Group 5 Handout

Omnivore’s Dilemma 239 – 334

“Don’t you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?” (Pollan 240).

Society has become consumed by an obsession with time. We have begun to put more time and effort into caring about our material possessions than ourselves. This is not a newsflash to anyone. Simply by looking around one can see the ever growing rate of obesity in America. Is this because we are eating unhealthy foods? To an extent, this answer is yes. The truth that Michael Pollan argues is that we are not spending enough time caring about what we are eating and how it came to be on the plate in front of us. We went from a hunting and gathering society, moving towards a meal in a pill, to a society that has begun to create pills in meals. We have begun to accept a false notion of what is healthy (frozen dinners labeled healthy and fresh), and have moved away from traditional eating (family dinners, slow meals), which is actually better eating.

While all of Pollan’s book, Omnivore’s Dilemma, deals with the problems our country is currently facing with the food industry, this specific portion focuses most on how non-industrial food systems can work, and why they are not the only solution to America’s industrial food problems. By doing this, we will begin the path to a healthier America. This section begins with Pollan at Joel Salatin’s farm. While different theorists argue different things, it is important to draw a connection amongst theorists, to show that the common thread linking them is something we should be listening to. Everything about Joel Salatin, and his farm, Polyface farm, is about a natural way of obtaining food. Everything there is grown organically, kept on a rotated system to ensure that none of the land will go bad, and that all of the animals will stay healthy until they die. Rather than Cronon’s belief, that nature is our own unexamined longings and desires, Pollan demonstrates how Salatin uses nature, accepting the wilderness not as a human creation, but rather a way of bettering human life. He does not see a mystery in the land, but rather a puzzle, a puzzle to figure out what should go where and how everything on his farm can act in the dependent nature that is best for it.

A man who shares Salatin’s, and possibly Pollan’s, view is Henry David Thoreau. Although from a time which predates the fast food industry, he does have some intriguing common links to Salatin, as can be seen in their both somewhat pastoral/nostalgic way of looking at the landscape. Salatin sees how everything is now, and wants to take it back to what it could have been. His farm is run in a modern day setting, using the simplest of methods. His fields are shifted, the cows eat the grass, the chickens and cows fertilize the grass to grow more. It is one big never ending cycle. Thoreau, in a similar way, is concerned with escaping society for a time to become closer to nature and more whole as a person. He does this, then retreats back to society. It is almost as if he cannot straddle the line that Salatin has found himself on. Thoreau sees one or the other, nature or society, Salatin combines the two by making nature work in society.

Thoreau makes a comment after moving out to become ‘closer’ to nature, “[a]s I live now so shall I reap.” Thoreau in this context is speaking about himself as a soul, what he does now will affect who he will become. The relations to Salatin’s philosophy seem obvious. Salatin himself not only depends on his farm, but understands how what he does defines who he is. He understands that his lifestyle makes him a greener more conscious person. He also then acts as a sort of advocate by selling his products to others and helping people like Bev Eggleston. He relies solely upon his farm not only as a livelihood and a food source, but also as a belief system.

In Thoreau’s journals, he once wrote, “know that the goal is distant and is upward and is worth all you life’s efforts to attain to.” This is what the food industry, and those who support the slow food movement must realize. Just as Pollan says, it is not about one particular group of people over throwing the major food industries like Tyson and Perdue; that is not going to happen. That would be too difficult to achieve and the efforts would be wasted. It is about offering choices, offering different options of various types of grown food so that when the failures of one amass, the others can step up. Each person must make the choice of what to eat, whether to be healthy or convenient, it is about offering that choice. It is only through the education of what goes into a meal that people will be able to make that choice in an informed manner. Until some sort of legislature is passed that makes major meat and crop producers label where their food came from and when, this is all we can do. As Pollan says, “we ask too much salvation by legislation. All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse” (260). We can give options, and help inform people how to choose the correct ones.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma – pg334-411

In the last quarter of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan discusses his last meal. No, not his last meal on death row, but the last one in the series of meals he’s made throughout his book. In contrast to his McDonald’s meal with his family and the chicken dinner by Joel Salatin’s ranged chickens, Pollan went even further back in time to the Paleolithic era to concoct this meal. As he plays the ancient role of hunter-gatherer, he learns both of the dangers and benefits of being a gatherer and fights with his negative connotations of hunting.

Pollan is determined not to use any store bought ingredients for the meal to conclude his book – except for salt, which will be addressed later – so he attempts to fit himself back into the natural food chain and gathers all of his supplies from the southwest United States. Wild pig now range the California forests as, ironically, an introduced species now wreaking havoc on the local ecosystem , and so Pollan decides to hunt the boar for the last meal and also play the role of public servant – killing two birds with one stone. The hunt is an exercise in digging through the human’s brain to the hunter’s instinct long buried under the human conscience. After his first kill, Pollan attempts to sum up his initial reaction:

“My emotions were as surging and confused as the knot of panicked pigs had been on this spot just a moment before. The first to surface was this powerful upwelling of pride: I had actually done this thing I had set out to do, had shot a pig. I felt a flood of relief, too….And then there was this wholly unexpected feeling of gratitude. But for what exactly, or to whom? For my good fortune, I guess, and to Angelo, of course, but also this animal…” (353).

His moment of triumph does not last for long before they have to dress the pig – or “undress” it – and Pollan is forced to watch all the unnecessary innards be cut away for other animals to eventually forage. But it is not until he sees the picture of himself crouched over his prize that the detestation for the hunter emerges:

“The image that appeared on my computer screen hit me with an unexpected blow to the body. A hunter in an orange sweater that was kneeling on the ground behind a pig the side of whose head has erupted in blood that is spreading like a river delta toward the bottom of the frame…One proprietary hand rest on the dead animals’ broad flank. The man is wearing a big shit-eating grin that might have been winning, if perhaps incomprehensible, had the bloodied carcass sprawled beneath him been cropped out of the frame” (359).

