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Summary and Analysis of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Based on the Book by Michael Pollan
By Worth Books OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4484-4
CHAPTER 1
Summary
Introduction: Our National Eating Disorder
Pollan sets out to answer a basic question: What should we have for dinner? But the question only seems simple. To answer it, we must sort through massive amounts of conflicting information and avoid countless products whose origins and ingredients are deliberately obscured.
How did we arrive at this place? Pollan pins the blame on "our national eating disorder," and points to the recent demonization of wholesome, carbohydrate-rich foods, such as bread and pasta, as a primary example of the problem. Part of the confusion, he argues, stems from the fact that America is composed of so many different cultures and ethnicities. As a result, there is no "deeply rooted" food culture for Americans to draw on. People in France, Italy, Spain, and Japan — all wealthy industrialized countries with old food traditions — don't have this problem.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is an attempt to provide clarity. The book is driven by the premise "that like every other creature on earth, humans take part in a food chain, and our place in that food chain, or web, determines to a considerable extent what kind of creature we are." Pollan identifies three principle food chains of modern America: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer. In each of the book's three parts, he follows one of these chains from beginning to end, from plant to meal, in an effort to understand the relationship between what we eat and how we interact with the natural world.
Need to Know: Research psychologist Paul Rozin first used the phrase "omnivore's dilemma" 40 years ago, but the concept appears in the works of 18th-century writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Throughout human history, the tension between our ability to eat anything nature has to offer and our awareness that some of those things will sicken or kill us has always created anxiety.
I
INDUSTRIAL: CORN
One: The Plant
Corn's Conquest
Most people are unaware of the dominant and remarkable role that corn plays in the modern American food system. Industrially grown corn feeds beef cattle, chickens, dairy cows, and fish, and serves as the basis for an untold number of sweeteners and additives included in supermarket staples, such as mayonnaise, Coca-Cola, and salad dressing. All in all, byproducts of industrial corn can be found in approximately a quarter of the products in the typical American grocery store.
Corn's preeminence is based on its biology and American history. Most plants during photosynthesis create compounds that have three carbon atoms. Corn, however, makes compounds with a fourth carbon atom, giving the plant an advantage in environments with high temperatures and scarce water. Corn is amazingly well-suited to the North American climate: In New England it saved the colonists after their wheat harvests failed, to central Mexico, where corn's ancestor, Zea mays, is believed to have originated. It's also an incredibly versatile grain. It can be eaten off the cob, turned into alcohol, ground into flour, and used as a commodity — corn was both the currency traders used to buy slaves in Africa and the food the slaves ate during their passage to America.
Corn has benefitted enormously from the relationship with man. The plant's unique biology makes it very difficult for it to reproduce on its own. (Female organs are contained inside the closed husk, which makes self-fertilization and wind-pollination, or "corn sex," as the author puts it, challenging.) Enter humans and their opposable, husk-opening thumbs. By opening up the husk and allowing the (male) tassel to mate with the flowers contained in the ear, we make it much easier for corn to reproduce. Eventually, humans began deliberately mating desirable corn plants together; this hybridization led to greater corn growth and success — and greater human reliance on the plant. Thus began the symbiotic relationship that has continued to this day.
Need to Know: Descendants of the Maya in Mexico refer to themselves as "the corn people" because the plant makes up such a large part of their diet, but recent research identifying carbon isotopes in human tissue reveals that modern Americans have more corn in them than their Mexican counterparts. According to one biologist, "when you look at the isotope ratios, we North Americans look like corn chips with legs."
Two: The Farm
Pollan begins his dive into the industrial food revolution by going directly to its modern incarnation: a corn farm in Iowa. George Naylor is a curmudgeonly but colorful third-generation farmer. When Naylor's grandfather began farming the land in 1919, he raised a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and animals (and some corn) on 320 acres. At the time, approximately one out of every four Americans worked on a farm. Fast forward to today, when grandson George — one of the less than two million farmers left in the United States — grows nothing but corn and soybeans on 470 acres. For all of his hard work, Naylor is barely scraping by, relying in part on his wife's office salary. Pollan wants to know: how did this happen?
He finds two main causes. The first is a bit paradoxical: efficiency. In the 1920s, farmers averaged around 20 bushels of corn per acre; thanks to advances in seed breeding and the development of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, some years Naylor gets 200. Over the years, the prospect of such a big harvest was too enticing to pass up, and the Naylor family began planting more and more corn on its property. The same goes for most of the other farmers in Iowa and neighboring states: livestock fences were pulled up, and fruit and vegetable plots and pastures became cornfields. An agricultural state with some of the richest soil in the world, Iowa nevertheless imports roughly 80% of its food.
