The Omnivore's Dilemma

I recently read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, a fascinating look at the modern American diet and what is so horribly wrong with it that's making us fatter and less healthy than at any time in our history.  But it ultimately left me wanting -- for what exactly to do about it (where to shop, what to eat, other than simply "more fruits and vegetables").  So I've since read his prior book, the best-selling 2006 tome The Omnivore's Dilemma.  And where Pollan whets your appetite with his knowledge and proscriptions in In Defense of Food, his previous effort was absolutely brilliant.  I cannot emphasize this enough -- anyone who eats food from American supermarkets today should read this book, right now.  It's that powerful.  It's that shocking.  And it will change the way you view the food you are putting into your body.  It has for me, at least.

The book is divided into three major parts, each an in-depth exploration of a different type of food supply.  The first part -- the most shocking -- is a study of the current American industrial food system, from the cornfields of Iowa to the feedlots in Minnesota to the slaughterhouses in Kansas (or right up to the door of the slaughterhouses, since none of the major national facilities allow any reporters inside their killing doors).  The second part takes us on a visit to an organic local farm in Virginia, where animals are treated humanely and no pesticides or hormones are used.  This is the way farming was done before World War II and is our memory of farming -- or at least our idealized version of farms, with chickens, pigs, cows, trees, and vegetables all living together symbiotically to produce the food for our table.  The third part takes us even further back in history, to pre-agricultural "hunter-and-gatherer" times, as Pollan attempts to create a meal solely from what he can kill and gather in northern California.  The agricultural age, which began 10,000 years ago, actually made humans smaller and less healthy than their hunter-and-gatherer ancestors, up until about 100 years ago, when we finally grew larger and lived longer than before we had domesticated animals.  Sadly, we have spent the past thirty years completely changing our food system again, to something almost completely unrelated to farming and agriculture, and it's making us horribly unhealthy.  It's pretty much The Jungle out there, today, and we're all getting diabetes and heart disease and various cancers as a result, in addition to common ordinary obesity.  These are all modern illnesses, all associated with the modern diet, and all a result of the industrial food system in the United States today.  And before I read this book, I never realized it.  Or what a huge problem it is.

Pollan's first culprit in this mess is corn, and a good portion of the first part of the book is spent in the cornfields of Iowa, where rows and rows of fields and fields of corn populate "farms" as far as the eye can see.  What's so bad about corn, you might ask?  Well, first of all, this isn't edible corn.  Not for us at least.  The corn grown in Iowa is a bunch of different strains all classified as #2 corn, which is not the sweet corn we find on our dinner tables in the summer.  No, this corn is processed before ever entering our stomachs, and it's the processing that is killing us.  Fully 60% of the corn grown in this country is being fed to cows.  60%!!  And corn is by far our biggest crop.  By far.  What used to be traditional farms that grew a wide variety of produce are now by and large all corn factories (and to a lesser extent, soybeans).  All to go into the feed of cows on feedlots, animals which, importantly, DO NOT EAT CORN!  I'll get to that in more detail, but cows are ruminants, born and evolved to eat grass and grass only, and they are all living on a diet of corn.  Why?  Because (a) it's cheap (for reasons I'll get into), and (b) corn makes a cow fatter faster than grass (a cow gets to a slaughter weight of 1250 lbs in 14-16 months on a corn diet, 2-3 years on a grass diet), which means they can be turned into hamburgers and steaks twice as fast, increasing profits.  It's always all about the money, even if our health is being jeopardized as a result.