This switch in mindset is surprising considering the same man describing the picture in such deprecating detail is also the one who killed the pig of which he had been so proud of. This strange cognitive dissonance is clear evidence of man’s thorough separation from nature, even in spite of the existence of recreational hunting and movie’s depicting violent deaths of man. The human’s conscience is what separates them from those of the animals.

Pollan’s dilemma with being the predator in the food chain and thus displaying his animality appears to reside primarily the enjoyment of taking the animal’s life. His reconciliation in taking the pig’s life lies not only in a determination that as little of the animal’s meat goes to waste, but also in his picture that shows at least one chain of the Earth’s infinitesimal number of the natural system. He writes, “Sun-soil-oak-pig-human: There it was, one of the food chains that have sustained life on earth for a million years made visible in a single frame, one uncluttered and most beautiful example of what it is” (363).

His hunting of the morel Mushrooms is far easier for him to reconcile with his instinctual nature as predator, since plants and fungi are widely considered to not be sentient. He makes the interesting point that when humans often settle on hobbies, they almost all seem to hearken back to a time of the pre-industrial, where people commonly craft and hunt in their free time. Pollan treated the morel gathering almost like a game, “…I found myself, idiotically, taunting the morels whenever a bunch of them suddenly popped out. “Gotcha!” I would cry, as if this were a game we were playing, the mushrooms and I, and I’d just won a round” (387).

Pollan was not quite so successful making all his ingredients directly from nature. His attempt at making salt went awry since he did not know any effective ways of cleansing salt he had gotten directly from beneath the San Mateo bridge. The pollutants and dirt were not washed away thoroughly enough and he had to fall back on regular store bought salt.

His attempt at gathering abalones was an incredible example of the dangers that foragers can experience while trying to find food and, although he did not know it at the time, he was unable to make it apart of his menu because the texture of the meat would change upon freezing it. As he relates later after finding one abalone:

“Gathering abalone was the most arduous foraging I did for a meal, and quite possibly the stupidest. I learned later that more Californians are killed gathering abalone each year – by getting dashed on the rocks, being attacked by sharks, or succumbing to hypothermia – than die in hunting accidents” (393).

Although not quite as dangerous as the abalone-hunt, black bears face hundreds of angry bees when attempting to get one of their favorite delicacies, honey. Bats face peregrine falcons and hawks as they leave the safety of their caves to go hunting at night. Pollan was merely experiencing being a different part of the food chain, a link where was he not necessarily on top.

Although not quite on the same scale, this foraging and gathering of food is not dissimilar to Henry David Thoreau’s exercise to build a house by his own means, saving on labor and even some materials so that the cost was reduced to a mere $28 dollars, when a student at Cambridge College rents a tiny room at $32 per year (16 Thoreau). As Thoreau suggests by his own example of living outside Concord, Massachusettes, he writes of education, “…”I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end” (17).

Michael Pollan’s particular meal was certainly not meant to be a standard that everyone should achieve, especially as an everyday occurrence, as Thoreau may have wished. However, it was meant as an example of the fruitfulness of the earth, the interconnectedness of its system and, to a degree, of rediscovering the human’s animality. To be able to touch roots back to the original origin of the human would tear down the wall that man has built up between himself and nature, trying to insist that he works outside of the system rather than a part of it.

Food Inc.

Now that we have all watched the ever popular Robert Kenner documentary “Food Inc.” I feel that a summary of the film would be pointless. However there are other important aspects of “Food Inc.” that I would like to discuss; namely the film’s place/role in the overall argument and maybe the motivations behind its creation/support. So, why is this movement towards a better educated and sustainable food system so important to people? Well, as Pollan suggests on the top part of pg 257 in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the major reasons(other than health) for people’s interest in food is the independency. He goes on to discuss how so much of our lives is decided outside the realm of the individual(gas prices, jobs, legislature) but what we want to eat still remains in the hands…or better yet the mouths of the individual. It boils down to free-will, by just having a choice we have investments and power in our food. However, and this is one of goals of “Food Inc.” and any related literature, what good is that choice if it is within a single grotesque food system? Michael Pollan, Robert Kenner, Eric Schlosser and so on are simply trying to reestablish that choice. So now the question is how… The answer is complicated but in short, “Food Inc.”

As discussed in class this movement towards a sustainable eco-friendly food system will be accomplished in many small steps. The first step is to educate, to get people involved. This documentary is part of the first step, not the complete argument. It is easier to look at “Food Inc.” as a tool rather than a statement. In addition, as with all tools, “Food Inc.” has a uniqueness that warrants its’ existence. The first and most obvious is the visual aspect that the documentary brings to the table. By providing visual stimuli for the viewer the film allows for a much larger retaining of information(admittedly less detailed though). This addition of visuals is also what shapes the film/argument. The documentary itself is broken down into small segments for easier absorption. This allows the documentary to cover large range of topics/issues and control over what images are associated with a particular argument. For example the section on chicken farming included a repetition of scenes in which a farmer removed birds that have died in result of appalling conditions. The viewer immediately has an example of the argument being provided. The real power here is that the argument is instantly verified, we shift from opinion to fact basically.

The second aspect of “Food Inc.” to be discussed is its’ ability to reach a very large audience. It is a sad but true fact that not many people read these days, and would rather watch a movie than explore a book. This being the case it perversely makes sense to alter the presentation of arguments to meet the desires of the majority. This is the most important reason “Food Inc.” is part of the first-step. And yes, by making a 93 minute film you are limiting the amount of information covered. However, you do not need/want to relay ALL the information at once, it would be too much. Incremental steps are needed. Give the viewer an opportunity to get interested. That way they will willingly seek out more information on the food system and its true costs, which goes back to the original solution of simply educating people. Not to be cheesy, but the old saying “Slow and steady wins the race” comes to mind.