The second major cause is government policy. New Deal farm programs set a target price for commodities such as corn — whenever overproduction caused the market price to drop below that target, farmers could take a government loan in exchange for storing their corn until prices recovered. This had the effect of keeping supply (and thus prices) relatively stable. During the Nixon administration, however, the support system was restructured. Under the direction of Secretary of Agriculture Earl "Rusty" Butz, the government scrapped the loan program and started paying the difference between target and market prices directly to farmers. The new subsidies effectively encouraged farmers to overproduce, which contributed to a steady decline in corn prices — which was the goal all along. Butz believed that large farms concerned chiefly with "agribusiness" would both contribute to national food security and make US corn more competitive in overseas markets. Family farms collapsed or were consolidated into huge, industrial operations growing one or two crops. Our national glut of corn is the result, explains Naylor: "Farmers facing lower prices have only one option if they want to be able to maintain their standard of living, pay their bills, and service their debt, and that is to produce more."
Need to Know: Fritz Haber's invention of synthetic nitrogen exponentially increased crop yields and revolutionized farming. Haber won the Nobel Prize for his work in 1920, but has fallen into obscurity due to his connection to the German effort in World War I. He directed the first poison gas attack in military history and developed Zyklon B, which was later used in Hitler's concentration camps. Haber's wife, a fellow chemist, was sickened by his war activities and used his army pistol to kill herself.
Three: The Elevator
Every October, George Naylor sells his corn at the grain elevator in Farnhamville, Iowa. He grows "number 2 field corn," a designation created by the Chicago Board of Trade in the 1850s as part of a new grading system. Many different kinds of corn are rated number 2 — the designation only means that its moisture content doesn't exceed 14% and less than 5% of its kernels have insect damage. After it's sold, Naylor's crop becomes part of an anonymous river of "commodity corn" leaving Iowa on trains that stretch more than a mile long and carry more than 440,000 bushels.
The Iowa Farmers Cooperative owns the elevator and pays Naylor for his corn. Like every other corn farmer, however, he also gets a payment from the US Department of Agriculture — roughly $0.28 a bushel regardless of the market price. If the price drops below the "target" price set by the government, however, Naylor receives an additional "deficiency payment." These payments "account for nearly half the income of the average Iowa corn farmer and represent roughly a quarter of the $19 billion US taxpayers spend each year on payments to farmers." The system incentivizes farmers to produce as much corn as possible and dump it all into the marketplace. As a result, the amount of corn harvested from American farms has grown from 4 billion bushels in 1970 to 10 billion bushels today. Finding uses for all that surplus corn is the primary task of the industrial food system.
Need to Know: Cargill is the world's largest privately held corporation. Along with ADM, it buys nearly a third of all the corn grown in America. The two companies also make pesticides and fertilizers, operate most of the country's grain elevators, feed and slaughter livestock, manufacture high-fructose corn syrup, and help to write the government regulations on which the whole system is based. Both companies declined to let Pollan inside their operations, citing "food security" concerns.
Four: The Feedlot
Making Meat (54,000 Kernels)
As part of his mission to trace the industrial food chain from start to finish, Pollan purchased a steer from an independently owned ranch in South Dakota. Like almost all industrial cattle in the United States, the steer spent his first six months being raised traditionally, grazing "in lush pastures alongside his mother." Meatpacking companies have concluded it makes the most economic sense to let independent producers get calves ready for the feedlot. After six months, however, Pollan's steer was branded, castrated, and sent to Poky Feeders in western Kansas, a miniature city of pens, waste pools, corn-dispensing mills, and maintenance roads where he became one of 37,000 other cattle being raised onsite.
Like buffalo and sheep, cows are ruminants — they have evolved the ability to convert grass into high-quality protein. But with millions of tons of cheap energy available in the form of commodity corn, the agricultural industry decided that efficiency was more important than evolution. When cattle were fed exclusively on grass, it took them four or five years to reach slaughter weight. Today, on a nonstop diet of corn, protein, and fat supplements, a steer grows from 80 to 1,100 pounds in only 14 to 16 months. Americans like the marbled texture and flavor of corn-fed beef, but it contains more saturated fat and less omega-3 fatty acids than the meat of grass-fed animals. Since cattle don't naturally consume corn, eating such massive quantities frequently leads to health issues such as bloat and cow acidosis; Poky Feeders has three "hospitals" on its campus. The farm's main health intervention, however, is adding antibiotics into the feed, a process that is widely recognized as leading to the evolution of new antibiotic-resistant superbugs. The massive amounts of manure on feedlots are also cause for concern — bacteria in the animal waste can find its way onto a cow's hide and from there into our meat. E. coli O157:H7 thrives in the acidic stomachs of feedlot cattle and is particularly lethal to humans.
