Jump to content

"The Omnivore's Dilemma"


Tweaked

Recommended Posts

I think I may be among the few people that did not like this book. I found it rather mastubatory and self-congratulatory. But then again, if you consider it more memoir than documentary, that's what you would expect.

I am a fan of the local farmer, I spend a fair amount of money at the farmers' market every weekend. Partly because of philosophy and partly because it just plain tastes better than the alternatives. I'll pay the extra money at Whole Paycheck for Niman Ranch pork and Bell and Evans chicken over the agribusiness giants for the same reasons.

It's only at the very end, and in passing that Pollan even mentions the real dilemma -- that not everyone can go local.

For much of the US population, eating local organic is a conceit enabled by a wallet considerably fatter than the norm.

Furthermore, much of the reduction in mass starvation in the world is a direct result of the "Green Revolution" that applied scientific aids (manmade fertilizers and pesticides) to crop production that allowed the agriculture of India (to use just one example) to intensify crop yields (not to mention crop reliability) enough to almost eliminate mass famines and reduce serious malnutrition.

So, cheers to him for showing some of the darker side of food production and showing how people can link what's on their plate to where it started. Unfortunately, local organic, while an excellent individual choice, it's a utopian fantasy at the societal level. What's really needed is thought on reducing the harm to the Earth and the foods it produces while maintaining crop and protein yields. This is an area that I wish he would have addressed more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's only at the very end, and in passing that Pollan even mentions the real dilemma -- that not everyone can go local.

For much of the US population, eating local organic is a conceit enabled by a wallet considerably fatter than the norm.

Every discussion about this topic seems to come back to this. I have no answers, but it would be great to see Pollan cover it in more depth.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Haven't read it all yet through NY Times Select, but this Sunday's NYT Magazine will have a major feature article by Michael Pollan entitled "Unhappy Meals." If you have Times Select, you can read it now online.
Unhappy Meals Compelling stuff. It reinforced my deep suspicion of processed supermarket foods and high fructose corn syrup.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since this thread has been used to keep us informed about new articles by an author who continues to address the relationship between farming and the way we eat, I am linking the latest from the magazine section of the Sunday Times: "You Are What You Grow".

His subject this time is legislation that has recently come up for renewal for the next five years. Largely designed to aid large farms that grow a surplus of wheat, corn, soybeans, rice & cotton,

the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

In thinking about the Farm Bill, Michael Pollan has been asking owners of small, independent farms what they would like from the federal goverment. Should there be further articles based on feedback, it might be useful to glance at his Web site.

While the plight of dairies is not mentioned in the new article and I am sure the situation is complex, it reminds of Adam Cook's recent struggles to maintain his small dairy in nearby West Virginia and the auction of his cows once a grant application was denied and loans fell due. Ironically, Murky Coffee began looking for a local supplier of good milk here at DR.com shortly thereafter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Farm Bill subsidies also harm assistance efforts around the world, requiring all U.S. food aid to be grown in the United States. From a NY Times op ed:

A recent article by The Times’s Celia Dugger shows why that makes so little sense. Starving Africans in the arid reaches of northwestern Kenya desperately needed food. Kenyan officials did not want surplus American corn because they feared driving down the prices for local farmers. The obvious answer was for the Americans to buy local corn, but American law prevented this. So the corn was never shipped and people continued to go hungry.

The Bush Administration, finally on the right side of an issue, is hoping to modify this long-standing rule, but is running up against strong resistance in Congress.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I may be among the few people that did not like this book. I found it rather mastubatory and self-congratulatory. But then again, if you consider it more memoir than documentary, that's what you would expect.
I'm reading it now, and not liking it much more than you did, Joe. Self-congratulatory is just about right.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Farm Bill subsidies also harm assistance efforts around the world, requiring all U.S. food aid to be grown in the United States. From a NY Times op ed:

The Bush Administration, finally on the right side of an issue, is hoping to modify this long-standing rule, but is running up against strong resistance in Congress.

I think the more tragic item here is the Kenyan government's protectionist economic policy: "Kenyan officials did not want surplus American corn because they feared driving down the prices for local farmers." What?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the more tragic item here is the Kenyan government's protectionist economic policy: "Kenyan officials did not want surplus American corn because they feared driving down the prices for local farmers." What?