At the end of day one should not deplore or congratulate “Food Inc.”. While it did not detract from the overall goal of establishing choice in the food system, it also did not add to the reservoir of facts being presented. It is a continuation. It doesn’t matter if documentary was good or not, it was successful. Robert Kenner and friends have found a way to reach the mainstream and educate. You have watched it, you have thought about the system in which our food is produced, and you are even reading this blog in relation to it. The goal is within in reach, if not already in hand. First-step taken.

Reforming Fast Food Nation: A Conversation with Eric Schlosser

It all begins with strawberries. California strawberries to be exact. Fresh morsels of succulent fruit ripe on the vine. One can almost imagine a pastoral landscape dotted with a familial motley of grinning farmhands bantering among the crimson rows. Eric Schlosser, instead, depicts the grotesque reality behind the veneer; bio-genetically engineered berries slaved over by downtrodden immigrant workers who are subsequently exploited by both the corporations who hire them and the politicians who defend said corporations. Men like former California governor Pete Wilson, who, Schlosser is quick to point out, “was arguing that illegal immigrants were welfare cheats” (4), thereby sullying them in the public eye. Schlosser is at once both a journalist and a humanitarian. He spends the remainder of the Q&A session indicting both the corporate and political forces that drive the Industrial Food Machine as depicted in his seminal 2001 non-fiction book Fast Food Nation.

In illustrating the foibles of an “American society...driven by selfishness and greed and a lack of compassion for people at the bottom...[fed by] hierarchy and corruption” (7), Schlosser shares a page with the words of Cesar Chavez. In the legendary Latino activist’s 1986 Wrath of Grapes Boycott Speech, there is a sense of urgency and retort. Cesar speaks of the grape pickers as “one family,” (American Earth 690) a family forced to toil in the midst of “the indiscriminate and even illegal use of dangerous pesticides...causing illness, permanent disability, and even death” (691). This is a Deep Ecological approach to the interaction of humans and their living, breathing environs stressing interconnectivity. It is extended by Schlosser to include both such corporate-oppressed geographical locals as “[desperate] meat-packing communities” (7) along with such damaging ideological frameworks as those espoused by the US government allowing for the deregulation of the Industrial Food Industry, limiting work rights and quality inspections. Schlosser argues that this sort of “short-sighted greed..now threatens the entire economy of the United States” (9). This disturbing web of incestuous corporate/political beguiling is exemplified by Schlosser’s reference to Disney influencing McDonald’s- presumably their glossy-as-hell toy ad campaign- and then his informing us that “Heinz Harber, one of Disney’s principal scientific advisers, had been involved with medical experiments performed on concentration camp victims in Nazi Germany” (10). An interconnected web, indeed. Schlosser’s book is then a powerful muckraking device intent on raising awareness to this kind of long-rooted, essentially Anti-Deep Ecological approach that corporations and politicians implement to force-feed the American public ostensibly “cheap” food.

The book is also Toxic Discourse in its greasiest form. Lawrence Buell’s critical “shock of awakened perception” (35) is splayed out before us as Schlosser explains in no uncertain terms that we are being led as blindly to consume as the cows in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma were led on conveyer belts through grizzly abattoirs whose wretched killing devices were obscured by their metal confines. The Industrial Food Machine wants its buyers to kneel to the tenets of “uniformity, conformity and centralized control” (10), or in other words, Buell’s dreaded “hegemonic oppression” (41). Public dissent is unwelcome, subordination the prevailing theme. We are told that during the last few years, “the administration of President George W. Bush was completely in bed with the large meatpacking and food-processing companies” leading to “food safety regulations [being] rolled back or ignored” (14). This is a heinous, all-powerful industry in which we are unfortunately pitted in “a David V. Goliath scenario” (Buell, 40).

In Exploring the Corporate Powers Behind the Way we Eat, Food Inc. director Robert Kenner addresses the goals of Industrial Food with eerily similar language to Schlosser. His fear being that our national food system has become negatively “affected by the same forces of efficiency, uniformity and conformity as the fast food industry” (30) sounds like a rip-off until we remember the men worked together on the film. Kenner also reminds us of the titular pillar of Schlosser’s argument, the destructive nature of Fast Food. As a result of a diet of high fat/sugar/calories, Schlosser informs us, “about two-thirds of the adult population in the United States is obese or overweight” (15). This is what Michael Pollan might refer to as direct result of “myriad streams of commodity corn, after being processed and turned into meat, converg[ing] in all sorts of different meals” (109). Schlosser, at least in this interview, doesn’t spend a lot of time discussing corn, but he does take a lot of time illustrating the cost of food.

If imagined as a large metallic robot like the one in the online cartoon The Meatrix, the Industrial Food Industry would no doubt excrete exploited workers and medical-bill ridden, corpulently disabled public, while undermining “sustainable agriculture...food safety...and the ethics of marketing [fast and fatty food] to children” (Schlosser 13). From a sheer pragmatic standpoint, there is simply no longer a budget for this errant, disposable spending. Schlosser laments that “the obesity epidemic is now costing us $100 billion dollars a year. The medical costs imposed by the fast food industry are much larger than its annual profits” (17). In short, our reliance on cheap production renders increasingly costly results.

The answer? Ultimately, Schlosser illuminates a shred of hope, mainly in the forms of humanitarian initiatives. But first, he allows us to writhe in the fatty overload of lies regurgitated in Industrial Rhetoric. He speaks of bringing nutrition into public schools, reconstructing the health care system to not discriminate, raising worker wages, advocating for farmers markets and less long-distance food travel and working for animal rights (16). Places like Pollan’s highly-championed PolyFace farm come to mind. Small-scale operations where animals and the land are treated equitably. Places that recognize what David Abram describes in The Ecology Of Magic as an “ever-complexifying expanse of living patterns upon patterns” (A. E. 832). Every creature and every plant in their proper place, functioning organically. As Anna Lappe reminds us in The Climate Crisis at The End of Our Fork, proper organic growth can help sustain the earth by keeping soil healthy, while “addressing hunger and poverty, improving public health, and preserving biodiversity” (116). Schlosser’s encouragement of these organic strategies allows us to see a cleaner, less exploitative biota. In keeping with Deep Ecological principles, he stresses a return to our lost beginnings, stating rather bluntly that “this country thrived for almost two thousand years without industrial fast foods. There’s no reason we can’t thrive, once again, without them” (17). I said before that Schlosser is a humanitarian and I don’t deny that, but he is also a friend to the earth, an advocate for natural justice.

