Michael Pollan's new book on the U.S. food chain provides much to chew on

[jpak]

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/04/11_pollan.shtml

BERKELEY – Thanks to recent investigative works such as "Fast Food Nation" and "Supersize Me," a growing number of Americans are scrutinizing ingredient labels and asking, What is this stuff? Michael Pollan, Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley, can tell you. In a just-released new book, he takes readers to the feedlot, to the farm, and into the woods in search of the origins of our dinner. Will we have the nerve to follow?

"Imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what, in a true accounting, it really cost," writes Pollan in "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals."

By the time readers reach this passage, which comes at the very end of the book, they will be able to answer at length. They will have tagged along as Pollan traces the path from earth to plate taken by four meals — from McDonald's, Whole Foods, a small Virginia farm, and a "first person" dinner that he killed, foraged, and grew himself. Pollan is a genial tour guide through a variety of disciplines. Along the way to his main destinations — the feedlot where "his" steer is being fattened, the vast facility where organic baby lettuces are being washed and bagged, the pasture in which chickens joyfully root through cow manure, or the forest where he is helping to disembowel a wild boar he has just shot — he delivers fascinating mini-lectures on agricultural history, plant biology, food chemistry, nutrition, and the animal-rights debate.

Readers of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" will learn that the bulk of the American diet comes from one plant: corn. Grown on massive farms, oceans' worth of the golden kernels and green stalks are then processed, deconstructed, and reassembled in factories into everything from a Chicken McNugget to salad dressing. We eat so much corn that, biologically speaking, most Americans are corn on two legs.

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[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. kickin to read later nt

[megatherium]

2. I'm reading this. I'm half way through it and it is very good.

He describes in precise detail how US agriculture has changed from largely renewable to heavily dependent on petroleum, especially since the early 1970s. A decision was made to no longer loan corn farmers money to help them through droughts or surpluses, but instead to give them subsidies in case surpluses caused prices to drop. The result was an enormous increase in the production of corn, which is now the primary feedstock of the food industry. It is used to manufacture all manner of prepared foods (through corn oil, high-fructose corn syrup, and other ingredients). It is also fed to cattle. This is remarkable because cattle did not evolve to eat grain, they evolved to eat grass, and the corn diet causes serious health problems in the cattle.

His description of the organic food industry is absolutely arresting. He tells the story of Cascadian Farms, which began as a commune, founded in the days of the back-to-the-land movement, and now has become a huge commercial enterprise. Cascadian Farms and its subsidiary Muir Glen are now owned by General Mills, and the founder of the original commune sits on General Mill's board of directors. Pollan's description of the organics industry is often unflattering, but he is careful to identify the good that the new corporate organic companies have accomplished.

[XemaSab]

3. He's been working on this book for YEARS,

and though I haven't read it yet, I expect it will be as entertaining and thought provoking as "botany of desire."