Because we as humans who live in present day have a vast variety of choices for what to consume, our complex minds are often driven to anxiety on what could be considered the 'right choice'. Everything that we eat can fall under three major food chains- that of industrial foods, 'pastoral' or grass based organic foods, or meals of which we forage by ourselves and for ourselves only. Follow me as I try to find justification and non-justification that makes each of these meals the 'right choice'.
Gems:
-"To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction."
-"But forgetting, or not knowing in the first place, is what the industrial food chain is all about, the principal reason it is so opaque, for if we could see what lies on the far side of the increasingly high walls of our industrial agriculture, we would surely change the way we eat."
Thoughts/questions:
-WHY is this book going to change my views on food and my foodways, and how is it going to go about influencing those changes?
-I think that realistically, the four meals he mentions coexist and have become intertwined in such a way that we cannot survive- the current day market that is, without the presence of the industrial food chain.
-He is not going to simply suggest we only eat organic and hunt for our own food- in fact I would not have a hard time believing that Mr. Pollan is an occasional consumer of the industrial food chain.
Chapter One- The Plant (Corn's Conquest)
Look at the vast variety of foods that fill the shelves in your Pathmark- many things are naturally identifiable by species such as the fruit and meat, but once you reach those Lucky Charms nearly everything in the store is made of corn. In fact, even the fruit includes corn components, and that meat was raised off of corn. Think of a Thanksgiving dinner with all sorts of dishes- turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce; you might as well call is corn, corn and corn. Because of what seems today like a once in a blue moon encounter with corn in the late 1400's, corn now enslaves the Earth by penetrating the diet of nearly every living being.
Gems:
-" "What am I eating? And where in the world did it come from?" Not very long ago an eater didn't need a journalist to answer these questions."
-"Even in Produce on a day when there's ostensibly no corn for sale you'll nevertheless find plenty of corn: in the vegetable wax that gives the cucumbers their sheen, in the pesticide responsible for the produce's perfection, even in the coating on the cardboard it was shipped in."
-"So that's us: processed corn, walking"
-"In the plant world at least, opportunism trumps gratitude."
Thoughts/questions:
- This is slightly disturbing, although part of me deep down knew that there wasn't a species called 'fruit roll-ups'. I guess I never connected the dots that would lead back to the same farm on Iowa
-Is corn at all completely avoidable? Is it possible for one to go on an "anti-corn diet" or is this simply impractical?
-If people are starving halfway around the world, why are we wasting corn to make the outside of cardboard feel nice? Does anybody else ponder this disturbing thought???
Chapter 2- The Farm
The majority of food you consume is made of or contains corn, which can likely be traced back to a farm on Iowa- the highest concentration of corn farms in America. This farmer, who devotes his life of monotony and struggles to keep you from starving is having trouble making ends meet himself. In fact, not only do buyers of corn (corporations like Coca-Cola) take advantage of this farmer, but they also encourage them to use less natural techniques such as using synthetic fertilizer to grow corn, which not only poisons the Earth but poison you. In short, biodiversity is sacrificed for further progression in the corn industry.
Gems:
-"Measured in terms of output per worker, American farmers like Naylor are the most productive humans who have ever lived."
-"The true socialist utopia turns out to be a field of F-1 hybrid plants."
-"If, as has sometimes been said, the discovery of agriculture represented the first fall of man from the state of nature, then the discovery of synthetic fertility is surely a second precipitous fall."
-"By fertilizing the world, we alter the planet's composition of species and shrink its biodiversity."
Thoughts/questions:
-If Naylor is one of the most productive human beings of ALL TIME, why in the world is he and his family suffering because of their trade. Who cares about Einstien? Who needs Obama? All hail George Naylor!!!
-It really is startling to me that farmers no longer have actual animals on their farms- why sacrifice biodiversity for something we have so much of that it sells for literally nothing?!
-Farming today sounds so exciting- not. Farming a half-century ago might have sounded quite fun.
Chapter 3- The Elevator
Corn kernels here, there and everywhere. Today's technology takes every individual farmer's corn (which were all grown using different methods) and funnels it in with everyone else's, creating a vast sea of yellow kernels. Tracking down one of these kernels to your dinner plate is like trying to find salt in a pail of sand. The farmer gets little to nothing for his contribution.