The Meatrix

Join Leo and Moopheus as they reveal the realities behind the meatrix.  (Helps if you've seen The Matrix.) 

organic milk rap video

Yeo Valley, Somerset, UK

Group 4 Handout

The Omnivore’s Dilemma- Michael Pollan

Industrial Corn

Pollan argues that the American eating habit has been turned into a state of confusion and anxiety. We no longer know how to eat properly, how to look at food properly and how to look at the natural world around us properly. Our culture has been replaced with fad diets like the Atkins diet and sadly obesity. Pollan calls this problem the “American paradox- that is, a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily” (3). Our country is obsessed with how to eat properly, which has led to this unhealthy relationship with food. We, the omnivores, are now stuck with a dilemma. How or what should we eat?! This dilemma or problem is only deepened with the fact that there is an abundance of food in our country especially corn. This abundance of corn has left our environment and our health at risk. This plant has become the key ingredient in almost everything that one can find at the grocery and it is the key ingredient that is destroying our health, economy and environment.

Pollan begins his first chapter “The Plant: Corns Conquest” by discussing our relationship with the supermarket. When one first walks into the supermarket it seems like a place filled with endless possibilities. “…your first impression is apt to be of its astounding biodiversity” (16). The supermarket seems to be filled with diverse and abundant products, but Pollan wants you to search deeper. He wants you to ask questions that should be the simplest ones to answer: “What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?” (17). However, as he goes on to prove in his book these questions are not at all easy to answer. When you actually try to figure out what you are eating or what is in your food you find out that there is a long and complex answer. You will also be quite surprised to find out what is actually in your food. Does anyone even know what xanthan gum is? Well it is an ingredient found in a lot of our salad dressings and frozen foods. As Pollan figured out our search will almost always lead to a cornfield in Iowa. We have become “the corn people” (19) because almost all of our food includes some sort of corn product from xanthan gum to high fructose corn syrup. When the white European came to the New World he discovered corn. As Pollan describes “Squanto had handed the white man precisely the tool he needed to dispossess the Indian” (26). What if the white European never found corn? Perhaps the white European would have returned to his country and the United States would not exist as it does today, but that is not what happened. The white European learned how to grow corn and how to grow it to be more abundant and useful than the Indian ever had. The white European turned the corn into a commodity, perhaps what would later lead to our dilemma today.

Chapter two takes Pollan to George Naylor’s farm in Greene County, Iowa. Iowa is home to “black gold” or an abundance of corn. Farms in the early 1900s grew an abundance of crops, but today they only grow corn. Why would these farmers only grow corn and create a farm that is essentially only a monoculture now? This is because in today’s modern society corn is gold. The big corporations only want corn from these Iowa farms. The corn will be broken down and processed so it can be fed to both people and livestock. The corn found in Iowa will be sent to people and animals all over the country. Corn has become an increasingly hot commodity to produce. So why is George Naylor and other Iowa farmers broke? Every farmer saw how hot of a commodity corn was and decided to only grow corn on his farm, which led to an abundance of corn and a falling price. Farmers cannot survive by only selling one product with an ever-decreasing price. When the government stepped in to help the poor farmer, the shift of power would go from the farmer to the government and big corporations. Richard Nixon’s second secretary of agriculture, Earl “Rusty” Butz “revolutionized American agriculture, helping to shift the food chain onto a foundation of cheap corn” (51). He advised farmers to create bigger farms to produce more food as he dismantled all the ideals of the New Deal plans. The farmers would no longer be supported by government loans, but would have a new system of direct payment to farmers. The competitiveness that grew out of the 1980s would lead to farmers degrading their land just so they could produce as much corn as possible. As Butz had pointed out the farmer must produce big yields and be as productive as possible or else the farm will collapse. This theory will lead to vast consequences for the environment and the economy.

Due to the abundance of corn that skyrocketed in the 1980s the government and the farmers had to figure out what to do. What does one do with an abundance of corn? Scientists figured out that the corn could be broken down into different molecules and substances to then be added to all different types of foods. Corn is no longer pure corn or maize anymore. There is also no direct relationship with corn anymore. A person shopping in the grocery store no longer knows where the ingredients in his/her food are coming from. We have lost the relationship to the land because now all of our food is processed in the factories. The farmers no longer need to care about the quality, just the quanity or the yield. The yield is now everything to the farmer. “I began to see what George Naylor was getting at when he’d told me whom it was he grew his corn for: ‘the military-industrial complex” (61). The farmer and the consumer no longer need to know each other anymore. The big corporations have become the middlemen and have thus destroyed the farmer/ consumer relationship.

Where does all the corn go? One would be surprised to learn that farmers are in fact now feeding corn to cows; cows that are by nature grass eaters. A large portion of corn in fact goes to feeing livestock. Another shocking fact that Pollan discovered was that livestock are no longer living on farms and ranches, but in a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). This allows all the livestock to be located in one area to be fed the abundance of corn that the government needs to get rid of. Along with the abundance of corn, CAFO’s “have produce more than their share of environmental and health problems: polluted water and air, toxic wastes, novel and deadly pathogens” (67). By living in these large CAFO’s livestock are being adapted to live the way humans want them to live at the cost of their health and the lands health. The reason corporations want the cows to live in CAFO’s and eat corn is so they will grow faster and thus meat can become a cheap commodity that all households can afford. “Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows raised on a richer diet” (71). Corn allows cows to reach slaughter weight a lot faster even though their health and the health of the land is put at risk. Cows living in these CAFO’s are pumped with antibiotics to insure their health since these living environments are actually not healthy living environemtns for them. The use of antibiotics is greatly debated today since it could lead to further complications for the cow and for us. The antibiotics can be found in our food and if a bacterium resistant to the drug comes around what will we use to fight it? What we have also learned as of late is that corn fed cows are not healthy for us to eat. The corn fed meat contains more saturated fat and less omega-3 fatty acids than grass fed meat. So why are cows still fed corn and why are we still accepting this type of corn fed meat?

