Cover via Amazon
Sometimes, I’ll finish a nonfiction book and know that my perspective on the world has been changed. I won’t be able to get the book out of my head, books like Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, Columbine by Dave Cullen, What is the What by Dave Eggers, and In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall.
Having finished Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, I know that it has made the shortlist of books that will influence my thinking for years to come. It’s a both a personal narrative and a meta-level social critique examining the marriage of technology, culture, psychology, and nature, and specifically how these have shaped American eating habits. Pollan starts by describing our American eating disorder: we are a country obsessed with healthy food but eat mostly unhealthy food. He then explains that our dilemma as omnivores is since we can eat nearly anything, we have to decide what is best to eat. He rightly points out that deciding what is best to eat is a frikkin’ complicated question in our day and age, and here’s at least five reasons why:
1) Corn Ain’t Just a Vegetable
Corn is the main ingredient in nearly all the processed food that we eat—everything from Chicken McNuggets to the high fructose corn syrup in sodas. Also, it turns out that most of the mysterious chemicals in processed food (and nonfood products like toothpaste and batteries) are corn derivatives—things like xanthan gum, maltodextrin, and ascorbic acid.
Why is corn in nearly everything? Because there’s so much extra of it and companies needed to find something to do with all the cheap surplus. Why is there so much corn? Pollan traces it to two technological innovations over the last fifty years or so; namely, the development of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers and super-productive strains of hybrid corn.
We can also trace this to a change in how government subsidized corn in the 1970’s (bear with me for a sec while I try to explain some boring economic policy). Before the 1970’s, the government set a fixed price for corn based on how much it actually cost to make the stuff. Whenever the price dropped below that point, a farmer could take out a government loan and store his corn until the price recovered, at which point he could sell the corn and repay the loan. If prices stayed too low, farmers could give the government the corn and keep the loan money, and if prices got too high the government could sell from its stockpile. According to Pollan, this program didn’t cost the government too much, helped keep prices stable, and helped prevent the crazy corn surpluses we have now.
What changed? There was a scary year in which food prices rose too high, and Nixon wanted to make sure that never happened again. Instead of the old government loan program, they changed corn subsidies to direct cash payments to the farmers for the corn they could sell, resulting in way too much corn. Unlike the old program, there was no incentive to the farmers to “hold on” to corn when prices got too low, resulting in prices falling with no bottom in sight because of the market being flooded with corn.
2) Corn is hard on the farmers and the environment, and easy on big companies
This isn't your great-grandmomma's corn (Image via Theophilos on Flickr)
Nowadays, there is so much extra corn that it’s more expensive to grow it than to buy it, but farmers have already dug themselves deep into holes of debt and have no choice but to try to make and sell even more. Unsurprisingly, financial problems are rampant among Midwest farmers.
It’s not just the farmers that are suffering. It’s the communities they live in and the environments as a whole too. Nowadays, nearly all the good farmland has been converted already to corn (and soybean, its industrial sister). The problem with this is that it has driven most of the farmers off the land, and changed what used to be traditional, Mr. MacGregor-style farms with lots of different crops and animals to a kind of farm that only has one crop.
The problems with only having one crop (monocultures) are 1) that they’re really vulnerable to being wiped out by pests (not to mention environmental and terrorist disasters), and 2) keeping the same crop all the time degrades the soil. So you need huge amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Pesticides and fertilizers take a ton of fossil fuel to make and produce. Thus, the whole Corn Enterprise is driving our dependence on oil.
Pesticides and fertilizers are also really, really bad for the people and land. For example, the nitrates in fertilizers choke off oxygen in water, with farm run-off causing a growing “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey and growing. One freaky tidbit Pollan mentioned are the “blue baby alerts” broadcast on the news in Des Moines, Iowa when the nitrates in tap water get too high and are not safe for people to drink.
Companies profit directly from the situation, because they can buy corn really cheap, and turn it into something much more profitable, like a Twinkie.