"What" is this:

subsidized American food can hurt local farmers, while local procurement gives them a commercial outlet

Say northwest Kenya has a drought while the rest of the country is producing a good crop (like is described in this article): international aid is still required because even a fairly developed country like Kenya does not have the logistical capacity to deliver its own aid from its successful fields to its farther-thrown, suffering people. However, American food aid rules under the FAA don't let US aid organizations to purchase this surplus of grains from Kenya and help deliver it to the Kenyans who need it. Therefore, our only option to help the people who need it is to deliver American grains--including the great costs of subsidizing and shipping. And since Kenya's had a good harvest, an influx--a HUGE influx--of foreign grain completely will completely destabilize local markets, lowering the grain prices of Kenyans who have been able to harvest their crop in less afflicted regions of the country.

This kind of aid over the medium- to long-term can devalue the role of farmers, who will get significantly lower prices to sell their regular crops, and who increasingly have little incentive to grow crops, since they can buy American grains cheaper than they can grow it. Over the long term, it creates a dependent culture that farms less and less, and then not at all.

See, for example, 25 years of food aid to Sudan.

Calling this policy "protectionist" or believing it's a black and white issue is not looking at the longer-term effects that have been shown throughout Africa and other developing regions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Has anybody here read the Barbara Kingsolver book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (or some such?)? I haven't read omnivore's dilemna, but the comments here make it sound very similar to the Kingsolver book. I couldn't get through it (really, because I needed to return it to the person who loaned it to me, but even if I hadn't I don't think I could have stomached much more of it). The whole thing drove me friggin' bonkers (and I think she would recommend that you go chew on the bushes in your yard, Heather, because they're locally grown).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just finished it. I think I'll go chew on the shrubs in my yard for lunch. A great deal of tut-tutting, elitism, and self-congratulation. The final chapter in particular made me furious.

I read it quite a while ago and just did not detect this tone at all. In fact I think that Pollan made quite clear--without belaboring the point--that eating truly organically is neither practical nor possible for many people. He was describing an ideal that can inspire one to make some modest but important changes or at least think differently about how and what one eats. His prose was also clear, incisive, and elegant. This could easily have been a grandstanding, ideological tract, but in my opinion it was precisely the opposite.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"What" is this:

Say northwest Kenya has a drought while the rest of the country is producing a good crop (like is described in this article): international aid is still required because even a fairly developed country like Kenya does not have the logistical capacity to deliver its own aid from its successful fields to its farther-thrown, suffering people. However, American food aid rules under the FAA don't let US aid organizations to purchase this surplus of grains from Kenya and help deliver it to the Kenyans who need it. Therefore, our only option to help the people who need it is to deliver American grains--including the great costs of subsidizing and shipping. And since Kenya's had a good harvest, an influx--a HUGE influx--of foreign grain completely will completely destabilize local markets, lowering the grain prices of Kenyans who have been able to harvest their crop in less afflicted regions of the country.

This kind of aid over the medium- to long-term can devalue the role of farmers, who will get significantly lower prices to sell their regular crops, and who increasingly have little incentive to grow crops, since they can buy American grains cheaper than they can grow it. Over the long term, it creates a dependent culture that farms less and less, and then not at all.

See, for example, 25 years of food aid to Sudan.

Calling this policy "protectionist" or believing it's a black and white issue is not looking at the longer-term effects that have been shown throughout Africa and other developing regions.

I tried replying to this before, but I must have hit the wrong button. Anyway, I understand that the U.S. aid policy is a nightmare. It needs to change and it seems as though the proposal as outlined in the article is the way to go. We're in agreement.

In the meantime, as I said above, the Kenyan government can ease some needless suffering by changing their mercantilistic economic policy. Foreign grain is available for starving people, but the Kenyan government prevents these people from obtaining this grain in the name of "protecting" the farmer? This is not the way for an economy to grow (forgive the pun).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is not the way for an economy to grow (forgive the pun).

Heh. B)

Yeah, we are in agreement. US assistance policy is a moving target, but so is international assistance policy. There's just so many variables that you can't account for, so you change your tactic and something else pops up. Looking only at the long-term needs, you may end up ignoring the short-term ones; by minding only the short-term, you can create unintended long-term reverberations. So how do we fix it? I for one have no ideas. Suggestions welcome... :angry:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I read it quite a while ago and just did not detect this tone at all. In fact I think that Pollan made quite clear--without belaboring the point--that eating truly organically is neither practical nor possible for many people. He was describing an ideal that can inspire one to make some modest but important changes or at least think differently about how and what one eats. His prose was also clear, incisive, and elegant. This could easily have been a grandstanding, ideological tract, but in my opinion it was precisely the opposite.