Chapter five and six devote itself to the evolution of corn into our diet. Corn has been turned into corn whiskey in the past and today it has been turned into high fructose corn syrup among other things. We have found ways to eat up the excess corn that we use to drink up in alcohol. Thanks to this “mountain of cheap corn” (103) the people of the United States is undergoing an epidemic of obesity. Since corn is cheap and the products it creates are cheap people will eat it up in vast quantities. Thanks to poverty and clever marketing people are eating up the corn rich diets at a detrimental cost to their health. Cheap food and clever marketing saw its greatest achievement in the super size movement. Thanks to Wallerstein people can now go to a fast food chain and super size their meals. People on a budget can now buy a lot of food at a fast food restaurant while not spending a lot of money. What a great idea, right? That cheap, super sized meal eaten on a regular basis will lead to obesity and/ or type II diabetes. That cheap food is now costing you a lot.

Pollan and his family have their first meal at McDonald’s and decide to eat it in the car. McDonald’s cleverly have adapted their menu to be eaten in the car with the exception of the salad. McDonald’s has recently added a full list of nutritional facts with its menu and what you find in almost all of the food at McDonald’s is corn. It has even found its way into the salads. The chicken nugget is basically filled with corn-based products and the hamburger is mostly all condiments and “grill seasoning”. Why do we accept this as a meal? “Part of the appeal of hamburgers and nuggets is that their boneless abstractions allow us to forget we’re eating animals” (114). We prefer not to know where our food came from because if we did we probably would not want to eat it anymore. Corn has redefined our culture, land and economy, but at what cost?

Pastoral: Grass

In this section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan introduces grass farming, as well as organic farming. He starts by introducing Polyface Farm (the farm of many faces), where Joel Salatin runs a sustainable farm in the Shenandoah Valley. He calls Salatin to get some quotes on organic farms, and also asks him to send him a steak. Joel responds with, “I don’t believe it’s sustainable—or ‘organic,’ if you will—to FedEx meat all around the country…you’re going to have to drive down here to Swoope to pick it up” (133). Before Pollan made his journey to Polyface Farm, he decided to research the “Big Organic” industry, after listening to Salatin rant about it. Pollan says, “Salatin was convinced that industrial organic was finally a contradiction in terms. I decided I had to find out if he was right” (133).

In the Big Organic section (chapter nine), Pollan takes us on a trip to Whole Foods, where he says, “Shopping at Whole Foods is a literary experience…It’s the evocative prose as much as anything else that makes this food really special” (134). He implies that the stories they put on organic foods, such as “cows graze green pastures all year long,” or “wild salmon caught by Native Americans in Yakutat, Alaska (population 833),” convince consumers to pay higher prices for this “sustainable” food (135). Pollan then decides to explore deeper, to find out if this food is really as sustainable as it sounds.

Pollan starts his exploration of organic foods from the very beginning. He gives us the history of organic farming, beginning with People’s Park in Berkley, California where hippies began organic gardening in the 1960s. They knew little about organic gardening, so communes in the country “served as organic agriculture’s ramshackle research stations, places where neophyte farmers could experiment with making compost and devising alternative methods of pest control” (144). Organic farming was very rough in the early days. Produce did not look that food, but the convinced farmers stuck with it. Gene Kahn of Cascadian Farms was one of these people. Pollan follows Kahn’s life from “hippie farmer” to “agribusiness-man.” When it comes down to it, at least in Kahn’s case, it is more practical to sellout to corporation, such as General Mills, than to run a large organic farm.

Throughout his history of organics, Pollan touches on the science of organics and what makes them really work. He uses Sir Albert Howard to “provide the philosophical foundations for organic agriculture” (145). Howard’s idea was “that we needed to treat ‘the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man as one great subject” (145). When NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) were discovered to be the key nutrients plants needed to grow, many growers only focused on these three things. They paid no attention to feeding their live soil, and only gave plants these three nutrients. It was Howard who got farmers thinking about their soil and the complexity of it. “He claimed that the wholesale adoption of artificial manures would destroy the fertility of the soil, leave plants vulnerable to pests and disease, and damage the health of the animals and people eating those plants, for how could such plants be any more nutritious that the soil in which they grew?” (148). Howard was more about taking what nature did by itself and applying it to the farm.

The organic movement kept moving along. In 1990 the government began making organic regulations. However, organics meant different things to different people. The final regulations are farfetched from Howard’s ideas. They allow for additives and synthetics, “from ascorbic acid to xanthan gum” (156). There are also extremely vague regulations such as allowing livestock being able to have “access to pasture” (157). Pollan points out that he doesn’t “think migrant labor crews, combines the size of houses, mobile lettuce-packing factories marching across fields of romaine, twenty-thousand-broiler-chicken houses, or hundreds of acres of corn or broccoli or lettuce reaching clear to the horizon,” when he thinks of organic farming. But this is the reality of industrial organics today. “The organic movement, as it was once called, has come a remarkably long way in the last thirty years, to the point where it now looks considerably less like a movement than a big business” (138). Many of the organic cows are raised on factory farms where they are simply fed organic grain. There are organic TV dinners with as many ingredients in them as McNuggets. Pollan’s broiler chicken he picks up from Whole Foods (named Rosie) “lives in a shed with twenty thousand other Rosies, who, aside from their certified organic feed, live lives little different from that of any other industrial chicken… True, there’s a little door in the shed leading out to a narrow grassy yard. But the free-range story seems a bit of a stretch when you discover that the door remains firmly shut until the birds are at least five or six weeks old… and the chickens are slaughtered only two weeks later.” (140). Yes, the stories on the packages are a great way to market these more pricey food items, but they are hardly different from the industrial, non-organic foods that line the grocery store aisles.