To recap: there’s too much corn, and modern corn- (and soybean-) based farming practices are bankrupting farmers, polluting the soil and water, and using tons of fossil fuel to make it all happen. So that’s what the industrial Twinkie represents. Kinda makes me not want to eat a Twinkie as much.
3) Factory farms (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs) are wrong in so many ways
This is what farms really look like (image via Farm Sanctuary on Flickr)
PETA is right about one thing, if not anything else: unfortunately for us bacon-lovers, CAFOs are Evil. They abuse animals by frustrating all of their natural instincts, cramming them into warehouse spaces too small to be imagined, pumping them with hormones to grow them in as little time as possible, and letting them stew in their own filth. I am not going to go into detail here, because the facts are widely known. If you’re interested, do a Google search on “downed cows,” “tail docking,” “egg-laying hens” or “debeaking.” Although I don’t agree with many animal rights groups’ goals or methods, the basic info about abuses in factory farming is pretty accurate. Killing the animals seems like the most humane and merciful part of the modern CAFO.
Aside from all of the ethical reasons not to treat animals this way, the animals get fed a diet of mostly corn (the cheapest way to fatten them up quickly), which they’re not well- adapted to eat. Pollan reports that 2/3 of the corn produced in the U.S. are fed to animals in factory farms. Corn diet plus overcrowding makes animals vulnerable to disease, which is why they all get a steady diet of antibiotics in their feed as well. Did you know that most of the antibiotics used in America go to factory farm animals? I didn’t. Certainly, this practice is necessary in a factory farm, and probably to blame for many of the antibiotic-resistant strains of diseases. Not to mention the new strain of E. Coli, which is a result of farming animals this way (because of a complicated reason involving the extra acid in cow’s stomachs produced by eating corn, instead of grass.)
This is how farms should be--happy chicken like those at Polyface Farms (image via zekedawg00 on Flickr)
As if all of that weren’t enough, feedlot waste and poop is totally toxic (no way it can be used for fertilizer!) and is also poisoning the soil and water and gobbling up fossil fuels (Pollan estimates it takes 1 barrel of oil to raise a cow).
As if all of that weren’t enough, the meat is less healthy and safe than grass-fed meat, because it is more prone to disease/contamination (salmonella outbreak, anyone?), has higher fat content, and has less Omega-3 fatty acids.
But hey, at least a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger is only 99 cents, right?
3) The food industry has a stake in making us all fat and unhealthy.
Okay, okay, I get that that sounds a bit paranoid. It’s not a conspiracy; it’s simple financial logic. Food isn’t like other products in our capitalist system: a good product won’t have higher demand, because people can only eat so much food. Demand is “inelastic,” as the economists would say. So in order for food companies to make money, they only have a few options: make us consumers pay more for the same product, make the same thing for less money, or get us to somehow eat more than our bodies need.
Processing food allows companies to make a final product for which they can charge more money, and given how cheap corn and soybeans are, is it any wonder that most processing ingredients are made of it? The health of these manufactured products is irrelevant, as long as it sells. As the middleman between the farmer and the consumer, food companies get to keep most of the money.
Healthful, fresh foods like vegetables don’t make these companies nearly as much money. On the contrary, processing the heck out of and then extending the shelf life of products with mystery chemicals makes them more money, because they can send it farther across the country and the world, and extend their market.
Also, American food manufacturers have successfully gotten us to eat more food by Super Sizing everything. Pollan talks about the genius behind the Super Size movement, a man who worked for McDonald’s named David Wallerstein, who found that people would pay more for food, as long as you served it in even bigger portions. The result was a huge increase in both sales and profits for Mc Donalds, and fatter Americans.
4) Organic food is a Deal with the Devil
The organic food movement grew up in the 1960’s as part of the hippie movement and was initially inspired to address the problems with our industrial food system. Nowadays, it is part of the system. The labels on organic foods at big retailers like Whole Foods say poetic things about happy cows and family farms, but sadly, most of this is a marketing ploy. As Pollan says, organic supermarket labels are “A pastoral narrative in which farm animals live much as the books we read as children.”
