saying ‘this was gross, and I nearly puked’ when the situation seems to call for it.

This book focuses on the food chain for the modern human. It is, as he refers to another work in here, a book to make you defend your way of eating or change it. I don’t mean that he’s accusatory. It’s not a self-righteous book. In fact, it’s surprising to read that he takes his family to McDonald’s at one point. Even I won’t do that, and I’m pretty loosey-goosey about what we modern folks allow is “food.”

Instead, Pollan makes the effort to go to the food chain. He visits the monoculture of a government-subsidized Iowa corn farm and tries to follow the incredible “golden river” through the industrial agriculture machine. He describes clearly how our penchant for industrial efficiency combined with some politically expedient decisions in the 70s sent us down this– quite obviously, I think– massively errant food path we’re on.

Why is there a dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi the size of New Jersey? Why is there high-fructose corn syrup in everything? Why are we feeding cows corn only to have to feed them anti-biotics by the sackload to counteract the effects of the corn? How is it that no one says anything when Monsanto takes it upon themselves to release genetically engineered crops into the wild?

What are we hoping for when we voluntarily sacrifice culture, flavor, diversity, the environment, and ethical treatment of people, land, and animals for the profit of a few large corporations? The answer seems to be cheap calories. Period. But ‘cheap’ in this case doesn’t take into account the very real economic impact on our healthcare costs, environment, and taxes. Pollan makes a very lucid case on that point.

He also spends a good deal of the book talking to and about rational farming practices: grass-fed beef, polyculture farming, local food economies. Between the extremes, he discusses the concept of “industrial-organic” farming, which basically swaps nitrogen for compost but generally adheres to an industrial farming and distribution model. Is it ‘good’ organic or ‘bad’ organic? It turns out to be a difficult question to answer. The interesting aspect is the power of marketing and the purely capitalist influences on what was a grassroots movement to break away from pure capitalism. His thoughts on the literature genre he calls “supermarket pastoral” will make you read packages at Whole Foods a little differently next time.

I took personal interest in his thoughts on vegetarianism and omnivorism as someone who went years without eating meat of one kind or another. He asserts, debatably I think, that we’re ‘made’ to be meat eaters. Still, that interests me less than the ideas behind the ethics of raising domestic animals for whatever reason and specifically to eat them. Pollan goes back and forth on the subject, as do I, without getting preachy. He addresses thoughts I’ve had about the comparative value of species and individual, the reality of death in the wild, and the endless moral debate that is animal rights.

If I could call out any faults of Pollan’s work, it would be his tendencies to repeat himself and make debatable assertions as fact. I get the feeling that he’s trying to reach his page allotment when he tells (or repeats) some of his stories or Clifford Clavin “little known facts.” He also has a tendency to state presumptive generalizations without giving the proper concessions to uncertainty or exceptions.

Still, these are fairly nitpicky points. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s thought-provoking but an easy read on the nightstand. There’s only a couple of points, necessary to his story, in the book that are really disgusting. Most of it is actually pretty charming and hopeful.

If you read it, or already have, I’d be interested to hear what you think.