Joel Salatin’s farm looks a whole lot different from Big Organic farms. “Polyface Farm stands about as far from this industrialized sort of agriculture as it is possible to get without leaving the planet” (130). Salatin mimics Howard’s method of copying nature’s way of doing things. Pollan asks, “Why chickens?” because Salatin brings the chickens into the field after the cows are done grazing. Salatin responds, “Because that’s how it works in nature…Birds follow and clean up after herbivores” (126). Salatin sees himself as a grass farmer, because in reality, grass is what is keeping this whole farm going. The grass captures the energy from the sun, which in turn gives the cows energy. Cows can break down the energy in grasses, unlike humans, because they have a rumen which is a special stomach designed specifically for breaking down grasses. After the cows have eaten down the grass field, Salatin moves them to a new area of grass. He does not allow them to break the second bite rule because it could be fatal to his system. The cows graze long enough to do no damage to the land, and then move on. The chickens are brought in a couple days after the cows are done, when the fly larvae in the cow manure is nice and full from feasting. The chickens then pick the fly larvae out of the manure and they essentially break down the manure so it serves as fertilizer to the grass. “Joel is able to use his cattle’s waste to ‘grow’ large quantities of high-protein chicken feed for free; he says this trims his cost of producing eggs by twenty-five cents per dozen” (211). Salatin is using nature to help him be more economically efficient. He says that the animals do most of the work on the farm; “I’m just the orchestra conductor, making sure everybody’s in the right place at the right time” (212).

Polyface Farm has a lot of grassland, but Pollan did not think the wooded land played much part in this grass farming idea. Salatin broke it down for him, assuring him that every part of this farm served its purpose. The forests “hold moisture and prevent erosion,” the “deciduous trees work like an air conditioner. That reduces the stress on the animals in summer,” the pigs prefer to have a savanna-type area in the forest where it stays cooler and they could scratch their backs on trees, the forest brings more biodiversity to the farm (“more birds means fewer insects…[the forest] also helps control predators”), and the forest also provides firewood, as well as compost to feed the farm (223-224). Salatin has no zero-sum deals on his farm, where “the gain of the one entails the loss of the other” (225). Free lunch is a very real and alive idea on this farm.
Pollan also takes part in the weekly slaughtering of the chickens. He states, “It seemed to me not too much to ask of a meat eater, which I was then and still am, that at least once in his life he take some direct responsibility for the killing on which his meat-eating depends” (231). Salatin slaughters his chickens outside in the open air, which the USDA frowns upon. Salatin responds, “The problem with current food-safety regulations…is that they are one-size-fits-all rules designed to regulate giant slaughterhouses that are mindlessly applied to small farmers in such a way that ‘before I can sell my neighbor a T-bone steak I’ve got to wrap it up in a million dollar’ worth of quintuple-permitted processing plant.’ For example, federal rules stipulate that every processing facility have a bathroom for the exclusive use of the USDA inspector” (229). This seems insane, especially for a small farm. Salatin keeps emphasizing that the way he slaughters a chicken is an extension of his world views. So he does it outside, in the clean open air, and even invites his customers to come watch their meat being killed. He gets away with slaughtering outdoors because he does not sell processed food, but rather a live chicken that he has killed, de-feathered, and gutted for the customer’s convenience.

Salatin’s way of farming makes so much more ecological and economical sense. The problem with it is it cannot be produced on a massively corporate scale. McDonald’s, even Whole Foods, does not want to buy from ten, one-hundred acre farms, but rather one, thousand acre farm. If Salatin expanded it would become too difficult to produce his annual yield so sustainably.

Some questions:

• In what ways could organic regulations make "organics" more sustainable?What have we lost from the organic movement in the 60s to the organic movement today? Who and what has changed the way we think about organics?
• Pollan uses many references about food and the way we look at it from other writers, including Emerson ("You have just dined, and however scrupulosly the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." p.226-27), Wendell Berry ("Whose head is the farmer using? Whose head is using the farmer?" p. 220), and others. What effect does this have?
• How does Pollan use language to articulate the realities of the food industry?

Part 1

Opening Credits
The opening credits of the movie begins with pictures of agrarian farms and supermarkets but quickly shifts to images of industrial agriculture to emphasis the way our food system has changed in America. Schlosser, who narrates this segment, says, “The way we eat has changed more in the last fifty years then in the previous ten thousand”. The industrial images at the beginning are compelling because they capture some of the inhumane aspects of our new food system such as a chicken assembly line. The viewer is able to see how we have learned to apply the industrial principles of business to the processing of our food. The combination of these agrarian images ,which eventually fade into the grotesque industrial farmland, are very powerful in the sense that the viewer quickly realizes that they have no idea where their food comes from. Schlosser continues to argue that these multinational corporations, who control the whole food system, are deliberately hiding their tactics in developing the food we eat. By leaving Americans in the dark these corporations can continue to produce cheap, unhealthy food.

Fast Food to All Food
This segment opens with a scene featuring Eric Schlosser. Schlosser is at a small diner and orders and cheeseburger. He claims his favorite meal to this day is still a hamburger and french fries. This is a very critical scene in the movie because it depicts Schlosser as an everyday American who really just wants to know where his food comes from. There is something very blue collar and American about this scene. He does not seem like a raging environmentalist/vegetarian who wants everyone to stop eating meat, but instead comes off as simply an honest and curious every day American. He admits that all he wants to do as an investigative journalist is to find out where his food comes from and that his findings would reflect the ethics of these huge corporations.