I also read it a while ago, but I agree completely. I think he made a point of saying and showing how hard it would be to eat in this manner.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It took me a little while to get into the corn discussion in the beginning,

I'm confused by the recent price increase in milk and dairy products. I've finished the corn section and was left with the impression that, given the cheapness of cultivating and producing corn, the price of beef and, therefore dairy, is not subject to market fluctuations like other commodities. What did I miss? And, while the gallon price of milk rivals the gallon price of gasoline, why has it taken so long to get media attention. Granted, I buy milk maybe once a quarter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm confused by the recent price increase in milk and dairy products. I've finished the corn section and was left with the impression that, given the cheapness of cultivating and producing corn, the price of beef and, therefore dairy, is not subject to market fluctuations like other commodities. What did I miss? And, while the gallon price of milk rivals the gallon price of gasoline, why has it taken so long to get media attention. Granted, I buy milk maybe once a quarter.
There's sort of a perfect storm at the moment. The price of cattle feed has gone up a couple of hundred dollars a ton over the past 6 months to a year, because a significant amount of corn is going into ethanol production rather than into feed - that's reflected in both the price of milk and the price of beef. The higher price of gas is also driving up transport costs for groceries across the board. Add to all that a significant increase in demand for dairy products from Asia which has driven up the worldwide commodity price for dairy, and you have more expensive milk.

Wholesale and retail beef prices have been up for the past few years, thanks to the high-protein diet craze - when what are considered to be "non-ideal" live cattle (older, not fattened, etc.) are selling for nearly $1.00 a pound scale price, that's a good and happy thing for the farmers. The high feed prices are starting to get ugly, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also read it a while ago, but I agree completely. I think he made a point of saying and showing how hard it would be to eat in this manner.

I recall having the same reaction following my reading; the big takeaway for me was that there is an ideal way of going about eating in harmony with the natural order of things and a realistic way. Unfortunately both require resources (financial being only one component) that are outside the grasp of the average American. I was left hoping for something resembling suggestions for how to lower those barriers.

I think the reader's view of the food world and ecology in general will really color their reaction to this book. During the first half I had some thoughts to Heather's (but maybe a bit more charitable :angry: ). By the end of the book I had come around to what I hope he was getting at. I had to keep reminding myself that the target audience for this book was not me. Anybody who has already thought hard about the impact of their food choices is not going to find much new here, just maybe some new details to chew on. The dangling carrot for me was that he seemed to be dancing around the outskirts of something resembling an answer to the problem of "eating locally" in a sustainable way for a large population. In the end there is no good answer, so maybe that is what is infuriating to some. But maybe that's just the hard truth. The real audience for this book is an American population that does not think about their food choices or doesn't care where their calories come from. For them this is pretty powerful stuff, and anecdotally this rings true. I've had recent conversations with people I know who have read either this or Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (I have not tackled that one, yet) and they've asked me about local farmers markets, joining a CSA with them, etc. That's pretty powerful stuff. Even if these books don't hold the answer they are a big stepping off point for change on a personal level at least. Is pointing out the flaws in this country's supply chain and then pointing out the (expensive) alternatives elistist? Yeah, probably, but here it's been done in a less condescending way than the veggie/vegan/PETA literature that normally plies the same waters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

Confronting the many questions that grew out of his bestselling Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan breaks it down with seven simple words — "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Taking stock of today's complex culinary landscape — rife with bad advice, misleading packaging, and edible "foodlike" substances — Pollan advises the reader to not "eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize as food." Joyfully affirming the pure pleasure of eating, In Defense of Food is a bracing and eloquent manifesto that will surely redefine our beliefs on what it means to be healthy.

So, a follow-up to the "Dilemma"....anybody checked this out yet?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, a follow-up to the "Dilemma"....anybody checked this out yet?
I read the article that is the precursor to it but haven't seen the book yet. I recall the part about not eating anything your great-great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. I've got a bit of a backlog of books to get to, so I won't be reading this until I've cleared some of that out.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's a link to Michael Pollan's web site and its summary of what he's subtitled An Eater's Manifesto.

If you click on the link to "Unhappy Meals" in Heather's post in late January, you'll find the NYT article that launched the book project.

After the brief description on the web site, you'll find a link to the book's introduction.