Gems:
-"Such corn is not something to feel reverent or even sentimental about, and nobody in Iowa, save the slightly embarrassed agronomist, does."
-"Before the commodity system farmers prided themselves on a panoply of qualities in their crop: big ears, plump kernels, straight rows, various colors; even the height of their corn plants became a point of pride. Now none of these distinctions mattered..."
-"I should have known that tracing any single bushel of commodity corn is as impossible as tracing a bucket of water after it's been poured into a river."
Thoughts/questions:
-I like the way he describes the way the kernels look like a "golden river". They remind me of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, except with corn and nothing else.
-Having such minimal requirements for the kind of corn you can toss into the elevator is really convoluted. What if I grew mine with anthrax? Minimal insect damage? Check. Moisture under control? Check. Dusted with anthrax? Accepted! And the whole world goes down...
Chapter 4- The Feedlot (Making Meat)
Forget farms and ranches, cattle today stay at the fancy resorts known as feedlots. Here they will enjoy all of the corn they could possibly want (If they did want something their body is not evolved to digest), while standing in their own toxic fecal matter as they enjoy a scenic view of their collected effort- a manure lagoon. During their stay they will indirectly feed on their own kind and will be subject to deadly bacteria such as E. coli. Then, without being cleaned or treated, the cattle are slaughtered as fast as humanly possible while introducing humans to mad cow disease and petroleum ingestion.
Gems:
- "The urea is a form of sticky brown goop consisting of molasses and urea. The urea is a form of synthetic nitrogen made from natural gas, similar to the fertilizer spread on George Naylor's fields."
- "We don't know much about the hormones in it- ... but we do know something about the bacteria, which can find their way from the manure on the ground and to his hide and from there into our hamburgers."
-"Assuming 534 continues to eat 25 pounds of corn a day and reaches a weight of twelve hundred pounds, he will have consumed in his lifetime the equivalent of thirty-five gallons of oil, nearly a barrel."
Comments/questions:
- I don't blame Mr. Pollan for not wanting to eat beef again so quickly- I am actually questioning a burger I just ate... ugh.
- How idiotic could feedlot supervisors be? At least clean up the cattle BEFORE slaughtering it.
- After the dominant rise of these feedlots, can we ever turn back, or will industrial feedlots inevitably change for the worse as time marches on?
- How long can ANYONE bear to work at a feedlot, let alone smell one?!
Chapter 5- The Processing Plant (Making Complex Foods)
Beyond the existence of grounded up corn, the vast majority of the corn we eat is processed behind closed doors and heavy curtains in a wet mill. These industrial powerhouses that have developed rapidly throughout time takes bushels of corn, and through processes of extracting their different properties create a number of different corn-based products (namely anything that ends in and -ose) higher than Santa's list. Food scientists over time have strived to "improve upon nature" by cheating the phenomenon of spoilage, package foods for long distance imports. Now a new achievement has been reached: food can be grown with specific substances to produce more profitable results and the key to the corn kernel has been opened to make anything from artificial sweeteners to sneaker polish.
Gems:
- "It takes a certain kind of eater- an industrial eater- to consume these fractions of corn, and we are, or have evolved into, that supremely adapted creature: the eater of processed food."
- "There's money to be made in food, unless you're trying to grow it."
- "Remember the sixties dream of an entire meal served in a pill, like the Jetsons? We've apparently moved from the meal-in-a-pill to the pill-in-a-meal, which is to say, not very far at all."
Thoughts/questions:
-I've been reading up recently that the name "high fructose corn syrup" has been elected to be changed to "corn sugar". On a radio broadcast I was listening to, people were saying it should be renamed to "corn poison" or "cancer corn".
-I must admit that when it delves this deep (into X number of ingredients), I have a hard time truly caring about how many ingredients are on a label. I know this is lazy and promotes ignorance and non-observance but to be honest, my brother is far better at this than I.
-General Mills may be processing some very unhealthy cereals, but... they make Wheaties, the Breakfast of Champions!
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