Another 15% of the corn grown in the country goes to feeding chickens and pigs and other domesticated animals, and the remainder goes into a huge variety of synthetic products made from corn, primarily high fructose corn syrup.  Something like 1% of corn actually gets eaten as, you know, corn, into our bodies.  There are so many problems with this system, you really have to read the book to learn them all, but here's a few:  (1) because all these farms are only growing corn (and soybeans), the crops are highly susceptible to pests, so the corn that we eventually eat is sprayed with huge quantities of chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers  (an ecosystem which rotates crops, like the ones our forefathers used before the invention of chemical pesticides, are naturally healthy and attract no pests);  (2) we're growing too much corn, due to farm subsidies that pay about 50% of corn farmers' revenues since the price is so low because we're growing so much (an endless cycle it seems) and as a result, we're putting corn in everything we eat, from the cows and chickens and pigs to fully 85% of packaged food products in the supermarket -- yes, everything from high fructose corn syrup to corn starch to maltodextrin to lactic acid to xantham gum to glucose to a million other ingredients, it's all, everything, made from corn -- it's so cheap, there's so much of it, that the food industry just finds more and more ways to substitute it (in processed forms) for anything natural that might have made their products some 30 years ago;  it's in our ketchup, our frozen yogurt, our BBQ sauces, our Cheez-Whiz, mayonnaise and mustard, salad dressings, hot dogs, and frightening, almost every "diet" or "low-fat" mainstream product, such as the Ken's Light Zero-Fat salad dressings I've been eating for years, of which the first ingredient turns out to be "high fructose corn syrup";  (3) farmers aren't actually making any money off of the corn -- they're going bankrupt, one by one, even with the government subsidies, and the only ones getting rich are the ones who turn the food into something -- the industrial food chain;  (4) a diet made up of so much corn (in one form or another, we eat about 50% of our calories from corn and other 20-25% from soybeans) is inherently unhealthy and helps contribute to obesity, diabetes, heart problems, and cancer;  and (5) the environmental impact of all these heavily chemically treated fields is enormous -- the soil in these fields has been so damaged that all that can grow there now is corn, an incredibly hearty plant (engineered that way). 

I could go on and on, but you see the problem.  Why are we making so much corn?  It's a combination of government policy and corporate motives, which pretty much is the cause of almost every major problem in America today, but Pollan's book gets into it in much more detail than I have time to get into here.  Suffice it to say -- Nixon started it and every administration has exacerbated the problem since.  And the USDA really, really sucks, unless you're a major food corporation like Cargill, which basically writes all farm legislation itself.

Anyway, the 60% of corn that goes into cows is the biggest problem -- such a problem that I have a real hard time thinking of ever eating a non grass-fed hamburger or steak again in my life.  Every cow on a feedlot in America (which is to say, 95% of the beef that ends up on American plates) is sick.  Why are they sick?  Because cows are ruminants, one of a few multi-stomached creatures on the planet who are able to digest grass (humans cannot; bison can).  And for thousands and thousands of years, ruminants have subsisted on grass as 100% of their diet.   Humans can then eat the cow (or buffalo, in Native American times) and turn the grass into protein for their diets.  It was the perfect symbiotic system, 100% powered by the sun (which grows the grass).  By switching to a corn-based diet, the system is now 100% powered by oil (in the form of pesticides, in the form of fuel used to transport and transform the corn into something the cows can eat), and the cows are all sick.  Their stomachs are not adapted to a corn-based diet, even as food engineers have tried to make them less sick, and so how does the food industry keep them alive for the 14 to 16 months until they're fat enough to sell (and eat)?  Why, drugs of course.  And our major pharmaceutical corporations are perfectly happy to supply them.  These cows are pumped full of hormones (to make them bigger and "tastier") and antibiotics (to keep them alive) all because of a corn-based diet.  And they are jammed into feedlots full of hundreds of cattle, where they live on corn grain and water (and until Mad Cow disease, the protein of other cows), and they stand in their own feces.  Then they are moved to the slaughterhouse, where 400 cows an hour are killed and turned into the hamburgers for McDonald's and steaks for Applebee's.  As a result, our food is cheap -- really, really cheap -- and the corporations making it and selling it to us are getting rich -- really, really rich.  In the meantime, we're getting sicker and sicker.  A ton of studies coming out in recent years shows that diets subsisting of natural organic foods are much, much healthier than those based on the industrial food system.  And logic says it makes perfect sense.  Perhaps all these years of avoiding saturated fats and red meat had nothing to do with the inherent harm of eating beef, but rather the harm in eating the beef raised on corn in our industrial food system.  The "French Paradox" is the odd (to Americans) fact that the French and Italians eat high quantities of high-fat and high-carb and (we've been told) unhealthy foods like cheese and bread and foie gras and pasta and wine, lots of wine, and they are much less obese and have much lower incidences of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer than Americans.  Maybe it's because they still eat like their ancestors did, and their cows are grazing on grass and their chickens are free-range and they're not eating 50% of their calories from a single substance (corn).  It's not such a paradox when you really look into it.