Given some of the dissenting voices that didn't sing the praises of his penultimate book--and Barbara Kingsolver's more pastoral, if equally proscriptive/prescriptive memoir--there is an unattributed excerpt from an early review that specifically denies that the book is preachy, but instead "lets the facts speak for themselves". :( It's pretty obvious that MP meant to write a polemic and is as passionate as ever.

However, instead of focussing on carbon footprints and the sources for our meals, questions center on just how much nutrition is a hard science rather than a marketing tool.

Even Weight Watchers is cleverly refashioning itself these days by deriding diets and inviting you to a transformative experience of a different sort. Pollan also promotes an alternative to our obsession with our diets: eating food. His rhetorical strategy is kind of like Hemingway's. Don't eat low-fat food, healthy food, processed food, whole food... He simply removes the adjectives that modify "food" and explains what the noun means.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

However, instead of focussing on carbon footprints and the sources for our meals, questions center on just how much nutrition is a hard science rather than a marketing tool.

Even Weight Watchers is cleverly refashioning itself these days by deriding diets and inviting you to a transformative experience of a different sort. Pollan also promotes an alternative to our obsession with our diets: eating food. His rhetorical strategy is kind of like Hemingway's. Don't eat low-fat food, healthy food, processed food, whole food... He simply removes the adjectives that modify "food" and explains what the noun means.

I am very curious about the new book. While there is some merit in his Luddite approach, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is at least as damaging as moving to an all supplement diet. For instance, I don't know anyone with a modicum of scientific literacy that would deride the discovery of the role folic acid plays in the prevention of neural tube defects, and the subsequent recommendation of supplements before and during pregnancy.

See also Slate's Should We Buy Michael Pollan's Nutritional Darwinism?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am very curious to read the book. While there is some merit in his Luddite approach, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is at least as damaging as moving to an all supplement diet. For instance, I don't know anyone with a modicum of scientific literacy that would deride the discovery of the role folic acid plays in the prevention of neural tube defects, and the subsequent recommendation of supplements before and during pregnancy.

See also Slate's Should We Buy Michael Pollan's Nutritional Darwinism?

I heard Pollan interviewed on "Science Friday" on NPR last week, and I agreed with much of what he had to say about nutritionism as ideology. Many of the medical nutritionist professionals I have encountered directly or via the experience of friends, have advocated what I refer to as "nutritional naziism"-- insisting on stringent dietary proscriptions that make life intolerable. My theory is that many of them may actually be barely-controlled anorexics themselves who are sublimating their illness into attempting to control the intake of others. The pleasure police, I also call them.

I agree with Pollan's call for avoiding manufactured "food-like substances" and focusing on real food in moderation and increased physical activity.These, rather than strict diets that forbid entire categories of food, and isolating nutritional elements into expensive supplements that supposedly proffer or increase the health benefits of those elements as they occur in nature: ie. in food. People who fear food and derive no pleasure from eating ("food makes you sick, or fat") can delude themselves that they are getting the "health" benefits of food by taking supplements, while restricting their intake to things that have few calories. This is the ideology promoted by the nutritionists, and a source of huge profit to the nutritional supplement industry and its various shills.

When he talked about using what our grandparents ate as a touchstone of what food we ought to consume, however, it occured to me that much of what my forebears ate (and probably his, too) was slathered with chicken or goose fat or swimming in sour cream. And that many of their lives were cut very short by the consequences of infectious disease. Pollan's evidence is not convincing that it was primarily their diet that accounted for the survival of their succeeding generational lines.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've got a bit of a backlog of books to get to, so I won't be reading this until I've cleared some of that out.
So much for reading the other books first. I saw the new Pollan book at Costco ($13.49) and have started reading it. I haven't gotten far enough into it to make any comment, though.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So much for reading the other books first. I saw the new Pollan book at Costco ($13.49) and have started reading it. I haven't gotten far enough into it to make any comment, though.

I'm still trying to determine whether buying a Pollan book at Costco is inherently funny (or ironic?)...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure, but he sold a copy sooner than he would have if I hadn't seen it there :( .

Oh, I'm certainly not saying it's funny on your part for buying it there as you're just a cog in the machine. I (think) I find it funny because I would think that Costco and other bulk-merchandise stuff are alot of what Pollan goes against. Though perhaps that's where to have the most impact?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, I'm certainly not saying it's funny on your part for buying it there as you're just a cog in the machine. I (think) I find it funny because I would think that Costco and other bulk-merchandise stuff are alot of what Pollan goes against. Though perhaps that's where to have the most impact?

