April 2009 | Modern Hygienist
Life: Good Read

Where does dinner come from?

Digesting The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

	Photo: Andersen Ross/getty images You can learn more about the benefits of eating locally and practical ways to make it possible by visiting: eatlocalchallenge.com.

by Lisa Beth Anderson

First, a confession: Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals sat at the top of my reading pile for weeks before I actually mustered the strength to read it. I’d borrowed the book from a friend, but after bringing it home, I neglected it in favor of, well, anything else. A biography of Julia Child. A novelized version of “The Importance of Being Earnest”. A collection of six-word-long memoirs. The phone book.

Okay, maybe not the phone book.

My reticence to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma was simple: I was already eating as carefully as I knew how. I buy cage-free eggs and organic produce whenever possible. But I don’t have extra resources or time to spend buying and preparing my meals, so I was in no hurry to be made to feel guilty about them. I viewed Pollan’s book as a kind of forbidden fruit—once I read it I feared I would no longer be ignorant of how my food made its way to my plate.

Finally, though, curiosity got the better of me. In the pages of The Omnivore’s Dilemma I found a carefully researched and clearly wrought trajectory of four distinct meals, from source to table. The book follows the components of these meals procured by the author from McDonald’s, big organic (think Whole Foods), a small sustainable family farm, and the land around the author’s home, respectively.

A cloudly 'should'

Pollan begins by asking what we should eat for dinner. Taking seriously the complexities of food production, he admits the should of the American meal isn’t as clear as it once was. Is it best to buy organic produce? Is organic produce still best if it was shipped 2,000 miles to get to the supermarket? Is it best to avoid high-fructose corn syrup? Is it possible to do so? What’s the difference between cage-free and free-range?

Pollan says he “realized that the straightforward question ‘What should I eat?’ could no longer be answered without first addressing two other even more straightforward questions: ‘What am I eating?’ and ‘Where in the world did it come from?’” Not very long ago an eater didn’t need a journalist to answer these questions. The fact that today one so often does suggests a pretty good start on a working definition of industrial food: Any food whose provenance is so complex or obscure it requires expert help to ascertain.”

The Omnivore’s Dilemma is Pollan’s culinary detective work at your service. He artfully wends his way through its chapters, sussing out the strange and fascinating truth underlying the what and where of the food we eat. Pollan’s first examined meal, from McDonald’s, leads the author to an Iowan cornfield. The sweeteners, oils and thickeners McDonald’s depends on all come from corn. The chicken nuggets, which contain corn-fed chicken, cornstarch and corn flour (as well as corn-derived citric acid, lecithin, and mono-, di-, and triglycerides), are fried in corn oil. “You are what you eat, it’s often said, and if this is true, then what we mostly are is…processed corn.”

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