Well this review is already too long and I don't really want to re-write the whole book here, but believe me, it is absolutely fascinating.  The opposite of the industrial food system is the family farm in Virginia which Pollan visits in the second part of the book, where chickens and cows and pigs all live together symbiotically and each of them play a part to keeping the system thriving, without pests or pesticides and are living their lives as "happy", free-range animals in their natural habitats.  The chicken and eggs and the rest of the food Pollan eats at the end of his week on the farm (made entirely from things on the farm) is one of the most delicious meals he's ever eaten and as someone who has been shopping for the past 2 months at Whole Foods, I would have to agree.  The chicken and eggs especially (I don't really eat beef at home) just taste better -- a whole lot better -- than the chicken and eggs I used to buy at the supermarket.  Top chefs in Washington DC all buy foods from the farm that Pollan documents (Polyface), and if you ever watch the Food Network (I do all the time), the top restaurants all talk about quality, local ingredients and grass-fed beef and free-range chickens and the quality of eggs these chickens produce.  Sure, you're not going to be able to buy a dozen eggs for 79 cents from an organic family farm.  But since when did price become the biggest (maybe only) factor in deciding what you put into your body?  Why is quality not a factor at all?  Or, god forbid, health?

Pollan also debates whether the organic food sold in Whole Foods and Wegman's, which goes through the same marketing and distribution channels as the industrially grown foods (but is at least organically grown), is as good as the local, organic farm food.  (No, it's not, but it's still better for you than the industrial food system).  And he debates the merits of a vegan lifestyle and whether or not humanely treated animals like those on the farm in Virginia live a life compatible with animal welfare (and whether the animal rights effort should be focusing more on stopping the current feedlot/slaughterhouse industrial food system rather than saying we should all stop eating meat).  And the final part of the book is a fascinating look at our history as hunter/gatherers and the culture of hunting today (why is a hunter who kills and eats a deer somehow a worse person than someone who buys a ham from the freezer section at the local supermarket?)   There are a number of fascinating questions discussed and although Pollan doesn't have all the answers, he does give a hell of a lot information, and informs in such a well-written way, that it has 100% changed my view of eating and my view of whether or not I've been eating healthy for the last 15 years, when I switched to a low-fat diet that helped me lose a lot of weight but perhaps did not make me as healthy as I'd hoped, and definitely didn't provide me with the quality of food that I should be eating.

And as for me, I'm still shopping at Whole Foods, after an unfortunate trip to a local "natural foods" market in Princeton last weekend left me wanting -- they didn't have nearly everything that I needed and I felt completely out of place (the parking lot was for "hybrids only"!) and ended up having to go to Whole Foods anyway to get the rest of my order (or most of the rest;  I still have to hit the supermarket as well, for paper products and my favorite juice, which is all natural and 100% juice and good for you but not sold at Whole Foods).  So yeah, I haven't really found the proper shopping solution here in central Jersey (anyone with a recommendation, feel free to make it!) but if I have to shop at two stores every weekend and spend a little more money, at least I'm eating food that tastes good and won't make me think of all the chemicals and hormones and pesticides and fertilizers and corn -- evil #2 corn -- that went into making it.  Because we should be enjoying our meals.  Not just the price of them.

PS:  One final anecdote, for the next time you're sitting down to a pork meal... pigs are weaned from their mothers after 2 weeks, instead of the 8 that they would naturally, because their mother's milk won't get them as fat as quick as a corn-based diet.  But the pigs  still have the sucking impulse and end up trying to suck on other piglets' tails when jammed 40 or more into a pen.  This is painful to the other pig, but because pigs are such smart animals and are aware of what is happening to them, they are too demoralized to fight back.  But the tail biting results in infections and they end up dying if not treated, ruining a "crop" of pigs.  The food industry's solution to this "dilemma"?  Wean the pigs after 8 weeks, perhaps?  Don't jam so many into a pen?  Give them a better quality of life so that they fight off other pigs from eating their tails?  Um... no.  They just chop off all piglets' tails at 2 weeks old.  Yup.  No tails for piggies in factory farms.  Without anesthesia, of course.  All so the demoralized piggie can end up on your breakfast plate as bacon.  Mmmm... bacon.  Not that I begrudge anyone from eating pork (baby back ribs are my favorite food), but wouldn't it be better for everyone involved, from the animal to the person who ends up dining on him, if he'd been treating like the pigs at Polyface Farm in Virginia, from where the photo below is taken, happily sleeping in their yard.  And yes, these pigs all have their tails.