Costco, like most grocery retailers, sells a lot of "food-like substances" but also sells real food. Pollan's advice for supermarket shoppers is to avoid the middle of the store and shop the edges of the store, where the vegetables, meat and dairy are found. In the case of Costco, the real food is located in the back of the store, at least in Pentagon City, where I shop. If you shop carefully, you can find excellent cheeses and other dairy products, fruits, vegetables, nuts, meat, fish and wine, all at very good prices. All of which our great-grandparents would recognize as food. What is hard if not impossible to find are foods that haven't travelled many miles to get there and are raised under sustainable agricultural conditions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, I'm certainly not saying it's funny on your part for buying it there as you're just a cog in the machine. I (think) I find it funny because I would think that Costco and other bulk-merchandise stuff are alot of what Pollan goes against. Though perhaps that's where to have the most impact?
Authors want their books to sell, but, nonetheless, publishers make those the decisions rather than authors. Making money for a mom and pop store is nice, but you're not going to turn away sales from Barnes and Noble or Costco.

If Pollan wanted to be extremely ascetic, he would self-publish and sell only through outlets he approved of, not publish with Penguin (the publisher on the copy I have). ETA: I wouldn't expect him to do that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Costco, like most grocery retailers, sells a lot of "food-like substances" but also sells real food. Pollan's advice for supermarket shoppers is to avoid the middle of the store and shop the edges of the store, where the vegetables, meat and dairy are found. In the case of Costco, the real food is located in the back of the store, at least in Pentagon City, where I shop. If you shop carefully, you can find excellent cheeses and other dairy products, fruits, vegetables, nuts, meat, fish and wine, all at very good prices. All of which our great-grandparents would recognize as food. What is hard if not impossible to find are foods that haven't travelled many miles to get there and are raised under sustainable agricultural conditions.

I certainly agree with the selection at Costco. Alas we don't have Costco where I'm at now (we only have Sam's and BJ's) but we did find some great stuff there (which Sam's and BJ's has to some extent as well). I thought part of Pollan's position was that locally grown food is preferable, though it's been well over a year since I read his initial book and have more than likely gotten him mixed up with some other food books I read. If that is part of the position I just thought the juxtaposition a bit humorous as Costco certainly doesn't go for the locavore route as it isn't there thing. Not damning anyone, just found it funny :-)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I definitely plan on reading the new Pollan book. Another recent book on nutrition/diet that some former coworkers of mine in the health research industry are recommending is Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories. This book also started as a NY Times article.
Anyone here read The China Study? Less engaging work familiar to Pollan. No catchy, concise summary of conclusions, but it appears to be a work popular among vegans, especially, since it advocates eating mostly plants for the sake of good health.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Finally got around to reading "In Defense of Food". I was half expecting it to be a condensed rehash of the ideas in "The Omnivore's Dilemma", but I thought it was a fairly powerful book.

I don't think Pollan is anti-science, as some of his critics have suggested. I took his main point to be that it is likely going to be a long, long time before science isolates exactly what it is about food that works heath-wise. It's a complex problem that's difficult to study (I've seen how unreliable diet data can be), and nutritionists have probably been as harmful as helpful thus far, jumping the gun with theories shown to be wrong (beta carotene, oat bran, etc.), or now looking very shaky (the current fat debate). Or instead, maybe blame the "nutritionism" problem on something in our culture that wants to latch on to the latest findings, looking for silver bullets. In the meantime, while this is all sorted out, we need to know what to do.

I went back and reread the Slate piece. It ignores some of the key evidence Pollan uses to back up his argument for tradition/evolution. Pollan cites studies of Aborigines and other groups far removed from modern, processed-food-heavy diets. If fed a Western diet, these groups start having problems with "Western" diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Then there's also the French Paradox. The French, who don't eat as many processed foods and have a diet higher in traditional food products (including lots of fat and other things nutritionists consider undesirable), have lower rates of heart disease and diabetes. I certainly hope that scientists keep plugging away and eventually figure out just what prevents disease, but in the (long) meantime, as much through tradition as through scientific studies, we have a pretty good idea at a macro level of what works: lots of fruit and vegetables, excercise, etc... in other words, something like Pollan's "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Anyway, just my take on the book. I'd be curious to hear what others think about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...