He continues by talking about McDonald’s, emphasizing how the McDonald Brothers were able to bring the factory system to the kitchen. The scene consists of workers doing individual tasks repeatedly. This industrial concept results into the workers being replaceable and in turn, reducing their worth to the corporation. Schlosser continues saying, “That the mentality of uniformity, conformity, and cheapness, applied widely and on a large scale, has all kind of unintended consequences”. What he is saying is that when one corporation wants their food to taste exactly alike then something about the way we process our food has to change. Schlosser also notes that McDonalds is the largest consumer of ground beef in the United States and if they want their meat to taste exactly the same around the country, then the way we process our food will have to change drastically. This is the same with potatoes, pork, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce and apples. Now only a handful of companies control the food system. These incredibly large and powerful corporations, like Tyson, have got to the point where they genetically modify animals in order to get the most possible yield out of them. This idea of uniformity, conformity and cheapness will change the face of our modern food system.

The next scene takes us to Kentucky, where a Tyson grower, named Vince Edwards, farms chicken. The first time we see Vince he simply rolls down his window and says, “Smells like money”. As Vince drives down the road he points out the numerous chicken houses in the area. Vince is very grateful that Tyson came into his community as it has brought money to the area. It is clear Vince backs this industrial business and he sees no wrong in any of it. He offers to show the inside of his chicken houses but Tyson would have no part of that as they demand he not let the film crews in. Vince is important to have in the film because he represents one side of the argument. He is happy that he has a job and steady income. He has no problem with the way he makes his living and does not mind the grip that Tyson possess over “his” farm. This scene gives the movie so more credibility because like the Schlosser scene, it portrays another side of the argument.

In the proceeding scene we are introduced to Carole Morison, a Perdue grower who is sick of being controlled by these corporate juggernauts. She takes us into her chicken house where you can see the large amount of chickens. The scene is very overcrowded with dust and feces in the air. Some chickens cannot walk due to the genetic modifications on their bodies causing them to become too large for their legs to carry them. Carole walks through the house and picks up numerous dead chickens and tosses them out, claiming that this is a normal thing. She goes on about the ethics of these corporations and comments on how we have illegal immigrants working for these corporations simply because they will not complain. Carole says that after her initial investment with the company, they are constantly returning and demanding that she have her houses upgraded. Threatened by a loss of contract, the farmer has no choice and the debt keeps mounting up. Carole compares it to being a slave to the company. Eventually she had her farm shut down due to not upgrading. The scene closes by stating that a typical grower with two chicken houses has borrowed over $500,000 and earns about $18,000 a year. This is one of the most powerful scenes in the documentary because it really shows how worn down these corporations can make people feel.

A Cornucopia of Choices
This scene opens with Pollan pondering the origins of his food but keeps coming back to a cornfield in Iowa. Pollan remarks, “So much of our industrial food system turns out to be cleaver rearrangements of corn”. As the camera shoots over massive corn fields, he discusses the evolution of corn and how it has become the crop it is today. Troy Roush, the Vice President of American Corn Growers Association, explains how corn is being overproduced because it is below the cost of production. He explains how companies lobby for food bills, which really is a main driving force behind the food economy. Roush continues, stating that farmers are encouraged to produce as much corn as possible and are equally subsidized by the bushel. Due to the surplus of corn we are forced to make alternate use for it.

This brings us to a lab, where a scientist demonstrates the process of making high fructose corn syrup and later claims that 90% of supermarket items have a corn or soybean ingredient in the make-up. This just goes to show how much corn we are actually consuming in our diet. As long as there is science then there will be new ways of using corn. And as long as we have a surplus of corn then we are going to be forced to consume it.

Another way we are indirectly eating a lot of corn is through our animals. The high yield of corn has lowered the price of meat because it is below the price of production. This allows cow farmers to buy corn at a fraction of the price of other types of feed. The problem with this is that cows have evolved to eat grass, not corn. Corn has the ability to make the cows fat quickly but there is nothing natural about the process. Disease begins set in and some cows cannot live a healthy life based on a corn diet.
The movie continues by showing pictures of cows up to their knees in feces which is a very unpleasant sight. Pollan begins talking about disease such as e-coli and salmonella and insists they are products of the diet and living conditions of the cows. As the cows are processed their hide is caked in manure and e-coli that was in their feces is now in our food. This is unsettling considering the meat of one cow is routinely combined with the meat of numerous other cows.

Unintended Consequences
E-coli is everywhere. This scene begins with several news broadcasts delivering urgent messages about nationwide recalls on food infected with e-coli. This disease is no longer only in meat but also in foods such as spinach due to the way we process food. Schlosser speaks on how the regulatory agencies are failing in their attempts to keep the American public healthy. The massive production plants have become more and more contaminated over the years, which is due to over-expansion and simply put, lack of care.

We are next taken to Washington D.C. where we meet a food safety advocate named Barbara Kowalcyk . Barbara tells a heartbreaking story about how her son, Kevin, who fell sick with e-coli from eating bad meat and died ten days later. She is working for the USDA to be more strict with their contamination inspections and to not refrain from shutting a plant down based on constant failure or contamination. Barbara explains a new law in response to her son’s death. The law, Kevin’s Law, would give back to the USDA the power to shut down plants that repeatedly produce contaminated meat. This sounds like common sense but the fact is that Barbara cannot get this law passed due to the politics behind the corrupt industry. Barbara has been fighting for this law for the last six years but can’t help but feel that the food industry is more important than Kevin’s life.

We are then taken to Beef Products INC. in Nebraska where we meet Eldon Roth, founder of BPI. He asserts that they are ahead of everybody in terms of food safety and can reduce the cases of e-coli in their meat. One processing toll used is ammonia, which kills the bacteria in the meat. Pollan states, “If you feed cows grass for five days then they will lose 80% of the e-coli in their systems”, but instead these companies want to be as cost and time efficient as possible. This results in turning to chemicals like ammonia in order to cleanse the meat. This does not sound very healthy and sounds bad in principle. Grass is a natural and healthy alternative. Why not use it?