Need to Know: Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease, was caused by the practice — now banned by the FDA — of feeding rendered cow parts back to cows. New Guinea tribesmen who ritually eat the brains of their dead relatives suffer from Kuru, a disease strikingly similar to BSE. Some scientists believe that evolution selected against cannibalism as a means to avoid such infections.
Five: The Processing Plant
Making Complex Foods (18,000 Kernels)
Pollan can't get permission from Cargill or ADM to visit one of the country's 25 "wet mills," facilities that turn corn into high-fructose corn syrup, sorbitol, ethanol, xantham gum, and hundreds of other compounds. He is, however, able to arrange a demonstration of a scaled-down wet mill operation at Iowa State University's Center for Crop Utilization Research. He watches as corn kernels are subdivided and manipulated — the yellow skin processed into various vitamins and nutritional supplements; the germ (the dark part nearest the cob) crushed for its oil; and the largest part, the endosperm, pillaged for its long chains of carbohydrate molecules, which are broken down and rearranged into organic compounds.
When humans discovered how to preserve food — by pickling, curing, canning, freezing, etc. — it marked a monumental triumph over nature. After World War II, however, entirely new foods began to appear that could last much longer than anything grown in the earth. Margarine, Tang, Cool Whip, and other scientifically engineered products were created and marketed as improvements on nature. Corn played an essential role by supplying the carbohydrates, or sugars and starches, to these processed foods.
Engineering new foods allowed corporations to become more efficient and increase profit margins. Their products stayed on the shelves longer and could be shipped all over the world. And by "adding value"— in the form of vitamins and minerals, or new flavors, colors, and textures — food companies are able to combat the "fixed stomach" problem: A human being can only eat about 1,500 pounds of food a year. In order to achieve the kind of growth Wall Street expects, companies need to convince consumers to pay more for those 1,500 pounds.
Need to Know: Sweeteners derived from refined cornstarch are the corn industry's most important product. High-fructose corn syrup — a blend of fructose and glucose — accounts for 530 million bushels of corn every year. You can replicate the process by which cornstarch is broken down into glucose by chewing on a cracker until it turns sweet. Enzymes in your saliva break the long starch molecules into shorter molecules of glucose.
Six: The Consumer
A Republic of Fat
The United States is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Three out of every five Americans are overweight, and one out of every five is considered obese. A child born in 2000 has a one in three chance of developing diabetes. The causes of the epidemic include our sedentary lifestyles, supersize portions, marketing campaigns that target children, and more fats, carbohydrates, and processed foods in our diets. Behind many of these factors lies one common cause: a surplus of cheap corn. Corn accounts for most of the extra calories we grow, and most of the extra calories we eat. For the food industry, the smartest thing to do with this surplus of a cheap commodity is to turn it into a "value-added consumer product." In other words, refine corn into high-fructose corn syrup.
Americans consume 66 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup every year; most of it in the form of soft drinks. Because it's so cheap to produce, beverage companies and fast food chains can increase their profits by offering larger soda sizes for only a few more pennies. "Supersizing" was a tremendous psychological victory. McDonald's executives discovered that customers who were reluctant to order a second soda or bag of fries for fear of appearing gluttonous would happily order the equivalent of two sodas or fries at one time.
Corn subsidies and advances in food technology have caused the price of a calorie of sugar or fat to plummet since the 1970s. According to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, supermarket shoppers can buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or cookies for a dollar, compared to 250 calories of a whole food like carrots. Poor Americans are most affected by these changes in the food world and suffer from the highest rates of obesity and diabetes.
Need to Know: Like most mammals, humans have a sweet tooth. Natural selection has predisposed us to sugars and fats because they offer the most energy (or calories) per bite. That's why adding sugar or fat to anything makes it taste better. But processed foods have higher concentrations of these nutrients than we would ever find in nature. Diseases such as obesity and Type II diabetes occur when the body's mechanisms for managing sugar and fat get overwhelmed.
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Excerpted from Summary and Analysis of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Worth Books. Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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