Response to
Pollan Pages 64-140
The Omnivore’s Dilemma is a book that has been reinforcement
for me about the food industry. I have
been a documentary watched for a long time and many of the one’s I have seen
have been about the food industry including GMO
OMG, Food Inc.,and Supersize Me, just to name a few. The
Omnivore’s Dilemma, however, has been much more detailed in every facet of
the food industry thus far.
I
would like to draw a parallel to my life and the story the author tells
me. Pollan buys a steer named 534 to
follow him from birth to the dinner table.
The calf enters the world and eats his mothers milk and later a few
native grasses to the area. When he is
old enough to be sent to a CAFO, a concentrated animal feeding operation, and
first given steamed hay and then a diet of corn feed because in a country with
a surplus of corn why not feed the animals the cheap surplus to save money?
Wrong. Corn is not part of a normal diet
in a cow. Later in the book when Pollan
takes his family to McDonald’s his son gets chicken nuggets, and when Pollan
asks how if they taste like chicken his son replies by saying that it tastes
like what it’s supposed to taste like, a nugget.
After
reading this it reiterated the point to me that I don’t really know where our
food is coming from. What is real and not real?
What is pumped with GMO’s and what isn’t, or whether things labeled
“organic” really are organic? I have
always been pretty aware of the flaws in the food that I eat because my mother
had always been really cautious. My
mother lives in Maine for a lot of the year and when I was visiting her one
time she introduced me to one of her friends who is a cow farmer. He farms his cows for their meat. It was interesting to me though because
although I had watched so many shows on factory farming this man managed to
have his own farm that was basically the “ideal” farm that factory farms make
you think they are. All of his cows had
names and were treated more like pets than meat. They would have never been numbered like
Pollan’s steer, 534. He knew all of
their personalities and treated them well.
The roamed wide open fields and grazed on the grass that was available
to them. He did use them for meat, and
my mom usually bought ground beef from him to make burgers. As an experiment, one night for dinner we
decided to buy ground beef from the store and try some of the organic beef we
had gotten from my mom’s friend to see if we could actually taste a
difference. It was as if I was eating
two completely different foods. The beef
from the farmer was amazingly tender, juicy, and had real flavor. The store bought beef couldn’t even
compare. The unfortunate thing is that
everyone can’t have a farmer to buy meat from like my family does on occasion. Factory farms have taken over the industry
and it is hard for the individual farmer to stand a chance. If only people could see the harm
agribusiness and factory farms does.
4 comments:
I really appreciate you relating the book thus far to your own life. It's true-- most of us are now aware of the horrors of the food industry, but just like you said, "everyone can’t have a farmer to buy meat from like my family does on occasion." This is so true! The process of getting truly pure, untampered meat or vegetables is nearly impossible, and it is seen as not worth it to most of us (myself included.) It's great that "organic" (I use the term cautiously) farms do exist, but ordinary people have no idea how to get their food from these places, nor do they care to put in the effort. I myself am in an "ignorance is bliss" relationship with my food. I eat fast food and everyday supermarket foods, and I do not see that changing anytime soon. Yet, I DO know how the food industry works now. It is that convenience and our laziness that make our food too easy to give up. So is the problem solely the fault of the food industry, or are people like me to blame as well?
Michelle, I think the issue of who is to blame for the state of our food industry is too complex to assign fault in entirety to either the industry itself or the consumers. There are a lot of contributing factors to what food the industry produced and why we buy it
One of the factors that Nicole discussed is geography. Like she said, her mother lives in Maine. Nicole, maybe you can offer a additional information on the town your mother lives in, but I'm assuming its fairly rural. This isn't the case for a lot of people. In more developed areas of the country it is no longer even an issue of convenience. There simply aren't farms around.
I'm sure there are many many more contributing factors to why people make the decisions they make when buying food, many of which Pollan has or will discuss. It is a very strange and complex system which may, in fact, be blameless.
This book frustrates me in the sense, that no matter how healthy I am eating or thinking I am eating, I really don't know exactly what I am buying and consuming. I wish there was a way to feed our entire population, continue small farms while keeping foods cost effective and more natural, and still allowing the farmers to support their families. In a perfect world (well my perfect world), that would be achieveable. I would agree with Andrew that the food industry is too complex to point fingers at the industry itself, the government, or the consumers. However, now that we are fairly educated from reading The Omnivore's Dilemma (well part of it for now), I think it is important that we share our knowledge and continue to support locally grown food.
Nicole's comparision between the meat made me think of a comparision I noted from studying abroad. Although I am a pescetarian, when Nicole and I went abroad to Italy, I noticed how much fresher their food tasted. Granted I know relatively nothing about Italy's agriculture, just based off taste and shelf life, it was evident that their food was much more fresh. For example, when I bought strawberries from the local market in Florence, they were a third of the size of American strawberries. Not only that, but they only lasted a day and a half because I assume they had little to no preservatives or chemicals added. To be honest, I was a little upset about that at first because I was so used to the convience of being able to have strawberries last me a week. Yet after tasting them, I realized I was willing to give up the convience in order to have delicious tasting fruits. The strawberries in Florence tasted out of this world compared to the American ones.
It is unfortunate that the food industry is the way it is today. It deeply saddens me that America chooses to feed our animals corn because it is cheaper despite it not being a food not in their normal diet. It seems to me as if America seems to choose convience over health and quality. I'm not sure what the answer is to this problem, or if there is one, but I think Pollan's book is raising questions that will hopefully not only give Americans a better understanding of our food industry but push people to buy locally and fight for potential reform.
I have so many things I could say, and so many feelings about this topic because of how much exposure I have had with it. I studied in the sustainable agriculture program in Italy, and everything Cat has said is true about Italian food. It is fresher, healthier, better, less processed. But this is because it was a different country, with different values, and different goals. Also, a lot smaller. Italy started the 'Slow Food International' Movement in the 1980's after they opened the first McDonalds in Rome. America invented McDonalds. Italians eat long, extensive, personal and intimate dinners that could last for 4 hours, normally. Americans eat TV dinners. Our culture is fast, fast, fast, with a little sense that our resources are finite.
I've seen a cow processing factory in Italy, and I have been to the largest feedlot in America (in Greeley, CO with 90,000 cattle). The difference is immense. Our culture is disconnected with our food, but I am hopeful that the desire to be more connected is growing. The solutions are hard. We need to stop eating so much meat if we want to feel good about the meat we do eat. That Slow Food International organization I mentioned before? It is in 200 countries now, and I am head of the one at UCONN and in Central Connecticut. This book has been out for 10 years, and things have been changing. I try to stay hopeful for the future of food, because we will inevitably hit a point where we realize if we don't change, then we are in trouble.
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