The Dollar Menu
In this scene we are introduced to a hard working family who must count every penny when it comes to eating expenditures. The Gonzalez family works long hours for low wages which directly affects their decision of what to have for dinner. Many times this circumstance results in an unhealthy meal off the dollar menu. The dollar menu is time and cost efficient, all while filling the stomachs of the Gonzalez family, but unfortunately the cost to their health is something that needs to be considered. Later in the scene, the family is seen in the supermarket attempting to make the best possible financial decisions when it comes to what to eat. The family and Pollan question why the bad foods are cheap and the good foods expensive. The reason being because the calories we are subsidizing are the ones in our snack food. Pollan claims that salt, fat, and sugar, which are very rare in nature, have been hard-wired into our evolutionary make-up. Not only are these things no longer rare but they are available in enormous quantities. These high concentrations can wear down our genetic make-up and eventually break down the way our bodies have evolved to metabolize sugar. Thus resulting into many more diabetic individuals. This surplus food is directly affecting how much items cost and how affordable they should be.

In the next scene we are taken to a health advisory group where you can really see the affects of diabetes and other food related diseases on the youth of our nation. A large majority of the kids know someone with diabetes. The film claims that one in three Americans born after 2000 with contract early onset diabetes. It was previously thought that type two diabetes would only affect adults but that is no longer the case. These disease are very really and becoming more and more prevalent. This scene is crucial because it can really open the eyes of the viewer when it comes to every day American families

Food, Inc. Part Two

Food Inc. sends a message to the consumers of “fast food” conveying what they are purchasing without knowing. The film reinforces and connects with The Omnivores Dilemma by visual imagery and voice. The second half of Food, Inc. concentrates on grass. It discusses and contrasts the concepts of grass feed versus corn feed. Joel Salatin is a key voice in this segment and shows his way of running a farm compared to the ‘industrial’ way. His introduction to Food, Inc. Begins with him saying “Everything we’ve done in modern industrial agriculture is to grow it faster, fatter, bigger, cheaper.” It’s the truth what Salatin says, we all know it but don’t want to see it. He is a realist and knows exactly what is going on, but unlike most he has a solution. It doesn’t make sense to feed the cows or hogs corn when grass can be used. The cow fertilizes the grass and harvests it at the same time making a perfect system. Greed and power are the only reasons why corn is used to such an extent. It’s a cheap, fast, and easy way to create a large amount of feed to be used on the animals we eat. If the animals are becoming sick and treated under poor conditions, then that transfers over to us. Like the saying goes, “you are what you eat”.

Another man we are introduced to is Hirshberg, who is the CEO of Stonyfield Yogurt. He agrees with the problem of the food industry, but also realizes that some changes are inevitable. Logic and basic understanding of the business world is what Hirshberg knows and deals with. He says at one point in the film, “For me, when a Wal-Mart enters the organic space, I’m thrilled. It’s absolutely one of the most exciting things”. Some people look down on this because Wal-Mart is such a large corporation. It goes against the buy local tactics and gives the consumers money to the large corporation. But Hirsberg's whole point is that it’s a step in the right direction for the public. Supplying Wal-Mart makes him a boat load of money and helps bring more organic product to the table. He discusses how much pesticides are avoided by selling these organic products and it really is a step in the right direction.

We then move on to meet another man named Troy Roush, the vice president of the American Corn Growers Association. He also recognizes the problem of our food industry, but can’t do anything about it. The entire process won’t change until the corporation changes its ways. Monsanto is introduced because of their involvement with corn and the soybean. They have a team of investigators who look into the famers who possibly save their own seed. The control and power of this company is scary when thinking it is all revolved around the food we eat. They created round-up and genetically modified their soybeans to be able to survive the spraying of these harmful chemicals. No one company or person should be able to ‘own’ a crop or plant, it isn’t feasible, but it happens.
The famers of today are controlled by the large business corporations and can’t do anything about it. Pollan says “When you genetically modify a crop, you own it. We’ve never had this in agriculture”. We have never had this before because it’s morally wrong to take the rights of food away from the people and the growers. When Monsanto is talked about in further detail we learn about the politics and the people behind the entire operation. The close ties to the Bush administration and Clinton administration show that our government has been dominated by the food industries instead of regulating. Pollan talks about this in the film and its impact on the consumers.

Oprah Winfrey was sued by the meat industry for simply speaking her mind on national television. She went on to win the case, but spent over a million dollars in doing so.

The main problem with how our food is produced deals directly with the ‘top guys’ of the company. They are interested in one thing, making money. It’s strictly business for them and this affects everyone who purchases their food. The employees are shown to be treated poorly and lack respect. A worker from the large corporation talks about how the employees are treated just as the hogs are. The fact that hidden cameras are used to show what really goes on makes one wonder. The extreme privacy that these large companies use sets a tone of curiosity when watching and learning the film. How can they not get a single interview with the men from the large corporation? What message does that send the audience?

The most terrifying aspect of this film is the fact that even after knowing what goes on, people will go out and eat the same. I believe this is not the consumers fault, but rather the producer who secretly controls the food we eat. Being blinded from all these processes and ‘ingredients’ gone into the food we eat really is disturbing and unfair.

The meatpacking companies’ relationships with their employees are discussed in grave detail. Workers for these companies are being arrested while the companies sit back and do nothing. They are giving no respect or credit to the illegal immigrants that came over based on the advertisements. The companies get away with luring them over the border, but the employees are getting arrested. These meatpacking industries are bringing in billions of dollars, but why can’t they spend some of that to protect their employees.

Food, Inc. is a powerful film that everyone must be exposed to. It brings up the issue of real problems dealing with food and what we know. After watching the film it makes me want to change my eating and buying habits of food. The problem is that it’s not as easy as it sounds. When a person has a busy schedule and no time for a real lunch, what should they do? A quick meal is the only solution. We need to take a stand against these large corporations by buying locally and knowing what we are buying. The public is blind on these matters which is exactly what the large meatpacking and food related businesses want.