 

Comments

[Straw]

If all this food is so bad for us why are Americans living longer than ever? I just heard on the radio today that the average life span is an all-time high of 78.

[Bill]

Huge advances in medicine keep us alive. But we don't live nearly as long as many other countries' citizens (like France, Japan, Canada, Norway), who do not eat as poorly as we do (and also have better health care, but that's a different post).

[Bill]

Just a followup -- life expectancy in years (OECD, 2007)

Japan 80
Canada 79
Switzerland 79
Sweden 78.5
Australia, Italy, France, Spain, Norway, Holland 78
England, Germany 77.25
New Zealand, Austria 77
UNITED STATES 76.8

Even though the differential is not very
large in total years, the situation for the U.S. is actually worse than it seems. Although national
life expectancy continues to rise, the U.S. is not keeping up with the general western pace, and
now suffers from the lowest life expectancy in the 1st world (OECD, 2007). This slippage is
attributable to an actual decline in average lifespans in some regions (Ezzati, Friedman,
Kulkarni, and Murray, 2008), a disturbing failure occurring in none of the western democracies
(but is happening in some 2nd and 3rd world countries such as Russia).

Historical juvenile mortality rates were 50% or more, and average lifespans were just
20 years in Europe and America (Paul, 2008, 2009b). Since then enormous science and
technology driven gains in reducing mortality have been achieved, but despite continued
improvement no prosperous democracy loses children as rapidly as the U.S., whose mortality
in infants and young children is almost twice as high as achieved by some of the most secular
countries; it may not be possible to further reduce mortality rates with current technologies. Some 2nd world nations have juvenile mortality rates little above the U.S. level (UN,
2000).

[AJF 4]

Why is the enemy cat?I like cats, because they are very docile. But even the dogs don't like mice, as far as I know, the dog will go after them, and seize it.

[chaussure de basket]

Live and let live.*

[supra tk society]

i am really appreciating you for your kindness that you have made a really interesting blog and peoples are always seeking to get information and share their ideas. Great work Man and keep it going. God bless you!

[supra skytop]

It's only the idle will be tired.

[taobao mall]

I can accept failure, but I can't accept give up.

[True Religion Outlet]

Times and Roku is what thye ARE NOT doing by keeping old business models while inventing new ones. Sort of one hand not knowing what the other is doing. Roku rolls out new platforms but hasn't tackled the key question of selling more boxes. You need one for each TV. Why not discount multiple orders for people with more than one TV? Financial Times wants to make online access free or pay depending upon the frequency of use, but it continues to charge customers TWO fees if the customer subscribes to print AND wants an subscription online as well. Do the people in office A ever talk to the people in office B

[Moncler jackets]

Next time I'll put on some lederhose and sing "Adelvice". That should shatter the Captain Von Trapp illusions most thoroughly..

[Moncler Outlet]

This is just mean-spirited and petty. Here's a guy who has given most of his professional life to public service in Durham County and done more than creditable service through some pretty important issues. He gets in trouble for giving commission members legal advice they don't want to hear on a hot zoning case and they dump him - only months before his planned retirement. Shame! is all I can say.I also believe true "equal opportunity" in practice requires an open hiring and employment process. I think both Patrick Baker and Lowell Siler are wonderful people. However, as someone who would potentially compete for these jobs, it is disheartening to have these positions be filled as a result of backroom negotiations rather than open processes.
wllv20111108

[Reebok Zigtech]

One problem with this discussion is while nice; it's an example of the tail trying to wag the dog. The needs of transit authorities to be able to collect small payments rapidly probably is not high on the list of lawmakers' concerns, especially since in the US the jurisdictions running transit agency are not those printing and coining money.

The better solution is to move to electronic fare collection systems (RFID-based, smartcard-based, whatever) for most trips. For one-off trips by non-regular transit users; onboard (or platform-located) vending machines can sell single-ride tickets.

At a very minimum, transit authorities who have little cash to upgrade their onboard equipment, could still switch to a proof of payment system (enabling faster boarding and rear-boarding) by having the driver give out transfers for all cash fares; anybody with a pass or a ticket purchased elsewhere is free to use the rear door; anyone who wants to do it the old fashioned way has to board in the front, pay exact change, and keep their receipt.

This will help transit agencies run efficient operations more than hoping the greenback goes away; even if the US currency is excessively paper-based..wllv20111108