Book Review : The Omnivore’s Dilemma

June 1, 2009

What was the last non-fiction book that I could call un-put-down-able? That’s easy. There has never been another one.

I was speechless and spellbound.

Among its numerous awards, Michael Pollan’s book was named by the NYT Book Review as One of the 10 Best of 2006. I would say One Of The 10 Best, period.

You can read the first chapter and read what others have said on the book’s web page.

If you eat, if you talk about food, if you buy or prepare food, if you think you know what you’re getting or you think you know where it comes from, you’re about to be politely but definitely awakened. You might wish you could continue living in your old world of un-knowing.

The book is divided into thirds. The first section takes us through the depressing and horrifying labyrinth of corn production and usage.

The farm ain’t what it used to be and is only barely where food begins. A netherworld has grown between farm and food store, a dense and solid wall of chemistry and creative marketing. After all, there’s a limit to how much food we can consume. Or is there? The food bureaucracies keep finding new ways of making us pack away more and filling their pockets while they watch.

Meanwhile, the farmer is caught in a game that he can only lose. I wish he’s talked more about the psychology of the farmer. A more stubborn and independent group you will never find. They cannot come to an agreement about anything. Their collective character is part of the problem.

Section 2 takes us to an “organic” farm, though he explains that the “organic” label is so disputed as to be rendered almost meaningless. Salatin’s farm is what we want to believe we’re getting if we buy organic. Before anyone spouts another opinion about the Farmer’s Market, before you resist when your teenagers announce that they’re going vegan, before you decide if your organic strawberries are worth the cost, arm yourself with some facts.

I think most people who buy organic (I don’t, by the way) realize that it’s not what we hope for. Just as in buying Green cleaning products and non-animal-tested cosmetics (and I do), we are all trying to cast a vote for chemical-free cruelty-free world and saying we’ll pay more for it.

In the description of this farm is a prayer for our future that will never be answered. I felt almost overjoyed to read about Joel Salatin’s farm. This farmer’s understanding of natural process and his methods of miniaturizing them to suit his 500 acres are astounding. The workings of this incredible place in Virginia are so beautifully orchestrated to achieve cycles within cycles that it seems to be the only and obvious answer to the industrial mess that corn has become.

Except for one problem – it utilizes, even exploits, the inherent randomness of nature. The industrial revolution came about when business realized it was cheaper to product 1000 identical units than 10 different ones. They went on to notice that the numbers worked the same way for the productivity of human beings, meaning that 1000 people doing the same thing were cheaper to pay and easier to control than 10 people doing different things.

I wish he’d outlined the finances of Salatin’s farm better. Does his wife work? Yes, he has no inputs or loss to disease, but he needs buildings and machines. What does he clear in a year? The size of his animal and plant harvest are given and they are impressive but I’d have loved to see a balance sheet. For Salatin, it probably doesn’t matter because he’s living a life he loves and believes in and there’s no dollar sign on that. For farmers interested in trying to transition from industrial corn and soybean production to a model that allows them to truly be the stewards of the land that they pride themselves in being, more dollar talk would have been interesting.

The final example is an illustration of what a complete thinker Pollan is as he looks at a topic from every angle. We accompany him on a mission to prepare a meal that he has gathered and prepared at every stage. He forages for mushrooms and fruit. He decides that if he’s going to eat meat, he needs to experience the act of killing to defend his action of eating it.

Every spring, as I prepare to make the annual Tabbouleh, I look at the oregano and mint in my garden, and think “how sure are you?” I feel surging trepidation as I wonder if it’s mutated somehow. I worry that we’ll all have awful cramps later on. Who discovered that it was the rhubarb stems you could eat? and if it took awhile for the leaves to kill you, how did they trace it back? Pollan recreates for us the entire history of humans learning through trial and serious error what is safe for them to eat.

This section contains some of the most fascinating discussions in the book and raises some disturbing points. For instance, we might deplore hunting but eat meat. Regardless of how we feel about the moral decency of taking life or enjoying killing, our position may be untenable since the wild animal has had an overall better life and death than the farmed animal, most especially the factory-farmed animal.

If McDonalds’s has a failure rate of 5% at the abattoir, does this mean it’s acceptable if only 5 cows per 100 are skinned alive? Jesus. And apparently the situation at the slaughterhouse improved when McDonald’s came along and set some standards. As the WalMart of the food industry, McDonalds, and indeed the whole fast food machine, has to appear beyond reproach at every level, but even 1 in 100 seems to me too many. Fast food walks a fine line, as does the cigarette industry, because they are selling us something that may be bad for us. We don’t have to choose to buy, but the argument is not that different. The less public inquisition, the better for them.

Maybe the level of complexity that we’ve allowed to overtake the food industry has been a way of protecting ourselves from the debasing ,ugly, cruel reality and allows us to blame someone else for the destruction.

You’ll also find the most intelligent discussion of vegetarianism in these pages. No single outcome is revealed to be the right one and no opinion is criticized or accused. Pollan doesn’t propose the right path or a new path. His goal seems to be to force us to question at the deepest level our feelings about food and recognize the level of complexity and near-impossibility of finding the solution.

I wish he’d contrasted European and Canadian farm policies with those in the US but I expect that’s the topic of another book and some distance from Pollan’s real interests. Canada doesn’t deserve to have farmers. The bureaucracy forces them to compete on a global playing field with a huge handicap. Perhaps cynical of me, but until we know what it means to line up for 5 hours to get bread or what empty shelves look like in the supermarket, nothing will change. Europeans know all too well what that looks like and treat their farmers more carefully.

For me, cooking is just another chore, a job that I can never cross off. Through his eyes and experience, I see that preparation, sharing, even the saying of a grace is the human tradition of gratitude for the sacrifice that an animal, plant, and place must make to feed us.

My brother-in-law, Xavier, is the only bred-in-the-bone forager I know. It always seems so odd to me that he thinks about food so much. I now understand that he is not perpetually hungry but simply showing the deepest respect for the true source of food. The skill of foraging, that most of us have long lost, takes enormous time as Pollan learned.

Once we sit at his table, sharing the final meal, we have covered a lot of territory.

Posted by Christine Scaman | Filed Under Food & Recipes

Comments

4 Responses to “Book Review : The Omnivore’s Dilemma”

MarySteele Lawler on June 1st, 2009 9:10 pm

What an accomplished writer you are, Christine. Your blog is something I look forward to every day, but this one was different. Passion about your subject (my family are farmers, too) along with a clear review of the book……..moving.

You provide a lot to think about, as usual.
Christine Scaman on June 2nd, 2009 5:29 pm

Thanks for that, MarySteele. It is easy to write about this very accomplished work – for the depth of the research, the beauty of the use of the words, and the information it conveys, all told in the most readable style. We are better citizens of our planet for having read this.

Daniele sends us a couple of links to Pollan videos at

http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/videos.html?id=729498103
http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/videos.html?id=666769600

You’ll find a good one on YouTube here,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFpjskn3_Pc

and of course at TED,

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_view.html
jaycee on June 5th, 2009 7:28 am

Do you know that Michael Pollan is the brother in law of one of your fellow Canucks, Michael J Fox? He is the brother of Fox’s wife Tracy Pollan! Smart family!
Christine Scaman on June 6th, 2009 6:54 am

Jaycee,

I did not know that! What an interesting connection. A lot of bright lights in that family indeed.