The Omnivore's Dilemma

The saying is "you are what you eat." Well, apparently we, 21st century Americans, are just walking and talking bundles of corn. Corn and it's by-products are infused within a majority of the foods we consume. Oh, no you say - I stay away from high carb food. If you have consumed "citric and latic acid; glucose, fructose, malodextrin; ethanol (for alcoholic beverages as well as cars), sorbitol, mannitol, and xanthan gum, modified and unmodified starches; as well as dextrins and cyclodeztrins and MSG" you, my friend, have eaten an organic - but corn - compound. And you thought it was just corn syrup to blame!

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan brings to our attention the sprawl of the modern industrial food complex. And how it effects almost every aspect of the food we eat. Is it for the better? That is the question. The first section of the book is on corn and how it has been filtered through out lives. We eat it, feed it to our meat, drive with it, use it for other non-food (adhesives etc.) items. The ironic part of this - to get that corn, all that lovely corn, we need to use petrochemicals as fertilizer. And that is why food prices are going up with the recent rise in oil prices.

The next section is about a different kind of farm - self sustaining and more in tune with nature's cycles. Pollan spends some time seeing how this "non-industrial" farm makes it work. And in the last half of the book, he talks about forging - hunting in the woods for animals, and mushrooms.

Pollan is a writer who draws you in with his prose and practicality as he moves smoothly along from one section to the next. He definitely makes you think about your food choices. And that may bother some readers. Or be eye opening to them. But ignoring where it comes from is one of the problems. People have lost sight of how their food is made. Their health and the ecosystem are the ones that pay the cost. An excellent read.

Warning : It does have disturbing scenes of meat processing and killing animals. This may not be for everyone - but we watch thousands of people being murdered and dissected on CSI and other cop shows all the time - so why should this bother you?

Something to think about:
"The longer the ingredient label on a food, the more fractions of corn and soybeans you will find in it. They supply the essential building blocks, and from those two plants (plus a handful of synthetic additives) a food scientist can construct just about any processed food he or she can dream up."