Book #2 of the year

[lunabee34]

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really enjoyed this book. I was first introduced to Pollan's writing in The Botany of Desire, and I liked that book so well that I looked for other books he's written.

The Omnivore's Dilemma raises fascinating and often disturbing questions about how we grow our food, about the way agriculture as an industry is harming our planet, and about the potential ways we might go about solving these problems. As Pollan says over and over again in the book, learning about the way we raise and slaughter meat on a mass scale in the U.S. is guaranteed to ruin the appetite. And yet, Pollan asserts that some of the ways people have tried to circumvent this problem (going vegetarian, only eating organic food, buying meat that comes from animals that were treated well before slaughter) come with their own sets of problems (like the large carbon footprint incurred by shipping organic fruits and vegetables all over the country/world, for example).

This book was very informative, but my favorite parts were the moments of introspection. I particularly enjoyed the part where Pollan turns up his nose at what he sees as off-putting machismo in "hunter porn" and then has to admit to his chagrin later that he can kinda see where those writers are coming from when they write about how hunting engages them on a primal level even while acknowledging how profoundly uncomfortable that realization makes him.

As someone who never ate a tomato from the store until I was an adult and who mostly ate protein as a child that was fished or shot by my dad, I appreciate stories that are about people eliminating the middle man between them and the food they eat.

Very highly recommended.



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Comments

[ariadne83]

The thing that gets me is: the way we produce food in pretty much *every* aspect is fucked up.

Example: my vegan friends who refuse to eat honey, so they consume agave instead. I hate to point out to them that bees feed on agave, so they're starving the creatures they aim to protect, but...

Moving from New Zealand to Australia made a HUGE difference to the way we eat. New Zealand is SUCH a small country that unless you grow it yourself, it's incredibly expensive to eat fresh fruit and vegetables. And having enough land to grow your own fruit/veggies it ALSO incredibly expensive, because I came from the country's capital. (Don't get me started on New Zealand's export first, fuck everyone else attitude that leaves locals shit out of luck unless they can afford to pay export prices for locally-sourced food.)

Food is a lot more affordable in Australia, and sometimes we end up being accidental vegetarians a couple of times a week because we really love fresh produce. But then there's my personal situation, where I get really ticked off with smug, holier-than-thou people on vegetarian/vegan/whatever flavour of the month diets because I have chronic iron depletion. No, trend of the week, I do not care if red meat is bad for you (it isn't) because I need it.

[lunabee34]

*nods nods*

Vegans and vegetarians, as Pollan points out, are almost certainly participating in the killing of rodents and small mammals that get chewed up in the combines and other machinery that are used to cultivated plants we grow. And the carbon footprint they amass when buying that food, which is shipped from all around the world and country, is also a problem.

Because of the way we grow plants and raise animals on an industrial scale, all that food is tainted and causes an ecological problem in some way.

I don't have a medical reason to eat meat, but I like meat and have no plans to stop eating it. The protein in meat makes me feel much fuller and more satisfied than the protein in plants.