Big-scale sellers of organic products like Whole Foods have to supply their stores with huge quantities of food, and it is easier and more reliable to also deal with big-scale farming operations, not small-scale local farmers. Thus, most organic products widely available are sold by a handful of giant companies with farming practices that are similar to other large-scale industrial food companies.
For example, much organic milk is produced in the very same factory farms as other milk, with a subsection of the caged diary cows receiving organic corn, with the milk then “ultra-pasteurized” so that it can be shipped all across the country using lots of fossil fuels. That finally answers my question about why my Horizon Organic milk has a much later expiration date that “regular” milk!
The USDA labeling of “organic food” has heavily favored big-scale companies, and have lots of qualifiers that make it difficult or impossible for small farms to obtain the official label. Also, the labels themselves can be very misleading; for example, the label for eggs called “free range” is a designation so vague and unenforceable that it has come to mean a basically standard factory egg production, with a tiny little outdoor yard that the animals in theory could access, but never do.
On the other hand of the Devil’s Bargain, though, is that at least with certified organic food you know that there are no hormones or pesticides used in making your food, and all the farmland that could be doused in chemicals is being spared the environmental damage. That’s good. But it’s not really meeting our need for more humane farming methods that protect the environment and support local economies.
Pollan juxtaposes these modern, “Industrial Organic” food companies like Cascadian Farm with a smaller-scale, truly sustainable farm like Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farms. Basically, Polyface Farms is the model for modern farming to which all others should aspire. This is the kind of place we would like our food to be grown. The environment at Polyface Farms is carefully tended and the soil is improved, cows eat fresh grass daily in rotating parts of the pasture, chickens follow the cows into the pasture and eat the grubs from the cow poop (gross, but makes for healthy, happy chickens and lower parasites in the cows), forest is re-established at the border of crop lands to reduce erosion and wind damage to crops…You name it, Joel Salatin has thought of so many ways to create a healthy, self-sustaining ecological cycle. Too bad the farm is in Virginia, not Pennsylvania. This place gives me hope that ethical farming is possible and profitable. It gives me hope that the local food movement is more than just an antiquated and idealistic nostalgia for the older, better days.
5) Seasonal, local food is better.
More happy animals ay Polyface Farms (image via zekedawg00 at Flickr)
Ok, I lied. I knew that fact already. I already knew lots of reasons why buying local, fresh food is better: better-tasting food, reducing fossil fuel use in shipping food all over the country, and supporting local farmers and the local economy.
Now I know a lot more reasons why that is the case. Food created in traditional ways may be more healthful, and is definitely better for farmers and the environment. As Pollan points out, the cheap costs of industrial food are masking its true costs: water pollution, Super Bugs, animal cruelty, crop subsidies, excessive oil and water use, additional health care costs of the obesity epidemic, and costs of cleaning up the environment (to the extent that happens).
Eating food that is cheap and easy is no longer worth it to me. Pollan suggests that the industrial food system only works because we as a country are mostly ignorant about what goes on behind the scenes. We don’t see tortured animals in CAFOs or the nitrogen poisoning our water in the Gulf of Mexico; we see attractively packaged food under bright lights, in glossy rows in the supermarket. My choice is either pretend to be ignorant—which is mostly what I’ve been doing for the past decade or so—or change my behaviors.
After reading this book, I don’t think I can pretend anymore, or at least not as much. I am more committed than ever to relying on Farmer’s Markets and the local food co-op for most of my food purchases, and buying local, seasonal flora and fauna (even above organic) whenever possible. I will have to eat less meat, and will try to only buy locally-raised, pastured, and grass-fed varieties, even if it costs twice as much. It’s less convenient, sure. Then I remind myself about the price of convenience, not just for my health and weight, but for the health of our world. My food purchasing decisions may do nothing to change anything in the world, but they will change my own connection to the food I eat and the impact it has on my body.
